Background
Bonnielin Swenor is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center and an associate professor of ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute. She is also an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, as well as a core faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health.
Dr. Swenor's research aims to improve the health of people with disabilities, including visual impairments and is fueled by her personal experience with a visual disability. To achieve this, Dr. Swenor and her group have concentrated on three interrelated areas:
- Vision and Aging: This research aims to improve the health and well-being of individuals with visual impairments across the lifespan, with a focus on older adults.
- Access to Care: This area of research focuses on identifying health care disparities and improving healthcare utilization, quality, and access for people with disabilities.
- Disability Inclusion: By identifying and addressing barriers for people with visual impairments and other disabilities in the biomedical workforce and across society, Dr. Swenor is working to increase disability inclusion.
Dr. Swenor and her team are now expanding on this research framework to more broadly examine Disability Health. This area of research examines disability – including visual impairment - as a health disparity population, and uses an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to establish the evidence needed to design effective policies and programs that will reduce disability inequities. The overarching goals of this research are to maximize health, equity, and participation for people with all types of disabilities.
Dr. Swenor received her master of public health and doctorate degrees in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the National Institute on Aging prior to joining the Wilmer faculty. She holds a joint appointment with the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.