Pam previously served as a member of the sociology faculty at Duke University. She earned her PhD from Indiana University, where she was a Ford Foundation Fellowship recipient and a predoctoral research fellow for the NIMH funded program in Self, Identity, and Mental Health. As an associate professor at IUB, she was a recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.
She has served on a variety of committees for the American Sociological Association (ASA), including as Editorial Board member for the American Sociological Review, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Social Psychology Quarterly. Some of her committee work includes member of the Advisory Committee for the Minority Fellowship Program, director of the Mentoring Program for the Mental Health Section, elected chair of the mental health section for the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and elected secretary/treasurer for the Social Psychology section of the ASA.
She is working on several research projects focusing on racial health disparities. She has authored many scholarly articles and book chapters and is currently co-authoring a book on the way in which race/ethnicity (ethnorace), gender, and social class intersect to define the experience of family life among adults in the Midwest.