Leah Frerichs, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Frerichs’ research is focused on the intersection of community-based participatory research and systems science to address health disparities, largely in the area of chronic disease prevention. She has experience working with diverse communities including American Indian, Latino and African Americans to develop, implement and evaluate community-bas … Continued

Leah Frerichs, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Frerichs’ research is focused on the intersection of community-based participatory research and systems science to address health disparities, largely in the area of chronic disease prevention. She has experience working with diverse communities including American Indian, Latino and African Americans to develop, implement and evaluate community-based interventions and policies. Her work has had a major focus on understanding and developing interventions that target social and physical environment influences on youth’s health behaviors in under-served communities.

Frerichs earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for Health Equity Research at UNC. Prior to her doctoral studies, she managed a cancer prevention and control program for tribal communities in the Northern Plains.