I am a critical medical geography interested in the political economy of health and health care, the political ecologies of environmental health, and immigrant health. I approach these issues from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective, as both a social scientist and a public health scholar.
I am currently completing my dissertation research on immigrant health care in the farmworker community of Immokalee, Florida. My dissertation project -- currently funded by an NSF DDRI -- investigates five aspects of health care delivery: (1) I explore the politics of immigrant health care through the lens of deservingness to care through policy analysis at the state and federal level; (2) I look at the changing availability of health care services to immigrant women within in the context of health reform and immigration reform using quantitative and spatial data; (3) I use interview data from health care providers in Immokalee to explain how the changing politics of immigrant health care affects the provision of health services for immigrant women; (4) Using feminist qualitative GIS and interviews with Haitian women, I investigate their experiences of the resulting health care system in Immokalee, as well as how these experiences influence where and how they utilize health care services; and (5) I identify the socio-spatial barriers that Haitian immigrant women face in accessing care in an effort to improve health care accessiblity in the community. I will defend my dissertation in early Spring 2018.
I have over seven years of teaching experience in both geography and public health, and I have received two teaching awards based on student evaluations. As a graduate student, I co-founded a Critical Pedagogy Working Group at the University of Kentucky.
I am currently living on 12 acres in Georgia while writing my dissertation and working full-time. In my (unfortunately limited) spare time, I enjoy reading, hiking, traveling, dancing, cooking, picking up hobbies and then not having time to do them, and spending time in the woods with my family.