F. Hunter McGuire, MPH

I am a doctoral student in Public Health Sciences at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

My current research interests center on psychiatric epidemiology, LGBTQ health across the life course, and systems science methods.

• Psychiatric Epidemiology: My research primarily concerns the epidemiology and etiology of mental disorders with a focus on eating disorders and body image concerns (e.g., body dysmorphic disorder, muscle dysmorphia). My work seeks to identify risk and protective factors with the goal of informing population-level prevention efforts and policy change.

• LGBTQ Health Across the Life Course: I aim to promote health equity for LGBTQ people, who disproportionately experience adverse health outcomes. To achieve this end, I am interested in using longitudinal methods to identify intervention opportunities to prevent mental disorder development among LGBTQ people from youth to older age.

• Systems Science Methods for Mental Health: I use systems science methods (i.e., agent-based modeling, social network analysis, system dynamics) to identify multilevel drivers of mental health disparities across/within populations and to better understand the ecological context in which mental disorders develop and persist in at-risk populations.

I currently serve as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Brown School's Center for Public Health Systems Science where I support agent-based modeling projects on decision-making processes/mechanisms in state mental health agencies.

In addition to my research and teaching activities, I provide statistics and methodology support to graduate students through the Brown School's StatLab. I also lead a monthly journal club where we discuss current eating disorder research with a focus on epidemiology and public health approaches. If interested in joining, check out the Journal Club page!

I am a member of the Academy for Eating Disorders, the Society for Epidemiologic Research, and the American Public Health Association.