Assistant Professor

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University

My name is Stephanie Hernandez. Broadly, my research and teaching specializations are in health disparities and population health, with additional expertise in quantitative methodology. Guided by my desire to understand the health of adults with minoritized identities and their experiences navigating the United States’ complex healthcare system, my research agenda centers the experiences of minoritized populations to detect and understand health disparities and barriers to health care. I accomplish this goal by employing critical theoretical perspectives from both in and outside the fields of public health, demography, and sociology. I incorporate work from higher education, sexuality studies, and ethnic studies.

Currently, I am a tenure-track assistant professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Dornsife School of Public at Drexel University. I am also part of the inaugural FIRST (Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation) cohort. The NIH-funded FIRST program at Drexel supports and promotes the career advancement of a cohort of diverse early career scientists who conduct clinical and policy-relevant research on health disparities.

Prior to joining Drexel, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Carolina Population Center (CPC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a postdoc, I was part of the Biosocial Training Program, where I was trained in understanding the social and biological pathways that are important to population health. During my time at the CPC, I became very familiar with the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) and continue to use its multiple waves of data for my research on gender expression and health disparities.

I earned a B.S. in Sociology and an M.S in Demography from Florida State University and a Ph.D. in Applied Demography from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Research Expertise

  • Sexual and gender minority health
  • Demography
  • Population health
  • LGBT Health
  • Intersectionality