headshot of woman smiling; Tina Sacks

Research Bio

Tina Sacks is a social welfare scholar whose research focuses on racial and gender inequities in health and social systems. She studies how structural racism and discrimination shape health outcomes and access to care. Sacks’s work combines qualitative and community-based research to document lived experiences of inequality and resistance to domination. Her research informs public policy and health equity initiatives that promote justice.

She is associate professor of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley and  faculty director for the Center for Research on Social Change at the Institute for the Study of Social Issues.

Research Expertise and Interest

racial disparities in health, social disparities of health, race and class and gender, poverty and inequality

In the News

Breaking the cycle of shame about mental struggles in athletics

Long before sports superstars Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles braved the spotlight to defend their mental health, Graig Chow, a certified mental performance consultant at UC Berkeley, studied the culture that pushes elite athletes like NBA players Chamique Holdsclaw, Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan to their breaking points.

Race, law, and health policy

As the country moves toward reopening — and with it some sense of “normalcy” — UC Berkeley researchers said simply returning to normal isn’t enough. Rather, they said, dismantling structural racism must be part of any reopening strategy.

COVID-19’s unequal toll on black Americans: A Q&A with Tina Sacks

The recently-released data are shocking: COVID-19 is infecting and killing black people at an alarmingly high rate. An Associated Press analysis — one of the first attempts to examine the racial disparities of COVID-19 cases and deaths nationwide — has found that, of nearly 3,300 of the 13,000 deaths so far, about 42% of the deceased were African American. Black Americans account for about 21% of the total population in the areas covered by the AP analysis.

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
January 28, 2019

Why Middle-Class Black Women Dread The Doctor's Office

ScienceBlog
Many African American women experience discrimination in their doctors' offices, and assistant social welfare professor Tina Sacks has researched and written a book exploring some of the ways the malpractice presents itself -- often through delayed or denied diagnosis and treatment -- and potential solutions to the problem. "When you look at inequalities in healthcare, you see a lot of studies tying the problems to race and poverty, but there's not a lot about educated, insured black women who are not poor," Professor Sacks says. "Yet infant mortality rates for black women with a college degree are higher than those for white women with just a high school education. I wanted to dig deeper into the personal experiences behind this disparity." The book is called Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System (Oxford University Press, 2019), and this Q&A with Professor Sacks originated at Berkeley News.
FullStory


Teaching

Courses taught during the three most recent terms
2026 Spring

  • Individual Study for Graduate Students  [SOCWEL 296]  

  • Individual Research for Graduate Students  [SOCWEL 299]  

  • Social Welfare Graduate Research Colloquium  [SOCWEL 299C]  

2025 Fall

  • Supervised Independent Study and Research  [SOCWEL 199]  

  • Anti-Oppressive Frameworks for Social Work Ethics and Justice  [SOCWEL 240]  

  • Anti-Oppressive Frameworks for Social Work Ethics and Justice  [SOCWEL 240]  

  • Individual Study for Graduate Students  [SOCWEL 296]  

  • Individual Research for Graduate Students  [SOCWEL 299]  

  • Social Welfare Graduate Research Colloquium  [SOCWEL 299C]  

2025 Summer

  • Individual Research for Graduate Students  [SOCWEL 299]  

2025 Spring

  • Research Methods and Techniques in Social Welfare  [SOCWEL 289A]  

  • Individual Study for Graduate Students  [SOCWEL 296]  

  • Senior Honors Course  [SOCWEL H195]