My research career began with a foundational question: how does racism — in its institutional, interpersonal, and internalized forms — shape the mental health and well-being of People of Color? That question has driven my work from the beginning, and over time it led me somewhere specific: to perinatal mental health, where racial disparities are among the most devastating and the least addressed.
Black, Indigenous, and Latina birthing people face disproportionately high rates of perinatal mental health disorders, maternal mortality, and barriers to culturally responsive care — not because of individual risk factors, but because of the structural racism embedded in healthcare systems and the broader social determinants that shape their lives. That is where my research now lives.
I am a clinical psychologist and NIDA T32 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, working under the mentorship of Drs. Constance Guille and Sudie Back. My current work examines co-occurring PTSD and substance use disorders in perinatal populations, barriers to MOUD retention among pregnant and postpartum women, and the development of culturally grounded interventions for Latina and BIPOC families.
My methodological approach spans qualitative and quantitative traditions. I use reflexive thematic analysis in my qualitative work, with original contributions to dual-language coding with Spanish-speaking participants. My quantitative work includes structural equation modeling and multiple regression, examining pathways between discrimination, trauma, and mental health outcomes. This mixed-methods orientation allows me to ask both what is happening in the numbers and why it is happening in the lives of the people behind them.
I am a protocol therapist on two MUSC clinical trials — the EMPWR study and the PATH Relapse Prevention protocol — and I mentor students at the intersection of health equity and clinical psychology. I am bilingual in English and Spanish.
I am currently on the academic job market seeking tenure-track faculty positions where I can build an independent research program centered on perinatal mental health equity, teach, and mentor the next generation of health equity scholars.
NIDA T32 Postdoctoral Fellow
Medical University of South Carolina · Charleston, SC
