With the heart of an epidemiologist — and specifically a social epidemiologist — Dr. Debbie Barrington studies the social structures and contextual factors that impact population health and health disparities. However, Lifestyle Medicine offers ways, Dr. Barrington believes, to allow physicians to empower patients to take control of their health despite the challenges that can occur within patients’ social contexts.
As a Clinical Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences at SOMG, Dr. Barrington will be teaching epidemiology and biostatistics courses. “It truly is an honor and a privilege to teach future physicians who not only acquire the skills needed to practice lifestyle medicine here at USC SOMG, but also embrace the task of emboldening their patients to practice disease prevention, the key for improving population health,” says Dr. Barrington.
Dr. Barrington, who began at SOMG in January, 2023, is the biomedical sciences thread leader for Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Evidence-Based Practice.
“My primary goal is to ensure that our medical students are well prepared for all Epidemiology and Biostatistics content.” Dr. Barrington says. “I also aim to inspire our students to enjoy the critical thinking that epidemiology and biostatistics hones for the life-long learning needed to ensure that their future clinical practice continues to be evidence-based.”
Debbie Barrington, PhD, MPH, comes to SOMG with an undergraduate degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Princeton University. She then obtained her Master’s in Public Health with concentrations in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Boston University before earning her PhD in Epidemiological Science from the University of Michigan. For her postdoctoral fellowship, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University. She also was a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), where she had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with scientists from several Institutes at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Barrington has held faculty positions at Columbia University where she taught Epidemiology at the graduate level, and most recently at Georgetown University teaching Population Health at the undergraduate level in the Department of Human Science. Her passion lies with epidemiological subdisciplines, including social epidemiology, life course epidemiology, cardiovascular epidemiology and perinatal epidemiology.
Since arriving at SOMG this January, Dr. Barrington has received two grants, along with Dr. Jennifer Grier, associate professor at SOMG. One research grant is an ASPIREinG: Advanced Support for Innovative Research Excellence in Greenville award from the Office of the Dean at USCSOMG to study the socioecological determinants of pediatric hypertension in the Upstate and Midlands regions of South Carolina. The other is a $20,000 grant from the University of South Carolina Big Data Health Science Center to examine the similarities and differences of the effects of contextual factors on both pediatric chronic and infectious diseases. “These are very exciting and innovative projects that I very much look forward to.” Dr. Barrington says.
The pair of researchers will focus their investigations over the next year on the possible impact of multi-level neighborhood socioeconomic factors on chronic and infectious diseases within the Prisma Health pediatric patient population in the Upstate and Midlands of South Carolina. “Through the examination of environmental conditions that are associated with susceptibility of the pediatric population to both communicable and non-communicable diseases, we hope our work will lead to the development of new methodologies and interventions designed to improve the health and wellbeing of children in South Carolina,” says Dr. Barrington. SOMG third-year student Adaya Sturkey has also been recently added to the team to work with Dr. Barrington on the ASPIREinG Grant to examine the impact of the rural environment on pediatric hypertension. “One of the most enjoyable aspects of these projects is the opportunity to work with medical students on population health research,” says Dr. Barrington.
In her spare time, Dr. Barrington loves to garden which she finds as a perfect way to incorporate her professional beliefs into her personal life.