Sofia Curdumi Pendley, PhD

Sofía Curdumí Pendley, PhD, MPH (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  Dr. Pendley has over 15 years of evaluation and public health practice experience – working across academia, with and for community organizations, nationally and internationally. Her research focuses on disaster resilience, migration, evaluating public health programming and food security. She employs community based participatory research techniques whenever possible.

As a member of the Children’s Environmental Health Team, she provides evaluation expertise across various centers and programs. These include the New York State Children’s Environmental Health Centers (NYSCHECK), the Region 2 Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU), the Community Engagement Core of the Center on Health and Environment Across the Lifespan (HEALS), and the Community Engagement Core of the Mount Sinai Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program. 

Previously, she was a faculty member at Sacred Heart University and was recruited to create the Master of Public Health program. As a core faculty member on the Public Health Executive Committee, she developed curricula, taught courses, and aided the department through a successful Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) accreditation process. Dr. Pendley also helped secure $1.4 million dollars in funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). This funding was specifically for increasing the public health workforce through student scholarships.

Dr. Pendley’s experience includes providing monitoring and evaluation expertise to post-disaster recovery programs in Louisiana, Haiti, East and West Africa, and Southeast Asia. Dr. Pendley has consulted for the World Food Program, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision International, and other organizations.  These consulting assignments included an evaluation of the Mobile Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping Program (mVAM) in Ebola Virus Disease affected countries; and the development of a monitoring and evaluation framework for the Louisiana Disaster Case Management Pilot Program (funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency).

Dr. Pendley completed her PhD in Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences from Tulane University's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She holds a Masters of Public Health degree from Tulane University in International Health and Development.