Sandra McCoy

Sandra McCoy is an associate adjunct professor in the Division of Epidemiology at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She studies how social, economic and cultural forces influence disease transmission and health outcomes. During the past several years, McCoy has explored these relationships through the lens of HIV infection and reproductive health. Using a diverse array of approaches, her goal is to identify innovative, cost-effective and scalable interventions to overcome global health challenges. McCoy is especially interested in designing and testing new interventions that can positively change health behavior, such as increasing adherence to treatment, adoption of family planning methods or encouraging people to engage in health screenings. She draws on tools from behavioral economics, psychology and marketing research to design novel programs to solve health challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa and in the United States. She has experience with experimental and quasi-experimental impact evaluations, qualitative research, user-centered design and implementation science. In addition, McCoy has been an instructor at numerous impact evaluation workshops led by PEPFAR, the World Bank, and UNAIDS around the world. At UC Berkeley, Dr. McCoy teaches the fall course PH250A: Introduction to Epidemiologic Methods and co-teaches PH253B: Epidemiology and Control of Infectious Diseases.