Celeste Campos-Castillo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media & Information. Celeste discovers ways technologies can be designed and implemented so that they mitigate inequalities, particularly with respect to health outcomes and access to health care. This interdisciplinary and multimethod research involves documenting where inequalities exist and why, partnering with communities to identify their needs and develop solutions, and conducting social psychological research to understand the underlying mechanisms that connect individuals, contexts, and outcomes. Examples of this research include characterizing who uses social media for health information seeking and social support, identifying the policy contexts that enable telehealth and patient portals to address health inequities, designing accessible mental health screeners for autistic youth, and developing chatbots to support the mental health of diverse youth.
Celeste’s research has been funded by agencies such as the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, and Meta Research and has been published in journals such as BMC Medicine, Health Affairs, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Journal of the Medical Informatics Association, New Media & Society, Social Psychological Quarterly, Sociological Theory, and Social Science Computer Review. She’s been honored to receive awards recognizing her scientific contributions, including a paper award from the International Medical Informatics Association and the Midwest Sociological Society’s Early Career Award, and to accept invitations to share her work with diverse audiences, including local high schools and the National Academies.
Celeste received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Iowa and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Security, Technology, & Society at Dartmouth College.