Historical Structural Racism
Research examining how historical racial exclusion, segregation, racial violence, and institutional practices continue to shape contemporary social and health conditions.
Sociologist & Population Health Researcher
Dr. Leia D. Belt, PhD
Researching how history, place, and power become health.
Dr. Belt is a sociologist and population health researcher studying how historical and contemporary systems shape health, opportunity, and inequality across place.
Her research brings together population data, spatial analysis, oral histories, interviews, archival research, community-engaged methods, and digital scholarship to investigate how structural conditions become embodied across generations and communities.
Sociology · Population Health · Structural Racism · Place · Maternal Health · Mixed Methods
Fig. 01
[VERIFY BEFORE PUBLISHING — confirm this photo & cutout quality before launch]
Structural Racism
Population Health
Maternal & Infant Health
Rural Health
Mixed Methods
Community-Engaged Research
Spatial Research
Historical Sociology
Digital Scholarship
About
Researching the relationship between place, history, systems, and health.
Dr. Leia D. Belt is an interdisciplinary sociologist and population health scholar whose work investigates how historical systems of exclusion continue to influence contemporary communities, institutions, environments, and health. Her research moves between historical and contemporary evidence, and across methodological traditions — treating a research question, not a discipline's default toolkit, as the thing that determines method.
That range shows up in the evidence she works with: population health data and administrative records sit alongside oral histories, interview transcripts, PhotoVoice images, archival documents, and geographic and spatial data. She is as comfortable in a historical archive as she is with a multilevel regression model — and treats both as necessary for understanding how structural conditions become embodied, generation after generation, in specific places.
Throughout, she is concerned with research that is not only methodologically rigorous but meaningful to the communities represented in the data — work developed with communities, not simply conducted on them.
Training & pathway. Dr. Belt holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies — a designed emphasis in Sociology, History, and Public Health — from the University of Iowa (2023), an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Iowa (2020), and a B.S. in Psychology and Sociology, with honors, from Kent State University (2017), where she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. Her dissertation, "Sundown Towns and Contemporary Maternal Infant Health: An Interdisciplinary Mixed-Methods Analysis of Structural Racism and Its Public Health Legacy in the Midwest," laid the foundation for her ongoing sundown-towns research program.
Fellowships & training. She is a Health Affairs Equity Fellow (2024–2025), an AcademyHealth Health Data Policy Fellow (2024), and a graduate of the National Endowment for the Humanities' Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing Institute at Brown University Library (2024) — training that directly informs the born-digital book project below.
Postdoctoral research. Before her current appointment, she was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Sociology and the Higher Education Race & The Economy (HERE) Lab at UC Merced (2023–2025).
- Current role
- Postdoctoral Scholar, Nicotine & Cannabis Policy Center · University of California, Merced
- Methodological range
- Qualitative · Quantitative · Mixed Methods · Community-Based Participatory · Spatial · Historical
- Core questions
- History, place, structural racism & population health
- Available for
- Research collaboration · Speaking · Advising
Research Philosophy
Health happens somewhere.
Health is shaped not only by individual behavior or healthcare access but by the histories, policies, institutions, economies, environments, and relationships embedded in place. Understanding contemporary health therefore requires asking how communities came to look the way they do — and who had the power to determine that development.
01
History
Investigate the policies, institutions, racial hierarchies, and historical events that produced contemporary places.
02
Place
Examine how those histories become embedded in neighborhoods, towns, rural communities, infrastructure, environments, and access to resources.
03
Health
Study how those structural conditions shape population health, maternal and infant health, well-being, and access to care.
04
Community
Combine population-level evidence with the experiences, knowledge, memories, and priorities of people living within those places.
Core Research Areas
Seven questions, one throughline.
Each area below is a distinct body of work — connected by the same underlying question about how history and place produce health.
Sundown Towns, Place & Health
Research investigating the historical geography and contemporary consequences of sundown towns and racially exclusionary jurisdictions across the United States.
- Historical records & geographic databases
- Spatial analysis, rurality & regional exposure
- Population health outcomes
- Oral histories & social determinants of health
Maternal & Infant Health
Research examining how structural conditions, geography, healthcare access, racial inequality, and historical context shape maternal and infant health.
Rural Health & Geography
Research examining rural places as historically and socially produced environments — rather than treating "rurality" as simply a demographic classification.
Structural Determinants of Health
Research examining how political, social, economic, commercial, historical, and institutional forces shape population health — the systems that produce downstream social conditions, not just the conditions themselves.
Community-Engaged Research
Work developed with communities rather than simply conducted on them.
- Community stewardship & participatory research
- PhotoVoice & oral history
- Focus groups & interviews
- Community co-design & public-facing tools
Data, Maps & Digital Scholarship
Research that transforms complex academic evidence into accessible digital scholarship through interactive maps, public databases, StoryMaps, data dashboards, digital books, and oral-history archives.
