Yasmin Barrientos-Kofman, IPV and Maternal/Infant Health Outcomes Among Pregnant Women in a Homeless Shelter

SUMMARY OF RESEARCH
Yasmin’s work focuses on biological and psychosocial mechanisms that underlie health disparities and inequities in the perinatal period.  Currently, she is utilizing community outreach and participatory research to examine the relationship between intimate partner violence (a complex, chronic stressor), depressive symptoms, and obstetric and neonatal outcomes in a severely marginalized population: pregnant women who are in severe crisis and experiencing chronic homelessness. Additionally, she is examining how sociocultural factors might promote resilience in the face of adversity and mitigate stress-related pathology during this vulnerable time. By doing this work, Yasmin hopes to lay the groundwork for sustainable, culturally tailored interventions to reduce health disparities and spur change in health and social policy.

BIO
Yasmin Barrientos-Kofman is a fourth-year doctoral student in Psychological Science at the University of California, Irvine conducting research on stress physiology, sociocultural determinants of health, and health disparities and inequities. She has focused the scope of her work to understanding the complexities of intimate partner violence and its association with well-being and health in women during the perinatal period. This work is partially funded by the UCI Initiative to End Family Violence, and Yasmin was recently named inaugural School of Social Ecology Dean’s Translational Science Fellow. Yasmin received her BA in Psychology and MA in Psychological Research from Cal State Long Beach.

LEARN MORE ABOUT YASMIN
UC Irvine Profile: https://socialecology.uci.edu/students/grad/ykofman