Dr. Naomi Nichele Duke, MD, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Sociology, and is board certified in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Adolescent Medicine. Dr. Duke serves as an Associate Director for Duke PCLT. She also serves at the School of Medicine Program Director for the Duke National Clinician Scholars Program.
Dr. Duke is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Harvard Medical School. She completed a combined internship-residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Michigan Hospitals, Ann Arbor. While a practicing physician in the U.S. National Health Service Corps (NHSC), Dr. Duke obtained an MPH in Maternal and Child Health at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (UMN). After work with NHSC, she re-entered training and completed a fellowship in Adolescent Medicine (UMN). In 2017, she completed a PhD in Sociology (UMN) with a focus on life course theory. She joined the faculty at Duke in 2019. Working at the intersection of medicine, sociology, and public health, her research focuses on advancing knowledge and advocacy efforts around the relevance of childhood social context, including experiences of oppression and marginalization, for later disparities in health outcomes and the intergenerational transmission of health, such as morbidity and mortality related to stress physiology, premature aging and cognitive decline, and early onset chronic disease (e.g. diabetes and hypertension).