Featured Research Program
Working title — [VERIFY BEFORE PUBLISHING]
The Geography of Exclusion
Mapping the Afterlife of Sundown Towns
This body of scholarship investigates how historically racially exclusionary places — sundown towns and similar jurisdictions that used law, custom, threat, and violence to exclude Black residents — may continue to structure health, opportunity, resources, community life, and inequality today. The research question is not only historical: it asks how that exclusion persists through contemporary systems, and what that persistence means for the people living in and near those places now.
Map the History
Locating sundown towns and exclusionary jurisdictions using historical records, newspapers, and geographic databases.
Measure the Present
Linking that historical geography to contemporary population health and demographic outcomes.
Listen to Communities
Gathering oral histories and community knowledge from people who lived this geography.
Trace the Mechanisms
Identifying the transportation corridors, institutions, and policies that carried exclusion forward.
Build the Archive
Assembling historical documents, photographs, and records into a lasting, shareable public resource.
[Oral history photo]
[Newspaper record]
Map source: Loewen, J. (2005). Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. The New Press. Conception & research: Leia Belt. Visual engineering: Anthony Starks. Remaining slots are placeholders — add only with appropriate permissions and citation.
Digital Scholarship
Book in DevelopmentA born-digital book, built for the questions it asks.
Dr. Belt is developing a born-digital scholarly project that combines narrative scholarship with interactive maps, historical records, oral histories, population health research, data visualization, photography, archival materials, and audio — designed for a platform built for multimedia scholarly publishing, in the tradition of projects hosted on platforms like Fulcrum and university press digital imprints.
She trained for this work as a member of the National Endowment for the Humanities' Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing Institute at Brown University Library (2024). [ADD ACTUAL INFORMATION — working title, current stage, target platform/press once confirmed. No publisher has been confirmed to have accepted or contracted this project.]
- Narrative scholarship woven with interactive maps
- Oral-history audio and archival photography
- Data visualization built for public and scholarly audiences alike
- Already public: a ground-truthed sundown-towns spatial dataset, published via Dryad
Book in Development
[DIGITAL BOOK PREVIEW — placeholder]
Community-Engaged Public Health Data
Who should shape the data, not just who should collect it.
In California's San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Foothills, Dr. Belt works on community-engaged public health data infrastructure — asking not only "what data should we collect?" but also "who should shape the data, interpret it, trust it, and ultimately own how it is used?"
This work sits at the intersection of public-facing health dashboards, community crowdsourcing, resource sharing, warm handoffs between services, community stewardship, institutional trust, co-design, and data sovereignty.
- Public-facing health dashboards, built with community input
- Community crowdsourcing & resource sharing
- Data stewardship, sovereignty, and institutional trust
[ADD ACTUAL INFORMATION — partner organizations, project name, and any outcomes, once confirmed. No outcomes or metrics are stated here pending real data.]
[COMMUNITY DATA DASHBOARD PREVIEW — placeholder]
Participatory & Qualitative Research
Data tells part of the story. Communities tell the rest.
Dr. Belt's qualitative and participatory work uses PhotoVoice, oral history, key informant and expert interviews, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and community listening sessions to examine experiences of health, place, birth, community, and structural conditions.
Photography, excerpts, and field materials above are placeholders. Participant quotations and images are added only with explicit permission — never fabricated.
Selected Projects
Question, context, method, contribution.
Each project below follows the shape of the research itself, rather than a one-size-fits-all case-study format.
Structural Racism · Place & Health
Working title
Mapping the Afterlife of Sundown Towns
- Question
- How does the historical geography of racial exclusion continue to shape health and opportunity today?
- Context
- Originated as Dr. Belt's doctoral dissertation at the University of Iowa (2023) and has grown into an ongoing research program.
- Dr. Belt's Role
- Lead researcher — dissertation author and lead/co-author on subsequent publications
- Collaborators
- C. Gomez-Vidal, W. Zahnd, E. Mutch & J. Williams (co-authors); dissertation committee: S. L. Watkins, S. Hitlin, A. Adkins-Jackson, N. Novak & W. Zahnd
- Methods
- Historical & archival research, spatial analysis, oral history
- Outputs
- Belt et al., "Sundown Towns and the Racialized Structure of Rural Health Inequities," American Journal of Public Health (accepted); Belt & Mutch, sundown-towns spatial dataset, Dryad (2026); presentations at APHA, ASA, ABS & IAPHS annual meetings (2024)
Community Research · Public Health Infrastructure
Community-Engaged Public Health Data, San Joaquin Valley & Sierra Foothills
- Question
- Who should shape, interpret, and own community health data?
