A psychologist by training, Naa Oyo A. Kwate is an interdisciplinary social scientist with wide-ranging interests in racial inequality and African-American health. Her research has centered primarily on the ways in which urban built environments reflect and create racial inequalities in the United States and how racism directly and indirectly affects African-American health. She has studied topics including the disproportionate density of fast food in Black neighborhoods, the prevalence and health effects of outdoor alcohol advertising, and experiences with racism and mental and physical health.

Kwate’s research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, Newberry Library, and others. She is the author of a short work titled Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now and the forthcoming (spring 2023) White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation, both published by the University of Minnesota Press. She is also editor of The Street: A Photographic Field Guide to American Inequality, published by Rutgers University Press.