Nishita Dsouza

Staff

Dr. Nishita Dsouza is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at SIG's T32 Training Program on HIV and Substance Use in the Criminal Justice System.

Bio

Nishita (Nishi) Dsouza is a researcher dedicated to 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 the dissemination of evidence-based findings for the translation of 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 the state of Connecticut.

Before coming to SIG, Dr. Dsouza was a doctoral research fellow with the Drexel University Urban Health Collaborative and worked with Latino communities in Philadelphia on an NIMHD-funded grant to improve access to care for co-occurring issues of substance use, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and mental health. Before that, Dr. 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.

Dr. Dsouza has a B.S. in Human Science from Georgetown University, an M.P.H specialized in Urban Design from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, and a Ph.D. in Community Health and Prevention from the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University.

Publications