About Sepideh Modrek

Dr. Sepideh Modrek is Health Equity Institute (HEI) Assistant Professor of Economics. She co-leads the "Big Data and Health" cluster at SF State with Dr. Rori Rolfs.  Dr. Modrek earned a Ph.D. in Health Policy from University of California, Berkeley.  

Her work focuses on social determinants of health and is grounded in life course theory and empirical methods that exploit existing administrative data to examine a broad array of health outcomes. Her work often exploits exogenous geographical or environmental exposures in large longitudinal population based samples to better understand the root causes of health disparities. 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.