Sarah Wiehe, MD, MPH
swiehe-AT-iupui.edu

Dr. Wiehe is a pediatrician and public health researcher for Children’s Health Services Research at Indiana University School of Medicine, an Affiliated Scientist at the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Geography and Public Health. Her research focuses on how poverty and associated social determinants of health influence adolescent behaviors such as smoking, substance use, and risky sexual activity. She is currently working on two projects—(1) space-time determinants of adolescent health-risk entitled Pearl Grlz, and (2) the epidemiology and geospatial correlates of sexually transmitted infections.

As part of the Pearl Grlz study, she is tracking the locations of young women using GPS-enabled cell phones and assessing how their paths differ by health-risk behavior choices. Using qualitative and visual sociological techniques, she is developing of set of contextual characteristics potentially pertinent to adolescent health-risk choices. Interesting early findings indicate that perceptions of “neighborhood” and travel patterns vary widely between adolescents living in the same area. Engaging in health-risk behaviors may be both space- and time-specific. Learning more about environmental correlates of adolescent health-risk may aid in developing individually-tailored interventions using mobile devices and inform policy-relevant interventions to promote health among young women.

She is also studying the epidemiology and contextual correlates of sexually transmitted infections (STI) using the Regenstrief Medical Record System data. Despite significant racial and socioeconomic disparities in STI, it is unknown whether there are differences in STI testing. Thus, she is first assessing whether there are sociodemographic differences in testing. She is also studying the geospatial distribution of STI and whether contextual factors such as incarcerations rates and vacant housing may account racial disparities in STI.