Rutgers School of Public Health’s Tamara Taggart is advancing research that centers on community partnership, structural equity and the health of sexual and gender minority populations
As we celebrate Women’s History Month – themed this year “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future” – the Rutgers School of Public Health spotlights Tamara Taggart, the inaugural Perry N. Halkitis Endowed Chair for Advancing LGBTQ+ Public Health.
Her research explores how social-structural and cultural identity factors shape health behaviors and outcomes, with a focus on advancing community-driven solutions that support underserved populations. Through this vital work, Taggart is helping build lasting health equity for LGBTQ+ and other historically excluded communities, exemplifying women’s leadership in shaping sustainable futures.
Taggart, also an associate professor in the Department of Urban-Global Public Health and director of the forthcoming Rutgers Center for Sexual and Gender Minority Health (R-LGBTQ+), shares her path into public health, key research insights and vision for advancing health equity.
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What first inspired you to pursue a career in public health, and how did that path lead you to your current role at the Rutgers School of Public Health?
What first inspired me was my early life experiences at the church my grandparents founded in a low-income neighborhood in Cincinnati, OH. Before I knew anything about public health, I saw how the support people received from that congregation shielded them from some of the effects of poverty, discrimination, and hopelessness. The food donations, health screenings, and emergency housing assistance were how my church filled gaps often found in a neighborhood void of healthcare and preventive services. My maternal grandmother, Rev. Bessie Baines, who led that congregation, instilled in me a sense of purpose greater than myself and a work ethic grounded in that purpose.
So that tension between structural oppression and community resilience has fueled my research ever since. Those observations, and the questions they raised for me, drove everything that followed, through training in sociology, African American studies, public health, and community-based research, and ultimately to the Rutgers School of Public Health and R-LGBTQ+. Rutgers is the right place in this moment and feels like a convergence of everything that has shaped me and the kind of environment I want to be part of and contribute to.
Your research often explores how social-structural and cultural identity factors shape health behaviors among underserved groups. What disparities have your studies uncovered, and which interventions have proven most effective?
That is a difficult question because it can be hard to see the population-level impact of our work and, as we know, the long-term impact of changes in social-structural conditions may take decades to be fully realized. A majority of my work focuses on place and how neighborhood environments function as stressors and resources. So the zip code you live in, the policies that govern your state, the stigma you carry, the history written into your neighborhood’s resources and infrastructure, and the social fabric of a community are all part of health. Consistently, my work shows the burden of intersectional stigma and structural oppression, the strength of communities, and the need for community-driven research and solutions.
On the intervention side, the approaches that have proven most meaningful are grounded in CBPR, and for me, that also means acknowledging that CBPR exists on a spectrum. The gold standard, and what I am striving for in my work, is genuine community control in which communities are co-owners and creators of the research process, data, and products, not just consulted. I wrote about this in a recent Lancet correspondence, arguing for community-controlled research models as the most resilient approach because, when external funding disappears or political winds shift, the community still owns the work. That matters so much right now.
You’ve emphasized the importance of equity-centered scholarship to counter misinformation and protect historically excluded communities. What strategies have you found most effective to advance health equity through research?
This question feels especially personal right now. We are in a moment when LGBTQ+ health research, DEI, and the communities we serve are under significant political and social attack. Staying committed to rigorous, equity-centered scholarship in this climate is a personal and professional responsibility.
A few strategies I use include:
- Being transparent about the science and who it is for. When people can see themselves reflected in research, when they help shape the questions being asked and the way the findings are communicated, it builds trust and disrupts the pathways that lead to misinformation and distrust.
- Science is stronger when it is collaborative, cross-institutional, and rooted in partnership. We are developing R-LGBTQ+ with that philosophy, connecting researchers, community organizations, healthcare systems and providers, and policymakers across New Jersey.
- Train the next generation of public health researchers and practitioners with equity at the center. I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time teaching/mentoring students and early-career investigators, particularly those from historically excluded communities, because the field needs their perspectives, lived experiences, questions, approaches, and passion.
