Sarah Forrester

Dr. Sarah Forrester is an Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences. She received her PhD in Public Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she focused on cognitive disorders of aging. Her research is in two primary focus areas – 1. understanding and preventing health inequities to improve the health of Black populations; and 2. how stress and biology interact to create health inequities in aging of Black populations. Dr. Forrester is particularly interested in inequitable social determinants of health due to structural inequalities and systemic racism’s effect on cardiovascular disease outcomes, cognitive function, and overall health in later life. Dr. Forrester is also currently doing health inequity prevention work by using storytelling as an intervention to increase the participation of Black and Hispanic persons in COVID research and reducing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.  

Research, Education and Training – Fostering, developing, and amplifying existing as well as new infrastructure to support the education, mentorship, and scholarly productivity of collaborative, community engaged and interprofessional research efforts is the focus of this pillar. Through dissemination of a competitively applied Community Investment Fund (CIF), the voices and priorities of communities who have been historically underrepresented and marginalized will be centered. Meaningful community-driven, community-led and community-anchored research, educational, and service opportunities will engage learners, faculty, staff, as well as community stakeholders. There will be focused attention on employing community-based participatory research principles throughout. Priority will also be on illuminating the social determinants of health (SDOH) which are impacting communities and explore community and public service opportunities to jointly address them. Cultivating sustained and trust-based research, service, and educational community engagement will aim to transform health care access, use, research participation, and outcomes across vulnerable, underserved, and historically marginalized communities.