Samantha (Sam) Winter is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Columbia University. She is deeply passionate about climate and environmental justice; women’s health, safety, and well-being; and informal settlement health. Her research broadly focuses on climatic, environmental, and social determinants of and inequities in women’s health, well-being, and access to health-related services in informal settlements and climate-vulnerable communities in sub-Saharan Africa as well as interpersonal- and community-level interventions focused on climate adaptation and improving women’s health, safety, and well-being in these communities in East Africa. She uses a community-engaged, empowerment-based approach to research.
Dr. Winter’s current projects include NIH-funded longitudinal research investigating direct and indirect pathways between climate and mental health and violence for women living in informal settlements in East Africa; adapting low-cost, community-delivered interventions to improve mental health, safety, and well-being among women experiencing violence in these communities; and developing and testing mobile-health-based interventions to improve climate adaptation and safety and well-being among women experiencing violence using ecological momentary approaches. She is also carrying out research focused on exploring women’s resilience in the face of climate change-related extreme weather events in climate-vulnerable communities in East Africa.
Dr. Winter was the inaugural Dorothy Byrne Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Health at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. and Master’s in Social Work from Rutgers University. She also holds an MS in Environmental Engineering and Science from Stanford University and a BS in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University.