Monica Schoch-Spana

Monica Schoch-Spana, PhD, Certified in Public Health—a medical anthropologist, public health researcher, and policy analyst – is professor of community health in the Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences at Texas A&M University—San Antonio. She is the Director of the Community Health Degree Program, whose mission is to launch the careers of public health professionals who lead innovative, evidence-based, and culturally responsive interventions that improve community health and wellbeing, especially among underserved populations in South-Central Texas. For over 25 years, she has conducted research on public health emergency management, focusing on community resilience, behaviorally realistic emergency planning, community engagement in policymaking, crisis and emergency risk communication, post-epidemic recovery, and health equity in emergency settings. She has worked diligently to translate scholarly research and community insights into actionable recommendations for policymakers and practitioners. National advisory roles include the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Board of Scientific Counselors for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Resilient America Roundtable of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which she formerly co-chaired. She worked previously at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health as Research Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Johns Hopkins University and is certified in public health by the National Board of Public Health Examiners.