- Partnership
- Nicotine & Cannabis Policy Center, University of California, Merced — with A. Durazo, G. Zamperlin-Redondo & I. Yen
- Process
- Co-design of a community-partnered data dashboard for tobacco and cannabis prevention
- Knowledge
- [ADD ACTUAL INFORMATION]
- Stewardship
- [ADD ACTUAL INFORMATION]
- Outputs
- Belt, L., Durazo, A., Zamperlin-Redondo, G., & Yen, I. (2026, November) — APHA Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX
Maternal Health
Sundown Towns as a Structural Exposure Measure for Maternal & Infant Health
- Question
- Can the historical geography of sundown towns serve as a measurable exposure for structural racism in maternal and infant health research?
- Context
- Developed through Dr. Belt's dissertation research at the University of Iowa and presented as a conceptual framework at the Association of Black Sociologists (2024).
- Methods
- Mixed methods — historical/geospatial exposure measurement combined with population health data
- Findings
- [ADD ACTUAL INFORMATION]
- Contribution
- Proposes sundown towns as a novel structural-racism exposure measure in perinatal health research
Methods
Questions determine the method.
Dr. Belt works across methodological traditions and selects methods based on what a research question requires — not the reverse.
Quantitative
Population & Secondary Data- Population health analysis
- Secondary data analysis
- Survey & administrative data
- Multilevel approaches
- Geographic analysis
- Tools: STATA, SPSS, R, Gephi
Qualitative
Interviews & Analysis- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Oral history
- Thematic analysis
- Community listening
- Tools: NVivo, Dedoose
Participatory
Community-Engaged- PhotoVoice
- Community-engaged research
- Co-design
- Community crowdsourcing
- Participatory data interpretation
- Tools: Qualtrics
Historical & Spatial
Archives & Geography- Archival research
- Historical databases
- GIS / spatial thinking
- Historical geography
- Mapping
- Tools: ArcGIS, QGIS, ArcMap
Research Translation
Public Scholarship- Dashboards
- Interactive maps
- Digital publishing
- Data visualization
- Community-facing products
Professional Experience
A path through sociology and population health.
From Kent State to the University of Iowa to UC Merced — full details in the CV below.
2025 – Present
Postdoctoral Scholar, Nicotine & Cannabis Policy Center
University of California, Merced
- Focus
- Community-engaged public health data infrastructure; tobacco & cannabis prevention research
- Major projects
- Community-partnered data dashboard for tobacco and cannabis prevention across California's San Joaquin Valley and surrounding foothills (with A. Durazo, G. Zamperlin-Redondo & I. Yen)
2023 – 2025
Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Sociology
Higher Education Race & The Economy (HERE) Lab · University of California, Merced
2023
Ph.D., Interdisciplinary Studies
Designed emphasis in Sociology, History & Public Health · University of Iowa
Dissertation: "Sundown Towns and Contemporary Maternal Infant Health: An Interdisciplinary Mixed-Methods Analysis of Structural Racism and Its Public Health Legacy in the Midwest."
- Committee
- Shannon L. Watkins, PhD; Steven Hitlin, PhD; AJ Adkins-Jackson; Nicole Novak; Whitney Zahnd
2020
M.A., Sociology
University of Iowa
2017
B.S., Psychology & Sociology, with honors
Kent State University · Minor in American Sign Language · Ronald E. McNair Scholar
Download CV
PDF, updated Fall 2026.
Publications & Scholarship
Publications
Filter by category or search by title. Drawn from Dr. Belt's CV (Fall 2026) — links marked [ADD ACTUAL LINK] still need a URL before launch.
Sundown Towns and the Racialized Structure of Rural Health Inequities
Belt, L., Gomez-Vidal, C., Zahnd, W., Mutch, E., & Williams, J. — American Journal of Public Health
Teaching across the FGWC Terrain: Reflections of Sociology Educators
Oehmen, N. B., Haylett, J., Belt, L., & Clark, J. (2023) — Teaching Sociology
Sundown Towns Ground-Truthed Spatial Dataset (United States), v1.0
Belt, L. D., & Mutch, E. (2026) — Dryad [Data set]
Unveiling the Complex Racial History of the Midwest: A Call for an Intersectional and Systems Approach in Maternal Healthcare Design
Dorcoo, S., & Belt, L. (October 2024) — Lancet Race and Health Quarterly
Understanding the Need for Sundown Towns Measures in Health Service Research
Belt, L. (August 2024) — AcademyHealth
AcademyHealth Response to the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) Assurance Standards Guide and Reporting Checklist
Belt, L., AcademyHealth (July 2024)
AcademyHealth Response to OSTP on Disability Data Needs
Belt, L., AcademyHealth — White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (July 2024)
Invisible Suffering: Confronting the Intersection of Online Racism and Black Youth Suicide
Belt, L., & Spates, K. — Health Affairs Forefront
Unveiling the Hidden Legacy of Sundown Towns: Measuring Structural Racism through an Interdisciplinary Geospatial Lens
Belt, L. (2024) — American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting
Canonizing Whiteness and Maleness: The Overt and Covert Forces Shaping Sociological Thought
Belt, L. (2024) — American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Conference, Montreal
No publications match that search.
