Dana and David Dornsife Dean of the Dornsife School of Public Health
Professor of Epidemiology
Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Urban Health Collaborative
646.761.1362
gsl45@drexel.edu
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Degrees

PhD, Epidemiology, University of Washington
MPH, Epidemiology, University of Washington
BS, Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, UCLA

Bio

Gina S. Lovasi, PhD, MPH, is the Dana and David Dornsife Dean and professor of Epidemiology at Drexel University's Dornsife School of Public Health. She is formerly the co-director of the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative.

Her research projects reflect a tension between loving to work with large datasets to chip away at big questions, and a fascination with the insights gained through field data collection to tackle local information needs. In both contexts, the puzzles and surprises that emerge, either during the investigation or during subsequent dissemination, continue to provide a rich source of new research questions.

Her recent NIA-funded project is a longitudinal investigation of local retail (healthy food sources, physical activity venues, and medical facilities) and their implications for cardiovascular disparities and aging across the US. She is also using street-level observations to understand variation in physical disorder within urban areas in the US and Latin America.

Dr. Lovasi teaches and mentors graduate students on using data to answer epidemiological and urban health questions, and she co-directs an NIMHD-funded T-37 training grant entitled the Global Alliance for Training in Health Equity Research.

She has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and recently co-edited the book Urban Public Health: A Research Toolkit for Practice and Impact (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Previous affiliations include University of California Los Angeles (undergraduate training), University of Washington (graduate training in epidemiology), and Columbia University (interdisciplinary postdoctoral training, assistant professorship in epidemiology).

Research Interests

• Cardiovascular Disease
• Data Analysis Methods
• Health and Place or Built Environment
• Health Disparities
• Spatial Analysis or GIS
• Urban Health
• Urban Trees and Greenspace
• Local Retail and Urban Design
• Transportation, Infrastructure and Policies

Publications

Select Publications:

Brown, J, Hirsch, J.A., Tabb, L.P., Judd, S.E., Bennett, A., Rundle, A., and Lovasi, G.S. A segmented regression analysis of household income and recurrent falls among adults in a national cohort study. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2024: 193(3) p. 516-526.

Lovasi, G.S., Boise, S., Jogi, S., Hurvitz, P.M., Rundle, A.G., Diez, A., Hirsch, J.A., Fitzpatrick, A., Biggs, M.L., and Siscovick, D.S. Time-varying food retail and incident disease in the Cardiovascular Health Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2023; 64(6), p. 877-887.

Rundle, A.G., Neckerman, K.M., Judd, S.E., Colabianchi, N., Moore, K.A., James W. Quinn, Hirsch, J.A., and Lovasi, G.S. Cumulative Experience of Neighborhood Walkability and Change in Weight and Waist Circumference in REGARDS. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2023: 192(12): p. 1960-1970.

Lovasi, G.S., Treat, C.A., Fry, D., Shah, I., Clougherty, J.E., Berberian, A., Perera, F.P., and Kioumourtzoglou, M.A. Clean fleets, different streets: evaluating the effect of New York City's clean bus program on changes to estimated ambient air pollution. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 2022. (Online ahead of print; PMID: 35906405; PMCID in progress)

Gullón, P., Fry, D., Plascak, J.J., Mooney, S.J., Lovasi, G.S. Measuring changes in neighborhood disorder using Google Street View longitudinal imagery: a feasibility study. Cities & Health. 2023:1-7.

Lovasi, G.S., Johnson, N.J., Altekruse, S.F., Hirsch, J.A., Moore, K., Brown, J.R., Rundle, A.G., Quinn, J.W., Neckerman, K., and Siscovick, D.S. Healthy food retail availability and cardiovascular mortality in the United States: A cohort study. BMJ Open, 2021. 11(7): e048390. PMCID: 8273445

Gullón, P., Bilal, U., Hirsch, J.A., Rundle, A.G., Judd, S., Safford, M.M., and Lovasi, G.S. Does a physical activity supportive environment ameliorate or exacerbate socioeconomic inequities in incident coronary heart disease? Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. 2021 Jul 1;75(7):637-42.

Lovasi, G.S., Diez Roux, A., Kolker, J. (Eds.) Urban Public Health: A Research Toolkit for Practice and Impact. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Click for full list of publications in PubMed