Krista Perreira
Professor of Social Medicine
MacNider Hall 342B
919-843-4505
perreira@email.unc.edu
Krista Perreira received her Ph.D. in health economics at the University of California Berkeley in 1999. Since receiving her Ph.D., she has received several honors for her research on the well-being of immigrant children including the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prizes for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; a visiting fellowship appointment at the Russell Sage Foundation; and The Foundation for Child Development Award for Young Scholars. In addition, Dr. Perreira is a highly engaged scholar who serves as an advisory committee member or on the board of directors for several task forces, nonprofit organizations, and state agencies seeking to improve the provision of services to new immigrant Latinos in North Carolina. Her research combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to study the relationships between family, health, and social policy, with an emphasis on racial disparities in health, education, and economic opportunity. Her research is also highly interdisciplinary integrating economic, psychological, and sociological models of human behavior. Over the past 15 years, she has received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the William T. Grant foundation for her studies on access to health care, mental health, civic engagement, and the academic achievement of immigrant families and their children. She has also worked with colleagues from the Migration Policy Institute and the Urban Institute to evaluate programs and policies aimed at improving the health and well-being of pregnant women, young children, and adolescents in immigrant families within the U.S. Globally, her research includes studies throughout Latin America including Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and Mexico. Most recently, she has worked on designing and implementing the National Hispanic Community Health Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL) and the National Study of Latino Youth (SOL-Youth) as part of a nationwide interdisciplinary team. Her research has resulted in nearly 100 co-authored articles, book chapters, and reports in leading journals in demography (e.g., Demography), public health (e.g., American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine), psychology (e.g., Journal of Social Issues), and sociology (e.g., Social Forces).
