Biography:

 

Dr. Silvia Stringhini is an Associate Professor at the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and an Investigator of the Edwin SH Leong Centre for Healthy Ageing, UBC. Her research program is dedicated to understanding how social inequalities impact health across the entire lifespan. She is a leading expert in the concept of biological embedding, investigating the mechanisms through which lifecourse socioeconomic adversity gets “under the skin” to shape health trajectories. Her work specifically examines pathways like epigenetics, inflammation, and accelerated biological aging.
Dr. Stringhini is a highly cited social epidemiologist, having published over 220 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals such as The Lancet, JAMA, and BMJ. Her research has been referenced extensively by public health agencies globally. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as the principal investigator for several large-scale population studies in Switzerland, including the SEROCoV-KIDS cohort, which assesses the pandemic’s long-term impacts on children’s health.
Recently, Dr. Stringhini’s research has expanded to more deeply explore structural and intersectional determinants of health. She is now focusing on how the intersection of gender and socioeconomic conditions shapes health inequalities. A key part of this new direction involves investigating the impact of structural policies, such as parental leave, on social disparities in maternal and child health outcomes.