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Erica Twardzik, PhD (she/her/hers)

Postdoctoral Scholar
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Baltimore, Maryland, United States

My research is situated at the intersection of disability, social epidemiology, and aging. My overarching goal is to identify environmental features that optimize functioning to increase participation and inclusion of older adults with and without disabilities. To date, I have investigated the association between walkable neighborhoods and physical activity, socioenvironmental determinants of health behaviors, and measurement of built environments in health research. I am a driven, productive scholar with fourteen first-author papers, along with nine co-author papers, and four co-author book chapters. My work uses innovative methodology (e.g. Google Street View audits, Inertial Measurement Units, Photo-Voice) to move research out of the lab and into the residential context. My NIH funded dissertation research examined the role of built and social environments for post-stroke recovery (F31HD098870; Twardzik, PI). Through the application of a mixed-methods study design, my research found both the quality and presence of features within the neighborhood environment were associated with post-stroke recovery. As an extension of this work, I was curious if similar associations would be observed within an older adult population. As a postdoctoral trainee, I have investigated how the transportation environment shapes older adult’s health and health behaviors (K99AG081563; Twardzik, PI). Within this project I seek to understand public transportation pathways that optimize physical activity and social participation among older adults. To achieve this goal, I combine rich data sources from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, the National Transit Atlas Database, and primary data collected on the accessibility of transportation systems. The longitudinal structure of these data allows for harmonization of information across multiple sample years to estimate causal effects between features in the transportation system and health behaviors. This is the first study to combine these rich data sources to evaluate the impact of public transportation features on physical activity and social participation.

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