Melody S. Goodman, MS, PhD

Melody received her B.S. summa cum laude in applied mathematics-statistics and economics (double major) from Stony Brook University (SBU) where she was a Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) National Institutes of Health (NIH) Fellow. She received her M.S. in biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health where she was an Initiative for Minority Student Development (IMSD/NIH) Fellow. Melody received her Ph.D. from the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard University with minors in theoretical statistics and the social determinants of health disparities. She was a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development NIH Minority Pre-doctoral Fellow. Her doctoral work focused on statistical methods for community-based cancer interventions and health disparities research. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Surgery, Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine.

Dr. Goodman has been subcontracted by the National Human Genome Research Institute/NIH to analyze patterns of beliefs about the genetic causation of health conditions and health behaviors among community health center patients. Dr. Goodman was Principal Investigator on a NIH Partners in Research grant entitled Community Alliance for Research Empowering Social change (CARES). Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Verizon Foundation, Long Island Community Foundation, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. She has over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles;her research findings have been published in top public health peer reviewed journals including Health &Place, Health, Education &Behavior, Obesity, Cancer Causes &Control, Social Science &Medicine, Public Health Genomics, and the American Journal of Public Health.