Dr. James is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. His substantive research focuses on healthcare access, utilization, and delivery among people with sensory disabilities, with a focus on those with developmental onset sensory disabilities. He is also interested in DeafBlindness, including CHARGE syndrome - the leading genetic cause of DeafBlindness in the United States. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Disability and Health Journal.

He is also a research methodologist, with expertise in applied latent variable modeling, qualitative, and mixed methods. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and regularly teaches mixed methods through the University of Michigan's Mixed Methods Program. He also teaches social epidemiology (EPID 591) for the University of Michigan's Department of Epidemiology.

Dr. James is a Master Certified Health Education Specialist, with over 10 years of experience in health education and health promotion evaluation and needs assessment. He received his Ph.D. in Health Behavior ('21) from the University of Florida, where he also received his M.S. in Health Education and Behavior ('17), and B.S. in Psychology ('16). He was a 2023 Davenport Fellow with the CHARGE Syndrome Foundation, a 2023-24 Long-term Cohort Member of the Michigan Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (MI-LEND), and also in the 2023-24 cohort for the Rare Disease Clinical Research Network's Rare Disease Clinical Research Training Program hosted by Children's National Hospital.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of Disability Rights Florida (Sept. 2023 - present) and the American Public Health Association-Disability Section's Executive Committee.

sensory disabilities; deaf; blind; health inequities; DeafBlindness; CHARGE syndrome; social epidemiology; legal epidemiology; mixed methods