She is also a research affiliate of OSU’s Institute for Population Research. Her research investigates how racial/ethnic inequalities in health are reproduced over successive generations with a particular emphasis on the experiences of middle-class African Americans. Colen holds a PhD in public health from the University of Michigan (2005) and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University (2005–2007). Her work has been published in the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science & Medicine, the Du Bois Review, and the Annual Review of Sociology.