Professional Title:
Assistant Professor of Public Health
Email:
Bio:
Pronouns: she/her | Dr. Gao’s research investigates the relationships between power structures, neighborhood health effects, and the well-being of racialized communities. Specifically, her work examines how structural drivers, through past and contemporary place-based policies and programs, distribute material resources and environmental hazards unevenly across neighborhoods. In turn, these unequal conditions shape community well-being over the life-course and across generations. Dr. Gao’s current projects explore how place-based sociopolitical mechanisms, including segregation, gentrification, and disinvestment, interact with exposure to environmental hazards to jointly shape pregnancy, perinatal, and cardiovascular outcomes.