- Stay grounded in the communities we serve. For me, staying proximate to community in research and everyday life really shapes my approach and keeps the work honest. My community partners remind me why this work matters.
As director of the Rutgers Center for Sexual and Gender Minority Health (R-LGBTQ+), how do you envision its mission and early priorities, and what impact do you hope it will have once it launches?
R-LGBTQ+ launches late 2026 with a mission to partner with sexual and gender minority communities across the lifespan to co-create evidence-based solutions that transform health systems, advance policy solutions, and improve health. Through scientific inquiry, culturally responsive clinical practices, and innovative interdisciplinary training programs, the Institute strives to create a society in which every individual and community can flourish. It is organized around four integrated research hubs—Social and Behavioral Sciences, Clinical and Health Services, Implementation Science and Policy, and a Research Development hub, with a cross-hub Community and Translation Partners Group.
What makes R-LGBTQ+ distinct is our commitment to genuine community power-sharing, explicit application of intersectional frameworks that center race and class with sexual orientation and gender identity, and a focus on knowledge generation alongside activation. Our early priorities include launching the pilot award program to fund emerging researchers, forming our economic development initiative, building community partnerships across the state, developing training pipelines from high school through faculty levels, and establishing clinical research collaborations.
The impact I hope for reflects our priorities: a researcher from a historically excluded community receives the support they need to conduct the science only they could conceive. A New Jersey policy protecting LGBTQ+ people cites evidence that came from our work. A transgender young person in Newark does not go to New York to seek care and receives even better care here. That is the vision we have for R-LGBTQ+.
Women’s History Month invites us to reflect on the women who have shaped our lives and work. What does it mean to you personally, and which women have most influenced your journey?
I have a complicated relationship with Women’s History Month. As a Black woman, I notice every March who is centered and who gets left out. Too often, this month functions as a celebration of a very one-dimensional view of womanhood, a view that leaves many of us feeling on the margins of a month meant to honor us all.
The women who shaped my thinking and career are not always the ones celebrated during this month. They include my maternal grandmother, Rev. Bessie Baines, who built and led a congregation whose example first taught me about resilience, community, and alignment. Zora Neale Hurston, who conducted community-embedded, culturally grounded work long before it had an academic name or course of study. bell hooks, writing about the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality, accessibly and plainly; truly pushing beyond knowledge generation to activation. Ida B. Wells, who documented racial terror with rigor and precision while being pushed out of suffrage movements by those who found her politically and socially costly. Sylvia Rivera, who contributed to the gay liberation movement and then spent decades being erased from its history.
The same structures that have excluded these women also exclude women now from healthcare, research, and safety. These are the women who inspire me every day, and who I intentionally reflect on during March.
What advice would you give to students and early-career researchers who are interested in health equity and LGBTQ+ public health?
Start with your why and purpose. This work requires something deeper than intellectual interest or curiosity because that alone will not sustain you through the rejections, social/political hostility, the emotional weight of studying systems designed to hurt people, and the slow grind that is academia. You need to know why you are here and not lose that focus. For me, it goes back to my church in Cincinnati, to the people I grew up watching navigate seemingly impossible circumstances with dignity and grace.
Be interdisciplinary and open to not knowing or getting it right all of the time. Some of my most interesting and exciting projects come from collaborations with colleagues in sociology, geography, law, and the humanities. Health inequities are produced and sustained by overlapping systems of oppression, and you need multiple frameworks to understand and intervene on them. Read widely, collaborate across fields, write, and be open to learning approaches that do not come naturally to you.
Learn your history and the history of the communities you want to serve. You need to know that history before you walk into any community partnership. The trust you are asking for was earned, or broken, by others before you, and that history is not forgotten.
Finally, be a good person. A mentor once shared this bit of advice with me, and I have carried it for years. He said, everyone is smart, everyone means well, and wants to do good work, so that’s the baseline. What separates you from that baseline is who you are as a person, your character, whether you are someone people trust and want to be around. Be a good person, and you will have nothing to worry about.
