Sepideh Modrek, Ph.D.

Dr. Sepideh Modrek is Health Equity Institute (HEI) Assistant Professor of Economics. Modrek earned a Ph.D. in Health Policy from University of California, Berkeley and conducted postdoctoral research at the Stanford, funded by the National Institute of Aging. Prior to joining the faculty at SF State, she was a research economist within the Global Health Groups at University of California, San Francisco and later was an Instructor at Stanford University within the Population Health Sciences group.

Her work focuses on social determinants of health is grounded in life course theory and empirical methods that exploit existing administrative data to examine a broad array of health outcomes. Currently her work focuses on (1) understanding how employment security affects workers health and the well-being of their family members (e.g., focusing on how stress is transmitted to children and spouses); (2) understanding how political unrest and uncertainty in institutions affect risk behaviors, particularly for youth in the Middle East; and (3) understanding the role of changes in population based policies, as opposed to individual ones, to shape health behaviors.