Allison Parsons, PhD

ABOUT

Allison Parsons is a public health PhD dedicated to partnering with community members and stakeholders to improve health equity. Her training and expertise are in qualitative methods, including ethnography, in-depth one-on-one interviewing, focus groups, and photovoice. Her research focuses on the social and environmental factors that promote equitable, optimal health across the life course. By co-producing research with communities, she works to identify effective interventions that promote well-being and reduce disparities.

EXPERIENCE

  • Co-Founder & Principal Consultant — HERE Consulting (Nov 2024–present)

  • Senior Research Scientist — Rescue | The Behavior Change Agency (2021–present)

  • Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (2015–2021)

  • Research Associate, Division of Critical Care (2018–2021)

  • NRSA Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2015–2018)

  • Program Evaluator — Junior Doctors of Health (2011–2014)

  • Adjunct Professor at the College of Charleston; Data Collector for the Soldier Health Promotion to Examine and Reduce Health Disparities study at Fort Jackson and Fort Benning; and Graduate Teaching Assistant at East Carolina University.

EDUCATION

  • PhD, Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior — University of South Carolina

  • MA, Public Health Education and Promotion — East Carolina University (Magna Cum Laude)

  • BA, Economics — Texas A&M University

PUBLICATIONS

“When You Look at This Chart, That Is Not My Whole Life”: Caregiver Perspectives to Inform Improved Primary Care Practice and Outcomes  —  Journal of Primary Care & Community Health, 2024

Dietary intake and quality during transition periods of drop-off and pickup from child-care centers  —  Children's Health Care, 2024

Beliefs and Motivations Regarding Early Shared Reading of Parents From Low-Income Households: A Qualitative Study  —  Academic Pediatrics, 2024

Report-Back of Personal Air Sampling Results and Study Participants' Perceived Knowledge, Attitudes, and Awareness of Air Pollution  —  Environmental Health Perspectives, 2023

Inpatient Screening of Parental Adversity and Strengths  —  Hospital Pediatrics, 2023

How Augmenting Reality Changes the Reality of Simulation: Ethnographic Analysis  —  JMIR Medical Education, 2023

“We know what's going on in our community”: A qualitative analysis identifying community assets that deter gun violence  —  SSM-Qualitative Research in Health, 2023

Participant engagement to develop report-back materials for personal air monitoring  —  Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, 2023

Children from disadvantaged neighborhoods experience disproportionate injury from interpersonal violence  —  Journal of Pediatric Surgery, 2023

Relationships between socioeconomic deprivation and pediatric firearm-related injury at the neighborhood level  —  Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 2022

Racial fairness in precision medicine: pediatric asthma prediction algorithms  —  American Journal of Health Promotion, 2022

Exploratory mixed-methods study of a primary care–based intervention promoting shared reading during infancy  —  Clinical Pediatrics, 2022

Perceptions of barriers and facilitators to disinfection of basic neonatal resuscitation equipment in a rural hospital in Kenya: a qualitative study  —  Midwifery, 2022

The case of the United States: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social connectedness and isolation in low-income communities  —  International Journal of Social Quality, 2021

Pediatricians contributing to poverty reduction through clinical-community partnership and collective action: a narrative review  —  Academic Pediatrics, 2021

Socioeconomic and racial disparities in diabetic ketoacidosis admissions in youth with type 1 diabetes  —  Journal of Hospital Medicine, 2021

Seven practices for pursuing equity through learning health systems: Notes from the field  —  Learning Health Systems, 2021

Factors associated with residential relocation and effects on early childhood development in a low-income home visitation population  —  The Journal of Primary Prevention, 2021

Trends and variation in the gap between current and anticipated life satisfaction in the United States, 2008–2020  —  American Journal of Public Health, 2021

Cultivating social relationships and disrupting social isolation in low-income, high-disparity neighbourhoods in Ohio, USA  —  Health & Social Care in the Community, 2021

Deploying community health workers to support medically and socially at-risk patients in a pediatric primary care population  —  Academic Pediatrics, 2020

Indicators of readiness and capacity for implementation of healthy eating strategies in child care settings serving low-income children  —  Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 2019

Sleep matters: The association of race, bedtime, outdoor time, and physical activity with preschoolers' sleep  —  Preventive Medicine Reports, 2018

Disease prevention & health promotion: what's critical care got to do with it?  —  Translational Pediatrics, 2018

Immigrants as research partners: a review of immigrants in community-based participatory research (CBPR)  —  Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 2017

Parental involvement: Rhetoric of inclusion in an environment of exclusion  —  Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2016