Assistant Professor
Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Humanitarianism
DB 5022J 44339
gboaten@yorku.ca
Dr. Godfred Boateng is an Assistant Professor of Global Health, Director of the Global and Environmental Health Lab, a Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Humanitarianism, and a Faculty Fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Multi-Interprofessional Center for Health Informatics at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Dr. Boateng is an expert in the design and application of culturally relevant scalable methodologies in understanding the multidimensional factors and processes that shape health and health equity across spatial scales (household, community, institutional, national) and how these factors can be addressed in a sustained manner. His research program is transdisciplinary and focuses on resource insecurity, health, and sustainable livelihoods; the socio-ecological determinants of cardiometabolic conditions in aging adults; social inequity in health systems; quantitative data analysis methods and survey scale development; and COVID-19 related health effects. Dr. Boateng’s research in these areas have been critical in transforming the understanding of the key social and structural determinants of health among vulnerable populations; particularly, women, infants, children, and older adults.
Dr. Boateng is an outstanding Global Health scholar with over 50 peer-reviewed publications and more than 3,000 citations. His work has appeared in the British Medical Journal -Global Health, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of Environmental Management, Wires Water, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Frontiers of Public Health, the Journal of Economic Geography, Global Health Journal, PloS ONE, Environment and Urbanization, and Health Policy and Planning. His landmark work, which is a primer focused on best practices for developing and validating scales for health, social and behavioral research has been viewed over 180,000 times and downloaded over 30,000 times across the globe, leading to the development of over 500 scales several disciplines and professions.
Dr. Boateng’s research has been supported through external funding sources such as the United States Health Resources & Service Administration, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the National Institute of Transportation and Communities. Dr. Boateng has won several academic awards including the Nobuo Maeda International Research Award for the Aging and Health Section at the American Public Health Association Conference and the Community and Public Health Nutrition Travel Award for Outstanding Young Scientist at Experimental Biology Conference in 2017.
Dr. Boateng is currently an Academic Editor at PloS ONE, a Guest Associate Editor in Life-Course Epidemiology and Social Inequalities in Health for the Frontiers in Public Health; a Review Editor for the Frontiers in Psychology, specifically, Quantitative Psychology and Measurement; and the Lead Associate Editor for the second edition of a special issue on “Measuring Health Inequities among Vulnerable Populations” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
He approaches his research from a transdisciplinary perspective drawing on methods, frameworks, and theories from sociology, nutrition, geography, environmental health, population health, social epidemiology, demography, medicine, and international development.
As a Course Director of Global Health, Dr. Boateng has trained over 300 students in global health programs, some of whom are working in significant public health institutions. As a mentor/advisor to undergraduate and graduate students in global public health, Dr. Boateng’s lab has produced phenomenal students who have published with him, currently pursuing doctoral programs in global public health, or have advanced to the medical school.
Prior to Joining York University, Dr. Boateng worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington (2019-2022) and trained as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Health at Harvard University (2018-2019), Northwestern University (2016-2018), and Cornell University (2016). He received his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2016 from The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario. He holds an MPhil degree in Sociology from the University of Ghana, which consisted of a one-year scholarship at UiT, The Artic University of Norway (Universitetet I Tromsø), with additional training in Peace and Conflict Studies.
Graduate Supervision
Dr. Boateng is currently interested in supervising graduate students who want to explore topics related to health inequalities, resource insecurity and health implications, ageing and life course effects, social inequity in health systems, climate change and health implications, and environment and disease vulnerability.