I am an Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island (URI) in the Department of Health Studies.  I study social factors and place-based characteristics associated with health, health behaviors, and healthcare services use in older adults, with a primary focus on rural-urban and other sociodemographic disparities.  I also study socioeconomic and demographic disparities in informal, family caregiving in the United States and their impacts on caregiver health and quality of life.  Please read more about my research interests here.

In fall 2019, we launched the Rhode Island Life Expectancy Project. which highlights how population health is related to where we live and work.  The project also provides population and health data to interested researchers, policymakers, and educators.

I teach two classes at URI- Fundamentals of Epidemiology (formerly Epidemiology in Health Care) (PHP 405) and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Health (HLT 200).  

Previously, I was also a co-investigator on several NIH-funded projects in the Boston area, including the Boston Puerto Rican Health Study and the GREEN (Growing Right: Eating Eco-Friendly and Nutritious) Project.   I was also a member of the Tufts-Brown-Johns Hopkins Center for Drug Abuse and AIDS Research (CDAAR) Epidemiology and Biostatistics Core.

During my time at Virginia Commonwealth University, I was the principal investigator of the California Poverty Study, funded by The California Endowment.  I also served as a co-investigator on several other projects on life expectancy mapping with the Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health.  I was also a faculty member of the Virginia Commonwealth University Group for Research on the Epidemiology of Mobility, Aging, and Psychiatry (GREMAP).

I received my Doctorate in Public Health in Population and Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health in 2008. My doctoral training focused on the application of demography to public health research and practice, emphasizing population aging, health management and practice, and social determinants of health.   I received a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics  from the Tufts University School of Medicine.