Goleen Samari

Goleen Samari is a population health demographer and Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences whose research focuses on social inequities and health. Dr. Samari examines how racism, gender inequities, and migration-based inequities shape population and reproductive health both domestically and globally with a particular focus on communities in or from the Middle East and North Africa. She focuses on issues related to immigrant health, women’s health, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. She was the first to draw attention to racialization of religious minorities and Islamophobia as a public health issue. She is also one of a handful of public health researchers examining women’s empowerment, gender equity, and reproductive health in the Middle East and North Africa. Her recent work includes a measure of structural xenophobia in the U.S. at the state level, the Immigrant Policy Climate index, that can be leveraged to understand the health implications of exclusionary and inclusive immigration contexts. Her research remains focused on understanding and alleviating intersectional structural determinants of health. Cutting across all her research areas is an interest in the way social science constructs are measured and mixed methods that guide the research process. Her research has been published in several journals including Social Science & Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health, and her editorials and Op-Eds have been published in local and national newspapers. She is recognized as a thought leader on the population and reproductive health effects of discrimination for Muslim, Middle Eastern, and immigrant communities and has received a few notable honors for her contributions to health equity research.

• University of Texas at Austin, Austin — 08/2017 — Postdoctoral Training in Population Studies
• UCLA, Los Angeles — PhD — 06/2015 — Public Health & Demography
• UCLA, Los Angeles — MPH — 06/2010 — Community Health Sciences
• UCLA, Los Angeles — MA — 06/2010 — Islamic Studies
• University of Texas at Austin, Austin — BA — 05/2007 — Plan II Honors
• University of Texas at Austin, Austin — BA — 05/2007 — Middle Eastern Studies

• Klausner, Jeffrey
• Gruskin, Sofia
• Unger, Jennifer
• Oh, Hans
• Jang, Yuri
• Brown, Hilary