Tyan Parker Dominguez
Teaching Professor
Health care systems expert, focusing on persistent racial/ethnic disparities in infant mortality, pre-term delivery, and low birthweight
Tyan Parker Dominguez
Teaching Professor
Health care systems expert, focusing on persistent racial/ethnic disparities in infant mortality, pre-term delivery, and low birthweight
Biography
Tyan Parker Dominguez, PhD, MPH, MSW is the curriculum coordinator for degree programs and a teaching professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Her research focuses on racial disparities in adverse birth outcomes and infant mortality, with an emphasis on racism as a social determinant of health. Parker Dominguez has served on the U.S. Secretary of Health’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality and partnered with organizations, such as March of Dimes, on initiatives related to health equity and birth outcome disparities. She is also an expert advisor to the Center for Health Equity at the University of California, San Francisco.
Parker Dominguez co-chairs the Improving Pregnancy Outcomes Committee within the American Public Health Association’s Maternal and Child Health section (APHA-MCH). She has instructed and mentored students at the master, doctoral and post-doctoral levels. In the MSW program, Parker Dominguez has taught courses in human behavior theory and lifespan development, research and evaluation, leadership, child development and social policy, spirituality, religion, and faith, and diversity. She has served as lead instructor for most of these courses, as well as chair for the MSW program.
Parker Dominguez is a USC Center for Excellence in Teaching Faculty Fellow. She has been honored with the Hutto Patterson Foundation Distinguished Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching and Service, the APHA-MCH Section’s Young Professional of the Year Award, the California Black Women's Health Project's Women Who Dared Award, and is a co-recipient of the Council on Social Work Education’s Community Impact Award.
Media
Education
University of California
PhD 2003
University of California at Berkeley
MPH 1996
University of California at Berkeley
MSW 1995
Rice University
BA 1993
Area of Expertise
- Inpatient and Outpatient Medical Settings
- Community Mental Health Clinics
- Health Equity
- Maternal and Infant Health
Industry Experience
- Health Care - Services
- Health Care - Facilities
- Program Development
- Writing and Editing
- Research
- Education/Learning
- Public Policy
- Health and Wellness
- Health Care - Providers
Research Interest
Accomplishments
Women Who Dared Award
2024, California Black Women's Health Project
USC Center for Excellence in Teaching
Faculty Fellow
Community Impact Award
2019, Council on Social Work Education
Hutton Patterson Award for Distinguished Teaching and Service
2015, USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work
Federal Appointee, Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality
2012, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Young Professional of the Year
2007, APHA-MCH
Articles & Publications
Dominguez, T.P. (2024). Person in environment and the social work profession. In M. Dorsey (Ed.). Understanding diversity in human behavior and development in the social environment. Springer Publishing.
California Department of Public Health (2023). Centering Black mothers in California: Insights into racism, health, and well-being for Black women and infants. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Public Health, Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Division. (expert advisor and co-author) https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DMCAH/Pages/Health-Topics/Centering-Black-Mothers.aspx
Braveman, P & Dominguez, TP (2021). Abandon “race”. Focus on racism. Frontiers in Public Health: Special Issue on Racism as a Public Health Crisis. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.689462
Braveman, P, Dominguez, TP, Burke, W, & the March of Dimes Scientific Consensus Workgroup (2021). Explaining the Black-White disparity in preterm birth: A consensus statement from a multi-disciplinary scientific work group convened by the March of Dimes. Frontiers in Reproductive Health: Special issue on Environmental, Clinical, and Biological Determinants of Preterm Birth and Their Effects on the Offspring. https://doi.org/10.3389/frph.2021.684207
Jackson, FM, Rashied-Henry, K, Braveman, PA, Dominguez, TP, Ramos, D, Maseru, N, Darity, W, Waddel, L, Warne, D, Legaz, G, & James, A. (2020),
Dominguez, TP. In K. Zaleski, A. Enrile, E. Weiss, & X. Wang (Eds). (2019). Women’s journey to empowerment in the 21st century: A transnational approach. Oxford University Press.
Heard-Garris, N.J., Cale, M, Camaj, L, Hamati, MC, & Dominguez, TP. (2018). Transmitting trauma: A systemic review of vicarious racism and child health (Special issue: The role of racism in health inequalities: Integrating approaches from across disciplines). Social Science & Medicine, 199, 230-240.
Lu, MC, Verbeist, S, & Dominguez, TP. In S. Verbeist (Ed). (2018). Moving life course theory into action: Making change happen. American Public Health Association.
Braveman, P, Heck, K, Egerter, S, Dominguez, TP, Rinki, C, Marchi, K, & Curtis, M. (2017). Worry about racism: A missing piece of the puzzle of Black-White disparities in perterm birth. PLos One, 12(10):e0186151.
