Current Fellows
Brittany Raffa, MD, MPH
General Pediatrics, 3rd Year
Dr. Raffa completed her undergraduate degrees at Florida State University and medical school at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She completed her residency at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, postgraduate certificate in Public Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Master of Public Health from Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill. She has worked as a board-certified pediatrician in Ithaca, NY followed by Honolulu, HI prior to starting her NRSA Primary Care Research fellowship. She has also had diverse clinical and research experiences in Kosovo, Vietnam, Botswana and the UK during medical school and residency.
Dr. Raffa’s research focuses on how the health and wellbeing of all family members affects that of children, and the role of sociopolitical policies in this. She is particularly interested in how interventions and policies that reduce family stress improve child wellbeing. She has examined the parental perceptions of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on child development and the increase in unintentional illicit substance ingestions among young children during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has also examined the effect of the 2016 presidential election and subsequent policies on birth outcomes and healthcare utilization patterns among infants born to undocumented Latina mothers. She is conducting qualitative work exploring undocumented Latina mothers’ experiences with getting healthcare and enrolling in benefits for themselves and their US born children under the mentorship of Dr. Rushina Cholera and received an American Academy of Pediatrics Community Access to Child Health grant to explore Latino caregivers’ healthcare experiences for US born children and their undocumented siblings. She received the National Foundation to End Child Abuse and Neglect under the mentorship of Dr. Samantha Schilling and Dr. Anthony Zannas to examine epigenetic changes of genes integral in the body’s stress response among children and caregivers receiving a group-based positive parenting intervention and controls. She also received the Carolina for the Kids Fellow Research Award and the Dr. Jacob A. Lohr Research Award to examine healthcare utilization patterns and developmental outcomes among infants exposed to marijuana in utero.
Research Interests: social determinants of health, structural inequities, immigrant health outcomes, health access among underserved populations, Emergency Medicaid
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