Pamela Scorza, ScD, MPH is Assistant Professor of Reproductive Sciences at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and an early career researcher with over a decade of experience in global health research in the perinatal period.
Dr. Scorza’s research centers on pregnancy and early childhood as a unique window of opportunity for interrupting intergenerational transmission of health risk in populations exposed to concentrated adversity, including poverty, discrimination, and marginalization. She has conducted fieldwork with pregnant women and children in Ghana, Rwanda, Burundi, Peru, Argentina, and the United States, where she has implemented and evaluated perinatal mental health interventions and refined cross-cultural mental health measurement tools. Her current research examines behavioral (maternal-infant relationship quality) and biological (DNA methylation) markers of the upstream formation of infant health and developmental trajectories. She then incorporates these markers of intergenerational transmission in the perinatal period to assess the impact of perinatal interventions on child development.
Dr. Scorza earned a Doctor of Science degree at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, a Master of Public Health degree at the University of Ghana in West Africa, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology at New York University.
