Juviza Rodriguez is a public health professional with over 15 years of combined experience working in academic research and non-profit environments. For more than half of her career she has worked exclusively at the intersection of maternal-child health and health communication. She is an alumna of Iona College and Columbia University and is currently a PhD student in the Community Health and Health Policy track at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. Born and raised in the Washington Heights section of New York City, Juviza credits her lived experience as a key influencer in shaping her work. Her doctoral pursuits primarily center maternal-infant health—specifically the wide disparities minoritized women and birthing people experience.

As part of her scholarly work, Juviza seeks to explore how factors like community design, food environments, and housing policy, are connected to birth outcomes. She is especially interested in, and an ardent advocate of, applying intersectional and mixed methods approaches when it comes to community health research. Juviza is a PhD Fellow at the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute and was selected as a 100 Hispanic Women Graduate Scholar by the NYC based non-profit organization 100 Hispanic Women. Previously, Juviza has served as a board member of the Latino Caucus for Public Health and the Nation’s Health, the official newspaper for the American Public Health Association. In addition to her professional and academic pursuits, Juviza is an avid writer and visual storyteller— her pieces weave in personal narratives about culture, matrilineality, and being first-generation.