Awardee

Erica Felker-Kantor, PhD, MSPH, MA is a social epidemiologist with a PhD from Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She also holds a Master of Arts in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Development from the University of Florida and a Master of Science in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has 16 plus years of experience working in public and global health research, intervention development and implementation, and teaching. Erica’s research interests center on understanding and addressing health disparities for women, migrants, and ethnic/racial minorities. She uses the socio-ecologic model to explain how social and environmental contexts influence disease syndemics (e.g., reproductive health, mental health, food insecurity, etc.). Erica currently works at the University of California San Diego, Division of Infectious Disease and Global Public Health where she is working on implementation science research for mental health, HIV prevention, and sexual and reproductive health with migrant women along the U.S.-Mexico border. She previously worked as a Senior Research Advisor for Population Services International, an international NGO, where she focused on health equity, climate, and reproductive health research and as a field epidemiologist in Haiti for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Tulane School of Public Health in the Department of International Health and Sustainable Development where she co-teaches a course on spatial epidemiology. In addition to research, Erica has extensive experience teaching, mentoring, and facilitating training for varying audiences including students, community-based partners, and ministries of health. Erica is fluent in Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French and has worked extensively in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the United States.