Rate My Professor Kathryn Derose

Kathryn Derose is Professor of Community Health Education in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She also holds positions as Senior Policy Researcher at RAND and Professor of Policy Analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. A native of Iowa City, Iowa, she earned a PhD in health services from the University of California, Los Angeles, an MPH in population and family health from UCLA, and a BA in comparative area studies focused on Latin America from Duke University, where she completed pre-med requirements. As a Fulbright Scholar, she lived in Ecuador for over five years, initially conducting research and later working with a health and development NGO among Indigenous communities. Bilingual in English and Spanish, she has extensive experience in Latin America, informing her community-partnered research on health inequalities.

Derose's research interests encompass social determinants of health, community-based participatory research, faith-based organizations, immigrants' health care access, Latino populations, and multilevel interventions in Latin America and the United States. She employs mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to design and evaluate interventions addressing HIV prevention and care, obesity, food insecurity, physical activity, mental health, substance use, and veteran reintegration. She has authored more than 140 scientific publications, including highly cited papers such as "Immigrants and health care: sources of vulnerability" (Health Affairs, 2007), "Limited English proficiency and Latinos’ use of physician services" (Medical Care Research and Review, 2000), and "Parks and physical activity: why are some parks used more than others?" (Preventive Medicine, 2010). Key works include church-based interventions like "Eat, Pray, Move" for obesity (American Journal of Health Promotion, 2019) and HIV stigma reduction (AIDS and Behavior, 2016). Derose received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2005. She leads NIH-funded projects, including the $3.4 million ProMeSA II efficacy trial in the Dominican Republic, testing urban gardens and peer nutritional counseling for food-insecure people with HIV, and a $4.4 million church- and park-based physical activity intervention for Latinos in Los Angeles. Her work fosters multisectoral partnerships to tackle structural health disparities.