Dr. Flavia Peréa believes that “change happens in action.” The 38-year-old, self-described “accidental academic” has spent most of her adult life working in education, from low-resource public schools to elite private school settings. That work further developed an interest in issues of equity. Now an assistant professor in the department of public health and community medicine in the Tufts University School of Medicine, Peréa’s work focuses largely on health disparities.
“My work, in general, is applied and community-based, with a particular focus on youth and families,” says Peréa, who joined the Tufts faculty on a non-tenure track in 2010. “I came to my Ph.D. with the idea — it sounds corny and idealistic — that we all need to do something to make the world a better place.”
For Peréa, a native New Yorker, that means working to improve the lives of children and families. The child of immigrant parents — her late father, who is of Mexican and Argentinian descent, fled political persecution, and her mother emigrated from northern Italy to the United States with her parents on a steam ship — Peréa’s story is one that has played out in varying forms in this changing American population.
Her work focuses on what that change might mean to this country, from making sure everyone has access to quality education, increasing access to health care and helping to grow the work force. Peréa released her first book, Language, Gender, and Academic Performance: A Study of the Children of Dominican Immigrants, in 2011. She has written or co-written seven scholarly articles, four book chapters and has seven publications under review, revision or in preparation. In addition, she has received numerous fellowships and grants.
