Founding Dean Bernadette Boden-Albala

Bernadette_Boden-Albala

Bernadette Boden-Albala, MPH, Dr.P.H., is the Director of the UCI Program in Public Health and Founding Dean of the future UCI School of Population and Public Health. A renowned researcher and academic administrator with more than 25 years of experience, she holds several leadership roles within the field of public health, at the UCI campus, and at the UC-system level. 

Motivated by the campus’ commitment to achieving quality in education that is accessible and affordable, Boden-Albala began her tenure with UCI in the summer of 2019. She was intrigued by the large, diverse undergraduate program in public health and was excited by the students’ commitment to healthier communities here and abroad. Equally, she was struck by the staff and faculty’s dedication to the students. 

Boden-Albala looks forward to mobilizing the entire UCI Public Health community’s commitment towards health equity, social justice, academic excellence and passion for the growth and transition of this program to a world-class school of population and public health. 

Get In Touch…

For meetings requests and general inquires, please contact Stefanie Avila at stefaa2@uci.edu.

For reporters and writers who would like to speak with Dean Boden-Albala as an expert source and other public relations needs, please contact Brianna Aldrich, Director of Marketing & Communications, at brianna.aldrich@uci.edu.

For research collaborations, please contact Emily Drum, Research Manager, at edrum@uci.edu.

Dean’s Biography

Boden-Albala has dedicated her career to promoting health equity for all, defining and intervening on social determinants of disease, and leading community-level health assessments and solutions. She has expertise in cardiovascular disease and stroke, emerging infectious diseases, epidemiology as well as global health.

In addition to being a professor of health, society, & behavior and epidemiology & biostatistics at UCI Public Health, Boden-Albala also holds an appointment at the UCI School of Medicine as a professor of neurology. She is a lead investigator on the National Initiative for Minority Involvement in Neurological Clinical Trials, which has resulted in improving racial-ethnic minorities and women’s participation rates in clinical trials. 

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Boden-Albala was at the forefront of Orange County’s COVID-19 response and has held leadership advisory positions at the Orange County Health Care Agency and at UCI, having started the successful Contact Tracing Program. Drawing from her vast experience with infectious diseases, she has become a voice of expertise on public health strategies, including community preparedness, contract tracing workshops, and health inequities.

Boden-Albala has built a robust portfolio of research that focuses on reducing health disparities for America’s disadvantaged, including the role of sex, race-ethnicity, socio-economic status, social support, stress, and social networks on vascular disease and patterns across the U.S. and globally. She is currently leading a community-based participatory research, SERVE OC or “Skills-based Educational strategies to Reduce Vascular Events in Orange County,” to reduce cardiovascular risk factors within entire family units in Latina/o/x and Vietnamese families in Santa Ana, Calif. Much of her work, documented in 200+ authored or co-authored publications, has become a blueprint for community-based stroke and heart disease prevention.

Boden-Albala’s work has extended internationally to a collaborative effort between the American Heart Association and the Grenada Ministry of Health to develop and evaluate novel community- and policy-based interventions for cardiovascular disease prevention in Grenada. She was also MPI of an exploratory project in Ghana to assess gaps in lay knowledge of primary and secondary stroke prevention, stroke treatment and recovery. Finally, her work in global chronic disease prevention has included a World Health Organization project that sought to identify the optimum social networks for promoting health policy dialogue in Moldova. In addition to her broad research experience, She has also worked with UNICEF and the United Nations World Food Program where she worked on Ebola and Polio response solutions and explored a system’s approach to food access.

Prior to UCI, Boden-Albala held leadership and academic positions with the NYU School of Global Public Health, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health where she also received her Master of Public Health and Doctor of Public Health degrees.