Erin Ruel is associate professor of sociology and director of graduate studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. She received her PhD in sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2003. In 2003, Erin took a postdoctoral position at the University of Wisconsin Madison in the Center for Demography of Health and Aging. While there, she continued to hone her survey research skills on the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Soon after arriving in Atlanta to take an assistant professor position at Georgia State University (GSU) in 2005, she began the Urban Health Initiative, a longitu...