Full presentation and guest-lecture history in the CV above — this list is a representative selection, not the complete record.
Books & Major Projects
Long-form research programs.
[BOOK COVER / PROJECT IMAGE — placeholder]
Book in Development
Mapping the Afterlife of Sundown Towns
A born-digital scholarly book combining narrative, interactive maps, historical archives, oral history, and population health data. [ADD ACTUAL INFORMATION — current stage, target press/platform.] No publisher has confirmed acceptance of this project.
Speaking & Conversations
Speaking & Conversations
Dr. Belt has spoken at national conferences, university departments, and community convenings — including a keynote address for the "It Starts with US" Conference (Community Action Partnership Pennsylvania, 2024) — and is available for academic talks, guest lectures, panels, workshops, and community conversations.
Speaking topics
Historical Structural Racism & Health
Sundown Towns and Contemporary Inequality
Maternal and Infant Health
Rural Health and Place
Structural Determinants of Health
Community-Engaged Research
Mixed-Methods Research
PhotoVoice and Participatory Methods
Oral History and Public Health
Data, Maps, and Digital Scholarship
Building Trust in Community Data Infrastructure
Formats
- Academic talks & guest lectures
- Panels & conference presentations
- Research workshops & methods discussions
- Community conversations
- Podcasts & interdisciplinary research events
Selected engagements
- 2024 Keynote, "It Starts with US" Conference — Community Action Partnership Pennsylvania, Lancaster, PA
- 2025 Invited talk, Health Systems and Population Health Department — University of Washington
- 2025 Spring Speaker Series, Public Health Department — University of California, Merced
- 2024 "Unveiling the Hidden Legacy of Sundown Towns" — American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting
- 2024 "Canonizing Whiteness and Maleness" — American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Conference, Montreal
- 2024 Panelist, "Hot Topics: AI and Large Language Models, Research, and Policy" — AcademyHealth Health Policy Orientation
Teaching & Mentorship
Teaching & Mentorship
Dr. Belt's teaching areas connect directly to her research — a teaching philosophy statement and sample syllabi are still to come.
Teaching areas
- Sociology & Medical Sociology
- Population Health
- Race and Racism
- Health Inequality
- Rural Health
- Structural Determinants of Health
Methods teaching
- Research Methods
- Qualitative Methods
- Mixed Methods
- Community-Engaged Research
Selected guest lectures
- "Community-Engaged Scholarship" — Research Methods, Cal State Dominguez Hills (2026)
- "Intersectionality and Community Methods" — Dartmouth College (2025)
- "Mapping in Community-Engaged Research" — UC Riverside (2025)
- "Sundown Towns, Rurality & Maternal Health" — Black Mental Health, University of Pittsburgh (2025)
- "AI and Health" — AI and Health Equity, University of Iowa (2024)
- Qualitative Research Methods — College of Public Health, University of Iowa (2022, 2023)
Mentorship: Undergraduate Student Success Internship (SSI) Mentorship Program, University of California, Merced (2024).
Teaching philosophy statement and sample syllabi: [ADD ACTUAL INFORMATION].
Ideas & Perspectives
Public scholarship & shorter writing.
A home for essays, commentary, interviews, and research reflections on place, health, race, history, maternal health, rural America, research methods, and community research.
If ChatGPT Reflects Hair Bias, What Other Racial Bias Does It Spread?
New Thinking · Belt, Leia
It's Possible to Change Low Rates of Black Breastfeeding, But It Starts with Acknowledging the Legacy of Slavery
Belt, Leia & Inderstrodt, J.
Breastfeeding Can Help Save New Black Moms — Who Are Nearly 3 Times More Likely to Die
Inderstrodt, Jill & Belt, L.
Links to full pieces: [ADD ACTUAL LINK]. More of Dr. Belt's commentary and reports appear in the Publications section above.
Collaboration
Let's investigate the questions that matter.
Dr. Belt welcomes select opportunities involving research collaborations, interdisciplinary scholarship, community-engaged research, population health research, mixed-methods projects, historical and spatial research, digital scholarship, public-facing research infrastructure, academic and community partnerships, speaking, workshops, and research strategy and advising.
Research Collaboration
Community Partnership
Digital Scholarship
Speaking & Workshops
Advising
Contact
Let's talk.
Share a bit about what you'd like to discuss — research collaboration, speaking, an academic opportunity, consulting, media, mentorship, or a community partnership — and Dr. Belt will follow up.