Dara D Méndez

Contributions to Public Health

• Racial/Ethnic Equity related Life-course Women’s Health, Pregnancy and Birth: I have more than 20 years of experience conducting work related to social and racial equity related to pregnancy, birth, and women’s health. Early in my career as a trainee, my NIH/NICHD-funded dissertation research (F31HD057782, PI: Mendez) and postdoctoral research as a Kellogg Health Scholar, has shown that contributors to racial/ethnic disparities in adverse pregnancy outcomes cannot be explained by individual factors but that the contexts in which women live play a larger role in their health outcomes. My work in pregnancy and birth outcomes has expanded to areas of women’s health such as weight and obesity where I led the PMOMS Study, a novel study on the effects of racism, stress, and place on maternal weight and cardiometabolic health (R01 HL135218-01). Finally, I am MPI of the EMBRACE Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence, focused on addressing maternal mortality and morbidity in Allegheny County and the surrounding region.
  • Jarlenski M, Cole E, McClure C, Sanders S, Smalls M, Méndez DD. Implementation and early effects of Medicaid policy interventions to promote racial equity in pregnancy and early childhood outcomes in Pennsylvania: protocol for a mixed methods study. BMC Health Serv Res. 2024 April 22; 24(1): 498.
  • Méndez DD, Thorpe R, Amutah N, Davis E, Walker R, Chapple-McGruder T, Bodnar L. Neighborhood racial composition and poverty in association with pre-pregnancy weight and gestational weight gain. Social Science and Medicine- Population Health. 2016 Dec. 2: 692-699. PMID: 29349180; PMCID: PMC5757954.
• Racism, Discrimination, Oppression and Health: Some of my most notable contributions have been in measuring and analyzing various forms of racism, particularly as it relates to reproductive health. Through this work, I developed a novel measure of institutional/structural racism, “residential redlining” and published one of the first studies of redlining, stress and pregnancy. This measure was based on Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data and has been applied by other researchers attempting to measure and understand the root causes of disparities in health. Our studies highlighted the intersections between lending disparities and health disparities and demonstrated that institutional racism, as measured by “residential redlining,” was associated with stress among pregnant women but inversely associated with preterm birth among black women. Additionally, I have developed novel methods for assessing experiences of racism and other forms of discrimination via ecological momentary assessment and led an analysis assessing over 100 policies across the country related to ‘Racism as a Public Health Crisis” in which I provided expert testimony to legislation developed in Pittsburgh, PA in 2019.
  • Méndez DD, Tapia A, Sanders a, Casas A, Smalls M, Davis EM, Rathbun S, Gary-Webb T, Burke L, Omowale S, Adodoadji L, Gianakas J, Lai Y, Feghali M, Wallace M. Real-time experiences of racism and stress in association with postpartum weight retention: A longitudinal ecological momentary assessment study. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2024. In Press.
  • Méndez DD, Scott J, Adodoadji L, Toval C, McNeil M, Sindhu M. Racism as a Public Health Crisis: Assessment and Review of Municipal Declaration and Resolutions Across the United States. Frontiers in Public Health. 11 Aug 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.686807
• Novel Methods and Approaches in Health Equity: My content expertise and focus on inequities in maternal and child health, reproductive justice and women’s health has led to work related to applying novel methods, approaches and tools in order to gain an increased understanding of why disparities exist and how to address them, particularly through community-based and structural interventions. This work has been focused in three areas: 1) neighborhood and place-based research, which was briefly described previously; 2) mHealth approaches, EMA and technologies; and novel community-based and structural interventions. The first area has focused on developing new measures of neighborhood or area-level contexts, highlighted in the pregnancy/women’s health inequities research, my research on mortgage discrimination, redlining and institutional racism, and regional studies on neighborhood well-being across Pennsylvania (and the Pittsburgh area). This line of research also includes novel approaches to assessing space/geography in real-time through GMA and smartphone GPS capabilities as well EMA assessments of racism and other forms of discrimination (described above). My work on momentary assessment of locations, context/environment and self-efficacy has been presented at national conferences, has been published and additional work is under development. Finally, my work includes community-based and structural interventions including but not limited to the effects of policy on maternal and infant health.
  • Gharani P*, Karimi H, Syzdykbayev M, Burke LE, Rathbun SL, Davis EM, Gary-Webb TL, Méndez DD. Geographically-explicit Ecological Momentary Assessment (GEMA) Architecture and Components: Lessons Learned from PMOMS. Informatics for Health and Social Care 2021. Feb 20: 1-20. DOI: 10.1080/17538157.2021.1877140. PMID: 33612061
  • Méndez DD, Gary-Webb T, Fabio A, Goode R, Zheng Y, Imes C, Duell J, Burke LE. Neighborhood factors and six-month weight change among overweight individuals in a weight loss intervention. Preventive Medicine Reports 2016 Oct; 4: 569-573.