Sarah Petry

About Me

I completed my PhD in Public Policy at Duke University in May 2023, after successfully defending my dissertation, "Medicaid and the Life Course: An Intersectional, Mixed-Methods Approach." In my dissertation, I concentrated on the role that Medicaid plays in older adults' health care access and outcomes.

I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the population science training program at the Carolina Population Center (CPC). In my research, I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine whether and how state-level LGBTQ+ policy variation impacts mental and physical health outcomes in young- to mid-adulthood.

Overall, my research aims are to determine whether access to health and social policies can disrupt expected trajectories of health disadvantages from birth until death, particularly for vulnerable populations in the US.