Education

BA Human Biology, University of Kansas, 2008
MPH Epidemiology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2012
PhD Epidemiology, University of Minnesota, 2021

Contact

njsanta@uw.edu

Bio

Dr. Santaularia (she/her/ella) is an interdisciplinary population health researcher. Before coming to UW she was a Postdoctoral Scholar in Population Science with the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her doctoral training in Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota and Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Dr. Santaularia worked in various capacities with local and state governments in epidemiological surveillance and practice. Her primary areas of research include violence prevention, social epidemiology, health equity, social determinants of health, and analytical methods to obtain causal estimates in social epidemiology when traditional randomized control trials are either not feasible or unethical. Dr. Santaularia’s current body of research examines how: (1) social and institutional determinants influence violence; and (2) violence gets under the skin or is ‘embodied’ to impact health. She aims to expand this research to better understand the cumulative influence of violence over the life course as well as the roles of society, community, psychosocial and family protective factors in offsetting negative outcomes due to violence. Ultimately, she will build on this research to develop and test scalable interventions in underserved populations informed by understanding the role of larger social structures, familial and cultural contexts.