Draft:Nishita Dsouza

Nishita Dsouza (born June 29, 1993) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Social Intervention Group, a research center at the Columbia University School of Social Work. Dsouza currently holds a fellowship with the T32 Training Program on HIV and Substance Use in the Criminal Justice System, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse

Early life
Dsouza was born on June 29, 1993 in Bangalore, Karnataka, to Felix Dsouza, a software engineer, and Poornima Dsouza, an adjunct professor and educator specializing in cultural diversity and inclusion. Dsouza spent her childhood in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and attended Lincoln High School, where she participated in debate and theater.

Education
Dsouza attended Georgetown University from 2011-2015, receiving a B.S. in Human Science and a minor in public health. She worked at Georgetown University Health Education Services with the Hoya Health Hut, which she credited with inspiring her to pursue a career in public health.

After her undergraduate education, Dsouza attended the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, where she received a Master of Public Health degree specialized in Urban Design in 2017.

After a gap year fellowship, Dsouza pursued doctoral training at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University, where she received a Ph.D. in Community Health and Prevention in 2022, studying under Dr. Ana Martinez-Donate. Dsouza was awarded a doctoral research fellowship from the Drexel University Urban Health Collaborative and worked on a grant funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to improve access to care for co-occurring issues of substance use, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and mental health among Latino communities in Philadelphia

Career
Dsouza served as a Commissioner's Fellow at the Tennessee Department of Health with their Office of Primary Prevention, managing a grant program for built environment and health projects in rural areas and providing training and technical assistance for health department staff.

Research Focus
Dsouza's research focuses on promoting livable and equitable communities. She has extensive research experience in academic, nonprofit, and public sector settings on projects related to built environment and health, obesity prevention, access to health and social care, implementation science, and behavioral economics. Dr. Dsouza’s research portfolio centers around examining and promoting livable policies, systems, and environments for minoritized populations, and encouraging disseminating evidence-based findings to translate research across sectors for primary prevention purposes. In her dissertation research, she created and validated a new statewide measure of livability and conducted a multilevel analysis examining associations between livability and health in Connecticut.