Kristen Nishimi, PhD, MPH

Dr. Kristen Nishimi is a social and psychiatric epidemiologist, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at UCSF in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and a research health science specialist in Mental Health at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs (VA) Health Care System. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of California Berkeley, followed by an MPH at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, a PhD in Population Health Sciences at Harvard University, and a post-doctoral fellowship at UCSF and the San Francisco VA Health Care System.

Her research has focused on understanding the relationships between trauma, mental, and physical health across the lifecourse. She has developed expertise in applying advanced epidemiological methods to observational and clinical data, to identify relationships between adversity and trauma exposure across the life course, with mental, behavioral, and physical health endpoints. Her research seeks to understand the pathways and mechanisms by which trauma, mental, and physical health intertwine, particularly via impacts on systemic inflammation and immune system functioning. Dr. Nishimi is also interested in an assets-based perspective in understanding the manifestation of psychological resilience to trauma, and its potential broad benefit to physical health and chronic disease.