Lisa M. Bates, PhD

Dr. Lisa M. Bates is Vice Chair for Education and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Bates is a social epidemiologist currently engaged in research programs focused on the social determinants of health in both the U.S. and South Asian contexts. In the U.S., her research draws on secondary data sources to interrogate structural drivers of socially patterned health outcomes in terms of gender, race, class, and immigration status, and mechanisms by which features of the social environment impact health, with a particular emphasis on common mental disorders. Her research portfolio in South Asia involves extensive primary data collection efforts in both Bangladesh and Pakistan and consists of quantitative and qualitative inquiry into the nexus of poverty, women's empowerment, intimate partner violence, and mental health and child developmental outcomes. Recent projects have yielded rich multi-level explorations of critical social dynamics and health outcomes as a function of novel methodologies and interdisciplinary collaborations. Much of this current work is also focused on understanding early life developmental trajectories of children born to mothers diagnosed with perinatal depression, and the potential for low-dose, scalable community-based interventions to mitigate risk.