The role of socioeconomic factors in black-white disparities in preterm birth | American Journal of Public Health
Objectives. We investigated the role of socioeconomic factors in Black–White disparities in preterm birth (PTB). Methods. We used the population-based California Maternal and Infant Health Assessment survey and birth certificate data on 10 400 US-born Black and White California residents who gave birth during 2003 to 2010 to examine rates and relative likelihoods of PTB among Black versus White women, with adjustment for multiple socioeconomic factors and covariables. Results. Greater socioeconomic advantage was generally associated with lower PTB rates among White but not Black women. There were no significant Black–White disparities within the most socioeconomically disadvantaged subgroups; Black–White disparities were seen only within more advantaged subgroups. Conclusions. Socioeconomic factors play an important but complex role in PTB disparities. The absence of Black–White disparities in PTB within certain socioeconomic subgroups, alongside substantial disparities within others, suggests that social factors moderate the disparity. Further research should explore social factors suggested by the literature—including life course socioeconomic experiences and racism-related stress, and the biological pathways through which they operate—as potential contributors to PTB among Black and White women with different levels of social advantage.
Lifetime racism and blood pressure changes during pregnancy: Implications for fetal growth | Health Psychology
Objective: Research suggests that exposure to racism partially explains why African American women are 2 to 3 times more likely to deliver low birth weight and preterm infants. However, the physiological pathways by which racism exerts these effects are unclear. This study examined how lifetime exposure to racism, in combination with maternal blood pressure changes during pregnancy, was associated with fetal growth. Methods: African American pregnant women (n = 39) reported exposure to childhood and adulthood racism in several life domains (e.g., at school, at work), which were experienced directly or indirectly, meaning vicariously experienced when someone close to them was treated unfairly. A research nurse measured maternal blood pressure at 18 to 20 and 30 to 32 weeks gestation. Standardized questionnaires and trained interviewers assessed maternal demographics. Neonatal length of gestation and birth weight data were collected from medical charts. Results: Childhood racism interacted with diastolic blood pressure to predict birth weight. Specifically, women with two or more domains of indirect exposure to racism in childhood and increases in diastolic blood pressure between 18 and 32 weeks had lower gestational age adjusted birth weight than the other women. A similar pattern was found for direct exposure to racism in childhood. Conclusions: Increases in diastolic blood pressure between the second and third trimesters predicted lower birth weight, but only when racism exposure in childhood (direct or indirect) was relatively high. Understanding pregnant African American women’s lifetime direct and indirect experiences with racism in combination with prenatal blood pressure may improve identification of highest risk subgroups within this population. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Maternal familism predicts birthweight and asthma symptoms three years later | Social Science & Medicine
There are marked ethnic and socioeconomic differences in birthweight and childhood asthma, conditions which may be linked causally or via a third variable. Cultural resources are often credited with diminished health disparities in infancy and childhood among subsets of poor and minority populations; yet direct empirical tests of this hypothesis are needed. In this study, ethnicity, lifespan family socioeconomic position (FSEP), and the cultural resource of familism were compared as predictors of birthweight and expression of asthma symptoms (AE) by age three. Familism and lifespan FSEP were assessed in 4633 socioeconomically disadvantaged African Americans, White Americans, and Latinas upon giving birth, as was offspring birthweight. AE was assessed in offspring through age three. Asthma diagnosis by age three was likelier in very low (≤1500 g) and low (≤2500 g) birthweight infants compared to infants born at average (2501–3999 g) or larger (≥4000 g) birthweights. Asthma risk associated with lower birthweight was higher for Latinos (17–35%) and African Americans (19–23%) than for White Americans (13–14%). As predicted, maternal familism was higher among White Americans than among African Americans and Latinas, an effect that was largely driven by ethnic disparities in lifespan FSEP. Familism predicted continuous birthweight (p = .003) and AE (p = .001) by age three independently of ethnicity and lifespan FSEP accounting for appropriate control variables, including maternal biomedical risk, maternal acculturation, parental marital status, and infant sex. There was a 71-g gain in birthweight for every one-unit increase in familism. The protective effect of familism on AE by age three was strongest for participants of lower lifespan FSEP. Maternal familism is one cultural resource that may reduce reproductive and intergenerational health disparities in both U.S.- and foreign-born Americans. Consistent with our previous work, familism and other nonmaterial resources covary with material resources. Nevertheless, culture is distinguishable from lifespan FSEP and ethnicity, and has health implications beyond associations to ethnicity, lifespan FSEP, and related biomedical and sociodemographic factors.