Maissa Khatib

Maissa Khatib, PhD is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Precision Health Research Initiative in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University and an Adjunct Research Associate at Valleywise Health. She holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Health Sciences and brings more than two decades of academic experience focused on advancing health equity among populations historically underrepresented in research.

Dr. Khatib is an interdisciplinary health scientist whose work examines how chronic social and environmental stressors—including climate exposure, caregiving burden, displacement, and structural inequities—shape physical and mental health across the life course. Her research integrates qualitative and mixed-methods approaches, behavioral intervention development, and digital health technologies to design and evaluate scalable, community-engaged interventions. A central contribution of her scholarship is advancing community-governed models of health innovation, including the Design Studios for Health framework, which centers co-production and trust-building in intervention design.

Her current research focuses on occupational heat exposure, caregiving burden, maternal health navigation, refugee and migrant health, and chronic disease prevention. Through interdisciplinary collaboration with clinicians, engineers, behavioral scientists, and community partners, she develops and tests technology-enabled, culturally responsive interventions that translate community knowledge into measurable health outcomes.

Dr. Khatib’s peer-reviewed publications appear in Frontiers in Public Health, Humanities & Social Sciences Communications (Nature Portfolio), and The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, among others. Her work has also been featured in the World Health Organization Dashboard of Experiences for the WHO Region of the Americas. She is committed to mentoring students and fostering sustainable academic–community partnerships that improve health outcomes locally while contributing to national and global advancements in translational health science.