Magdalena Cerdá
Magdalena Cerdá is an Epidemiologist in the Center for urban Epidemiologic Studies at The New York Academy of Medicine. Dr. Cerdá completed her M.P.H. in International Health at Yale School of Epidemiology and Public Health, and earned her Dr.P.H. in social epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan. Dr. Cerda's research focuses on the social epidemiology of risk behaviors and psychiatric disorders, particularly violence, substance abuse and depression. Her current work looks at individual, family, peer and neighborhood influences on psychiatric comorbidity, and focuses on developing innovative methods to simultaneously measure the onset and acceleration of risk for multiple risk behaviors or psychiatric disorders. She is also conducting research on the developmental trajectories of substance abuse, depression and violent behavior, particularly in post-disaster settings. Dr. Cerdá is using natural experiments and innovative methods of causal inference to understand the role that neighborhoods play on influencing risk behaviors in the United States and Latin America. Notably, she is conducting a pre-post case-control study in Medellín, Colombia, evaluating the impact that the installation of a cable car in low-income communities had on neighborhood processes and health outcomes. Before obtaining her doctorate, Dr. Cerdá worked at the World Health Organization, where she advised countries such as Mozambique on the development of national policies on violence prevention, developed global guidelines for collecting forensic evidence in sexual violence cases, and co-authored the youth violence chapter of the World Report on Violence and Health.
Contact information: (212) 822-7388, mcerda@nyam.org
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