Karina Gattamora, PhD, EdS

Karina Gattamorta, PhD, EdS, is a Research Associate Professor at the School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS) at the University of Miami. Her doctoral training was as an educational researcher with a concentration on measurement and program evaluation. Her technical expertise is in measures development and validation as well as quantitative methods and statistical analyses. She applies these skills at the SONHS where she is an affiliated faculty in CLaRO, a health disparities research center. In her current role, she conducts research with racial/ethnic sexual minority youth and their families and teaches various courses related to research methods, statistics, and measurement. 

Recently, her work has focused on the role of externalized stressors such as family rejection and racism, on psychological distress and internalized sexual and gender minority-related stressors such as homophobia, transphobia, and LGBTQ identity concealment. To guide her research Dr. Gattamorta engages community partners often including members of the LGBTQ community as part of the research team where they have the opportunity to contribute to all aspects of the study including design, implementation, data collection, data analysis, and dissemination of research findings through manuscripts and conference presentations. For example, she is the research partner on an NIH ComPASS grant titled “Leveraging a community-driven approach to address the impact of social determinants of health on structural inequities among Miami-Dade County’s intergenerational LGBTQ+ community”, a project where Dr. Abreu is also a research partner. 

Her goals are to continue working with diverse LGBTQ youth and their families to help address externalizing stressors such as racism and family rejection that are linked to disparities in mental and behavioral health among this population. Dr. Gattamorta is also involved in mentoring underrepresented and minority students through her role as the Program Director for the Minority Health Research Training (MHRT) program at the School of Nursing and Health Studies and through mentoring programs for first-generation and LGBTQ students at the University of Miami.  On the Healthy Familias study, Dr. Gattamorta collaborates with the team to support all phases of the project and uses her expertise in research methods and statistics will help guide the research methodology. She also oversees aspects related to measurement and data collection and will lead the statistical analysis. Dr. Gattamorta will also support the dissemination of findings.