Sonia Mendoza-Grey

Sonia Mendoza-Grey is a sociology-track PhD student in the Sociomedical Sciences department at Columbia. Sonia became interested in mixed-methods research and Latino health as an undergraduate at Stanford where she worked on community-based health intervention studies. As a master’s student at Columbia she continued to pursue her interest in the social determinants of health and minority health. Her MA thesis analyzed the role of social networks and social cohesion in relation to obesity rates and health measures within enclaves of Latino communities in the United States. Her publications to date, which explore addiction and racialized medicine, draw on and have been informed by her work on a NIDA-funded study at NYU Medical Center and her interests in mental health, stigma, and policy. Current major areas of focus include structural influences on health and qualitative research methods. As a doctoral student, Sonia uses her ethnographic and quantitative research methods training to study clinical cultures, the production of medical knowledge, and dissemination of health interventions in ethnic minority communities to study the effect of precision medicine initiatives on Latino population identity.