Katrina Walsemann Ph.D.

Katrina Walsemann's research examines how social inequities influence life course health. She is particularly interested in how the U.S. education system shapes individuals’ physical, mental, and cognitive health, independent from and in relation to other structural factors such as race/ethnicity, gender, and social class. She has published extensively on how early school environments affect health and health behavior across the life course as well as how student debt influences the psychosocial health of young adults and their aging parents. Her research is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of public health, sociology, education, and demography. Fundamental to that research is an understanding of the historical and contemporary social policies that can create, reduce, or eliminate social inequities in population health.