Lauren Bigger

Lauren Bigger is a doctoral candidate in Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. Her research asks why efforts to improve community health take hold and last in some places and stall in others. She studies how local conditions, including relationships, resources, and infrastructure, shape the implementation of policy, systems, and environmental changes aimed at advancing health equity.

Her dissertation examines these questions through a scoping review, a comparative case study of rural Georgia health coalitions, and a national survey of American Heart Association staff about community health initiatives. Across these studies, she aims to make community context easier to describe and measure so that coalitions and public health practitioners can use that information to decide what to adapt, where to invest, and what support partners need.

At the Emory Prevention Research Center, Lauren has contributed to mixed-methods research and evaluation on rural health equity and healthy eating. She holds an MPH in Urban Health from Northeastern University and a BA in Communication of Science and Technology from Vanderbilt University.