During my post-doctoral research fellowship at the National Poverty Center of the University of Michigan, I embarked on a new research agenda that explicitly examines the intersections of race, class and gender within the context of human-service agencies. The first project is coauthored with Dr. Chitra Raghavan of the Psychology Department at John Jay. Our study is a quantitative analysis of the significance of a respondents’ race for loss of child custody among 659 women who were participants in a national demonstration drug treatment and welfare-to-work program. Early findings reveal that, controlling for known risk factors and non-racial demographic characteristics, racial minority group members who had been investigated by Child Protective Services reported higher loss of custody than whites. The second paper uses ethnographic data from my dissertation research on welfare-to-work programs exploring the uses of racial and gender stereotypes by African Americans to build solidarity within a black community-based welfare organization. I am also developing a pilot study that examines racial/ethnic and socio-economic disparities in health. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, the study aims to identify and describe socio-economic and familial conditions that influence children’s weight; and to determine how maternal and socio-contextual factors influence a mother’s food choices and physical activities for her children. Specifically, the project will seek to understand how low-income mothers’ perception of neighborhood safety influences physical activity and dietary choices for themselves and their children.