Dr. Diez Roux is internationally known for her research on the social determinants of population health and the study of how neighborhoods affect health. Her work on neighborhood health effects has been highly influential in the policy debate on population health and its determinants. Her research areas include social epidemiology and health disparities, environmental health effects, urban health, psychosocial factors, cardiovascular disease epidemiology, social environment-gene interactions, and the use of multilevel methods and complex systems approaches in population health. She has led large NIH and foundation funded research and training programs in the United States and in collaboration with various institutions in Latin America. She was Principal Investigator of the Wellcome Trust funded SALURBAL (Salud Urbana en América Latina) study (2017-2023). She is currently Multiple Principal Investigator for the Wellcome Trust funded SALURBAL Climate Project and PI of the NIH-funded Drexel Center on Climate Change and Urban Health (CCUH). She is also Multiple Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded Drexel FIRST initiative, a program focused on the creation of a culture of inclusive excellence via recruitment and career development support of 12 diverse early stage investigators and a set of strategies in support of institutional transformation at Drexel University.

Dr. Diez Roux has served on numerous editorial boards, review panels and advisory committees including most recently the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) of the Environmental Protection Agency (as Chair), the Board of Scientific Counselors (BSC) of the National Center for Health Statistics, the Committee on Health and Wellbeing in the Changing Urban Environment of the International Council for Science (ISCUS), and CDCs Community Preventive Services Taskforce. She is currently Co-Chair of the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.