Faculty Spotlight
Aimee Afable, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences, SUNY Downstate School of Public Health.
My family is originally from the Philippines but I was born in the Bronx and a Bronx girl at heart! We moved to a NYC suburb (Spring Valley, NY) during my elementary school years and I was raised there until I left for college. I attended Brown University and received a BA with Honors in International Relations; my honors thesis focused on uneven economic development and its implications for children in the developing world. I became particularly interested in child labor. At Brown I received a small travel grant which allowed me to pursue studies in child labor and volunteer for a small non-governmental organization in Manila, Philippines dedicated to children’s rights and to preventing abuse and violence against children, in particular those children living and working on the streets. I received my M.P.H. and Ph.D. in public health from Tulane University (2003). Following my doctoral studies, I was a Post-Doctoral Scholar at the Institute for Health Policy Studies (2005-2007), University of California, San Francisco.
I am currently Associate Professor of Community Health Sciences and Associate Dean for Community Engagement. I have been at Downstate since 2011. I have had a very rich experience at Downstate and have held many roles in teaching, research and service. I am also actively engaged in the surrounding community and aspire toward creating and sustaining bi-directional relationships with all my community partners. I am board member of two local community-based organizations: Live Light Live Right (LLLR), the only tertiary care childhood obesity program serving Brooklyn and Kings Against Violence Initiative (KAVI), which has a mission to prevent and eliminate interpersonal violence from the lives of NYC youth.
I have always been passionate about social justice and equity. For over 15 years, my research has critically examined conceptual frameworks used to understand health disparities and health inequities. My work has documented the declining health advantage with increasing stay among US immigrants and has questioned the validity of the Healthy Immigrant Paradox. I have a growing research program in community-engaged approaches to the development of urban health interventions. I currently co-lead two NIH studies that use community-engaged implementation science frameworks. These NIH studies leverage community assets to develop novel digital health interventions that promote engagement in care in order to reverse historical disparities in poor maternal health and chronic disease outcomes. What I hope to achieve is the creation of interventions and solutions to historic disparities in health that resonate with the community, can be sustained and can inform policy.
I have had a long career in health disparities research. In the past much of my scholarship has focused on documenting health disparities. I strongly believe that collectively, the public health community, has gathered a wealth of knowledge. Perhaps spurred by national attention to health inequities (brought on by the COVID19 pandemic), in the last few years I made a very conscious decision to focus my efforts on applying the collective knowledge we know to practice and so, almost all of my funded research has focused on the co-design (with community partners) of urban health interventions that address some of the most pressing public health challenges of our time including the Black-white disparity in maternal mortality and the digital divide.
A major challenge I’ve experienced as a scientist is maintaining conviction, and staying authentic and true to myself, my values and ideas. It is important to acknowledge the value and role of mentorship in shaping my career trajectory as a scientist. However, when role models or mentors were not present in my life, I have had to resort to creating my own models and paths toward achieving success in my research and scientific endeavors.
To future researchers, I say stay true to your passions and dreams. Seek mentorship and do not be afraid or intimidated to approach or find them. In my spare time, I love taking walks with my little terrier, Ollie, going upstate for hikes and for new food experiences, cooking, skiing and salsa dancing!