Bertranna Muruthi

Bertranna A. Muruthi, PhD, MS, is an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health & Prevention. Muruthi joined the Dornsife School of Public Health as part of the Drexel FIRST (Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation) program.

Dr. Muruthi’s current research looks at the family as the unit of analysis within the context of communities and the community-based organizations that serve them. As such, family needs and resilient behaviors are understood at a systemic level. There are three areas that Dr. Muruthi addresses to develop her program of research: (a) migration, resettlement, and transnationalism of documented and undocumented immigrants; (b) predictors of risk and resilient behavior in immigrant families; and (c) development of intervention and prevention programming for immigrant families. Her research uses culturally responsive community-based collaborative methods. She uses this strength-based model to look at individuals and families within the context of communities and the community-based organizations that serve them. Dr. Muruthi also incorporates community culture and knowledge and practices throughout research with the aim of producing culturally effective actions that lead to community transformation and social change.

An important aspect of her work also focuses on transitional issues that immigrant families must negotiate as well as predicting factors associated with their risk and resilience behaviors. Specifically, Dr. Muruthi uses an intersectionality lens within a transnational framework to explore how immigrant experiences evolve and change as immigrants stay connected to their native countries while in their host countries. Intersectionality considers the social identities and statuses that may differ between countries and are often considered as existing independently, yet in practice immigrants experience these statuses simultaneously. Transnationality refers to immigrant families who live across borders and spend some or all the time separated from each other yet maintain a collective welfare. These perspectives provide her with vital tools to highlight the lives of marginalized families while empowering their cultural practices. They allow for a closer examination of connections that immigrants have to their native countries and how these connections may affect immigrants’ resettlement experiences in host nations.