Dr. Dara D. Mendez

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About Dr. Dara

Dara D. Mendez, Ph.D., MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences and Interim Director of the Center for Health Equity at University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and an affiliate faculty member of the Geoinformatics Laboratory at Pitt.  She completed her postdoctoral training as a Kellogg Health Scholar and earned her MPH and Ph.D. in Maternal and Child Health with a focus in Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and BA in Sociology/Anthropology pre-med at Spelman College.  Mendez applies a variety of methods and approaches in her work related to the complex intersections between racism, multiple forms of oppression, stress, and place in understanding Black maternal and infant health as well as racial/ethnic inequities in pregnancy, birth, and women’s health. Mendez works closely with community-based and governmental agencies including serving on the Infant Mortality Collaborative for Allegheny County, the BEST Allegheny Initiative, the Pennsylvania Maternal Mortality Review Committee as well as the ACHD/DHS COVID-19 Equity Advisory Task Force, and the Black COVID-19 Equity Coalition.