April  Ballard

April Ballard is a mixed methods researcher and doctoral candidate in the Environmental Health Sciences PhD program. Her research integrates social and behavioral methodologies into environmental health, and seeks to identify and implement humanistic and pragramatic approaches to solve public health problems.

April began her research career in 2015 in Kentucky, first as a MPH student and then as a research assistant, project manager, and project coordinator, using mixed methods approaches to conduct research at the intersection of social, behavioral, and environmental determinants of health among people who use drugs in Appalachia. She began her doctoral training in 2018 at Emory and began applying previously acquired methods and training to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) research. During her PhD, she has expanded her research portfolio to include domestic work with people experiencing homelessness and international work with mothers and children in Latin America. Overall, her work seeks to understand how social (e.g., stigma, poverty) and environmental (e.g., resource distribution, water quality) conditions influence behaviors and health outcomes. Her dissertation research focuses on sociobehavioral and environmental determinants of child exposure to animals and their feces along an urban-rural gradient in Esmeraldas Province, Ecuador. She is a current research fellow in the Center for Global Safe Water and former Livingston Fellow and Agents of Change in Environmental Justice Fellow.