Karla Mendez

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About

Karla S. Mendez, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, at the El Paso location. Dr. Mendez earned a BS in Biology at the University of Texas at El Paso, an MPH with a focus in Epidemiology and a PhD in Environmental Disease Prevention at UTHealth School of Public Health. Dr. Mendez has experience in conducting quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) to address human health risks associated with different wastewater treatment technologies and water reuse implementation. Specifically, her work is the first to develop a human health risk framework to evaluate the impacts of different water reuse treatment and practices that incorporates a community vulnerability assessment. Dr. Mendez is the first in the Texas Medical Center to train students in QMRA applications for water reuse and interpret environmental data. She continues to implement the QMRA framework to evaluate hazards from different environmental mediums.

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Research Interests

• Border Health
• Environmental and Occupational Health
• Epidemiology
• Health Equity
• Infectious Disease