People
Explore the faculty and staff of the Women, Gender, and Health Concentration
WGH faculty and staff are based in several departments in HSPH, including the 4 departments that sponsor the WGH concentration (Social and Behavioral Sciences, Epidemiology, Global Health and Population, and Environmental Health Sciences).
WGH faculty
Director, STRIPED
Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; S. Jean Emans, MD, Endowed Chair in Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital; Research Scientist in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
Dr. Austin is an award-winning researcher, teacher, and mentor. She is Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School; S. Jean Emans, MD, Endowed Chair in Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital; Research Scientist in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital. She is the Founding Director of the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders: A Public Health Incubator (STRIPED), based at the Harvard Chan School and Boston Children’s Hospital. Her program STRIPED is the first research and training program dedicated to eating disorders prevention based at a school of public health and with a specialization in research-to-policy translation. She was also the Founding Director of the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression Health Equity Research Collaborative (SOGIE), based at the Harvard Chan School and Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Austin is a social epidemiologist and behavioral scientist with a research focus on health inequitie…
elizabeth.boskey@childrens.harvard.edu
Dr. Brittany Charlton is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is the Founding Director of the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence—a partnership of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.
Additionally, Dr. Charlton is the Director of Faculty Development for the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. At the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, she is Co-Director of the Master of Science Program in Epidemiology. At the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, she is Co-Leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program. Dr. Charlton is also on the faculty of The Fenway Institute, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Charlton is known as a leading scholar of sexual and gender minority health inequities, particularly in cancer and reproductive health. The second focal area of her research is contraception use and family planning among people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Her research has sustained continuous funding for the last 15 years from the NIH and foundations, including the American Cancer Society. She has been the Principal Investigator on 18 grants, including her most recent NIH-funded R01 award, focused on sexual orientation-related disparities in obstetrical and perinatal health. Additionally, she collaborates with colleagues across the globe on a host of large-scale studies. Dr. Charlton …
As an epidemiologist, my research takes a three-way approach to studying and improving women’s reproductive and long-term health by: 1) evaluating the role of environmental chemicals on adverse maternal health outcomes; 2) assessing racial/ethnic disparities in environmental chemical exposures and adverse health outcomes; and 3) developing pregnancy and postpartum interventions to improve women’s chronic disease risk.
Environmental Health and Pregnancy Complications. Everyday we are exposed to hundreds of chemicals that can affect our health. Over the course of our lives, these chemicals may have differing effects that could have a greater impact on our health during certain critical and sensitive windows . Furthermore, certain populations, such as women and minorities have higher exposure levels of certain types of chemicals. My research focuses on the role of environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals in pregnancy and their effect on a number of relevant pregnancy complications.
Racial Disparities in Environmental Health. A related area of research focuses on racial/ethnic differences in environmental chemical exposures and their contribution to disparities in chronic disease risk. For this, I evaluate both non-pregnant and pregnant populations and assess sources of exposures to certain types of environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals. This work has led me to explore the role of black hair care products on risk of certain conditions, such as early age at menarche,
Dr. Sabra L. Katz-Wise, PhD (she/her) is an Associate Professor in Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and in Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She also co-directs the Harvard SOGIE (Sexual Orientation Gender Identity and Expression) Health Equity Research Collaborative and she is a Senior Faculty Advisor for the BCH Office of Health Equity and Inclusion. Dr. Katz-Wise’s research investigates sexual orientation and gender identity development, sexual fluidity, health inequities related to sexual orientation and gender identity in adolescents and young adults, and psychosocial functioning in families with transgender youth. Her work has been funded by numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and the BCH Aerosmith Endowment Fund. In addition to research, Dr. Katz-Wise is involved with advocacy efforts at BCH and HMS to improve the workplace climate and patient care for LGBTQ individuals, including her role on the Queer Leadership Council for the Boston Children’s Rainbow Alliance and member of the BCH Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Council. She is also a Faculty Fellow in the HMS Sexual and Gender Minority Health Equity Initiative.
Karestan C. Koenen, PhD aims to reduce the population burden of mental disorders through research, training, and advocacy. She is passionate about using science to overcome violence and trauma, which are major preventable causes of health problems globally.
Research
Dr. Koenen directs the Biology of Trauma Initiative at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard where she is an Institute Member. Her research focus is three-fold. First, she studies why some people develop PTSD and related mental and physical health problems and why some people are resilient when exposed to similar traumatic events. Second, she investigates how violence, trauma, and PTSD alter long-term physical health and accelerate aging. Third, she aims to expand access to evidence-based mental health treatment for survivors of violence and trauma. To this end, she co-wrote the book, Treating Survivors of Childhood Abuse and Interpersonal Trauma: STAIR Narrative Therapy with Drs. Marylene Cloitre, Lisa Cohen. Kile M Ortigo, and Christie Jackson.
Relevant links:
Biology of Trauma: https://www.broadinstitute.org/biology-trauma-initiative-broad-institute
Book can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Treating-Survivors-Childhood-Interpersonal-Trauma-ebook/dp/B0859BZZDM
Training
Dr. Koenen leads the NIMH-funded Training Program in Psychiatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics (T32) and the Interdisciplinary Concentration in Population Mental Health. She also advises masters and doctoral degree students in the Depar
Nancy Krieger is Professor of Social Epidemiology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health. She has been a member of the School’s faculty since 1995. Dr. Krieger is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist (PhD, Epidemiology, UC Berkeley, 1989), with a background in biochemistry, philosophy of science, and history of public health, plus 30+ years of activism involving social justice, science, and health. In 2004, she became an ISI highly cited scientist, a group comprising “less than one-half of one percent of all publishing researchers, with her ranking reaffirmed in the 2015 update.” In 2013, she received the Wade Hampton Frost Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association, and in 2015, she was awarded the American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professorship. In 2019, Dr. Krieger was ranked as being “in the top 0.01% of scientists based on your impact” for both total career and in 2017 by a new international standardized citations metrics author database, including as #1 among the 90 top scientists listed for 2017 with a primary field of public health and secondary field of epidemiology (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000384)
Dr. Krieger’s work addresses three topics: (1) conceptual frameworks to understand, analyze, and improve the people’s health, including the ecosocial theory of