Deborah Salvo’s interests lie in generating, translating and scaling up evidence for reducing health and social disparities, with a particular emphasis on chronic disease prevention in low and middle-income countries, and among minority groups in the U.S.
She works to understand the context-specific relationships between the built environment and health; documenting and improving geospatial health disparities; and using and improving objective measures to quantify obesity-related behaviors (physical activity, diet) and relevant geospatial exposures (social and built environment) using GIS, accelerometry, GPS, geostatistical approaches, and other new technologies.
She is an active member of a global network of researchers working jointly to advance the understanding of the relation between the features of urban environments and obesity-related behaviors. She is committed to advancing this field of study globally, with particular emphasis in Latin America.
Salvo is also an adjunct researcher and faculty member at the Nutrition and Health Research Center at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico.