Faculty Leads: Dr. Saba Rouhani, Dr. Jemar Bather and Dr. Diana Silver
The Researching Criminalization and Public Health (ReCAP) Lab at the NYU School of Global Public Health examines how carceral exposures, including incarceration, policing, and other forms of criminal legal system contact, shape health across the life course. Led by Dr. Saba Rouhani, Dr. Jemar R. Bather and Dr. Diana Silver, the lab conducts interdisciplinary research integrating epidemiology, criminology, social science, and biostatistics. This work focuses on how direct and vicarious exposure to carceral systems affects physical and mental health, contributing to disparities in chronic disease, mortality, and wellbeing. ReCAP’s projects also examine the structural and social conditions that shape carceral exposure itself, with the goal of advancing frameworks that explain health disparities and inform public health research, policy, and practice.
Objectives:
- Characterize how carceral exposures across the life course influence health outcomes
- Examine how structural and interpersonal determinants shape the distribution of carceral exposure and resulting health disparities
- Identify social, structural, and policy-level factors that mitigate the health consequences of carceral exposure
The ReCAP Lab welcomes undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows, to join its research team. Members will work with large-scale administrative and population-based datasets, apply quasi-experimental and causal inference techniques to questions at the intersection of justice and health, and contribute to ongoing grants and peer-reviewed papers. The lab is committed to rigorous, collaborative training that prepares its members to pursue independent research in social epidemiology.