Christopher (Kitt) Carpenter

E. Bronson Ingram University Distinguished Professor of Economics and Health Policy
Professor of Law; Professor of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations; Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society; Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies

Professor Carpenter is a health and labor economist who studies the effects of public policies on health and family outcomes. At Vanderbilt he is the Founder and Director of the TIPS-supported Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab. Carpenter is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Co-Director of the NBER Economics of Health Program, Editor at the Journal of Health Economics, a member of the National Advisory Council for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, President of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession (CSQIEP). For his contributions to EDI at Vanderbilt, Dr. Carpenter was named the 2021-22 Joseph A. Johnson, Jr., Distinguished Leadership Professor. He has published widely on the effects of legal same-sex marriage, the causes and consequences of youth substance use, and the effects of public policies on health behaviors such as bicycle helmet use, seatbelt use, smoking, cancer screening, and vaccination. Carpenter’s research has been continuously supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Cancer Society.