Sandra McCoy, PhD, MPH

Biography

Sandra McCoy is an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) School of Public Health. She studies how social, economic, and cultural forces influence disease transmission and health outcomes. During the past several years, Sandi has explored these relationships through the lens of HIV infection and reproductive health. Using a diverse array of approaches, her goal is to identify innovative, cost-effective, and scalable interventions to overcome global health challenges.

Dr. McCoy is especially interested in designing and testing new interventions that can positively change health behavior, such as increasing adherence to treatment or encouraging people to engage in health screenings. Most recently, Sandi and an exceptional team in Tanzania completed a randomized study to compare the effects of short-term food and cash assistance on adherence to antiretroviral therapy among people living with HIV infection in Shinyanga. In addition to her work in Tanzania, Sandi is part of the external impact evaluation team for Zimbabwe’s Accelerated National Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT) Program. In this role, she has led several sub-analyses, including describing service utilization in the PMTCT cascade, an analysis of unmet need for family planning, a study examining the effect of food insecurity on utilization of services in the PMTCT cascade, and a study using geospatial analysis to better target resource allocation in the “last mile” towards elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission.

At home in California, Sandi has led or collaborated on several research studies, both quantitative and qualitative, to identify innovative ways to increase the demand for HIV prevention, treatment, and care services among poor or disenfranchised communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.