Centers

Dr. Lourdes Hernández-Cordero came to the U.S. in 1996 after receiving her Bachelor in Sciences in Industrial Biotechnology – a degree combining Chemical Engineering and Microbiology – from the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she moved to the United States to attend graduate school. She obtained a Master of Public Health from the University of Connecticut, School of Medicine in 1998. In 2004 she graduated from the DrPH program in Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, where she is now an assistant professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences. She is Co-director of the Urbanism and the Built Environment MPH Track. Her dissertation focused on the role of organizations in community mobilization for trauma recovery post the 9/11 disaster.

As part of the Community Research Group at Columbia, she has been able to combine her interest in community mobilization and the application of research. The relationships built with local organizations as an awardee of the Community Scholar scholarship and Program Coordinator for the Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative has served as the foundation for her work. Currently, Dr. Hernández-Cordero directs the City Life Is Moving Bodies (CLIMB) project. Climb is the built environment component of her work with CCYVP and it is a multilevel intervention to promote the reinvigoration of public spaces once perceived as unsafe due to violence. She utilizes community mobilization strategies to engage local stakeholders in initiatives that promote collaboration, resource sharing and a broad work agenda.

Dr. Hernández-Cordero is actively involved in public health practice. Her first two projects as a Principal Investigator are an Active Living Planning Grant from the RWJF to examine perceptions of the built environment and use of public spaces and a Columbia University Diversity Fellowship examining the application of harm reduction strategies to the management of public spaces.

Lourdes lives in northern Manhattan with her husband Rodger Rodriguez and their children Diego Alejandro, Alma Consuelo and Elisa Victoria.