Alina Schnake-Mahl

Alina Schnake-Mahl, ScD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Health Collaborative and the Department of Health Management and Policy at Drexel's Dornsife School of Public Health. She is a social epidemiologist and health services researcher, and her primary research interest is in the social and political determinants of health inequities. Her current work aims to identify the compositional and contextual features of places — including neighborhood factors, social policies, and governance structures — that are associated with health disparities. Her policy work focuses on occupational- and housing-related social policies. She uses a combination of descriptive and causal methods to identify and inform policies and interventions that can mitigate health inequity. She received an NIH K01 career development award to examine neighborhood and policy determinants of disparities in influenza and COVID-19 acute care utilization. Dr. Schnake-Mahl earned a ScD and MPH in social epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Before joining the faculty, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative, and previously worked in applied population health research and evaluation.