Alexis Santos

Core Areas:

• Individual Development - Adult and Aging
• Developmental Research Methodology

Research:

• Determinants and Promotion of Well-Being Healthy Aging Influences of Stress on Development and Aging Socio-cultural and Economic Diversity

• 2015-2018             Director of Graduate Studies in Applied Demography, Department of Sociology and Criminology, The Pennsylvania State University
• 2015-2017             Postdoctoral Research Fellow, United States Army Institute for Surgical Research (USAIR)

My primary research interest lies in the study of social disparities in stress, health, and mortality. As a population health scientist, I work with health disparities and the measurement of physiological dysregulation and stress. Using biomarker data, I explore the implications of alternative measurements of physiological dysregulation in our understanding of health disparities.

My health and mortality projects are focused on post-climate disasters disparities and vulnerabilities due to different socioeconomic status. Following Hurricane María, I initiated a series of projects to study its effect in the population of Puerto Rico. First, I conducted the Puerto Rican Diaspora Study, an online survey for the Puerto Ricans living in the United States where they provide information about the strategies employed by their families to deal with post-Hurricane disaster conditions.

My second project, deals with the appropriate count of the number of deaths attributable to Hurricane Maria based on historical patterns of deaths for the post-2010 period. My aim is to use these results to inform policy makers and Emergency Managers and aid in the formulation of new protocols to prevent deaths in the future.