Samantha Garbers

Samantha Garbers, PhD works with a diverse range of clinical- and community-based stakeholders to develop, adapt, implement, and evaluate innovative interventions to improve public health for diverse populations including sexual and gender minority youth and adults, adolescent males and women seeking reproductive health care, Latinx and Black communities, and individuals with limited health literacy. Using her training as an epidemiologist, Dr. Garbers works with stakeholders to integrate rigorous methods for process and outcome evaluation into interventions, with a focus on reproductive health. She recently served as Lead Evaluator for a federally-funded randomized controlled trial of a motivational interviewing intervention for teen pregnancy prevention among young men. She has led a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project to improve pregnancy intention screening processes in primary care centers serving urban Latinas. She directed the development and testing of a low-literacy, computer-based contraceptive decision-making tool in a randomized controlled trial and a subsequent effectiveness study. Other current work includes evaluating innovative approaches to sexual and reproductive health care and integrative health services in school-based health centers serving youth in NYC, and working with hospital- and community-based providers to adopt population health management perspectives. At Mailman, Dr. Garbers teaches Quantitative Data Analysis, Research Design & Data Collection, and Program Planning & Evaluation. Dr. Garbers received her PhD in Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, and an MPA in Health Policy & Management from New York University.