Jodi Ford, Ph.D., R.N.

Jodi Ford, Ph.D., R.N. is an Associate Professor in the College of Nursing and a Faculty Associate of the Initiative in Population Research at The Ohio State University. She received a Bachelor and Master of Science degree in Nursing from the University of Florida and a PhD in Public Health from the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on population health, specifically the mechanisms through which contextual disadvantage contributes to health and health disparities among adolescents and young adults in the U.S. and globally. The purpose of Dr. Ford’s research for the Nurse Faculty Scholar Program is three-fold: (1) to examine associations between exposure to neighborhood and school disadvantage during adolescence and risk for sexually transmitted infections during young adulthood; (2) to examine specific social processes in neighborhoods and schools that may explain why or under what circumstances disadvantage shapes these outcomes; and (3) to examine how neighborhood and school disadvantage and their social processes contribute to racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in sexually transmitted infections. She is utilizing complex survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to complete this research.