Associate Professor
Division of Pediatric Pulmonary & Sleep Medicine
Education
Undergraduate
BA Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski
Graduate
MA Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski
Doctorate
Ph.D., Medical Sociology, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Bio
Dr. Oates is an assistant professor in the Division of Pediatric Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine in the UAB Department of Pediatrics, with a secondary appointment in the Division of Preventive Medicine in the UAB Department of Medicine. She is a scientist in the UAB Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, the UAB Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research (COERE), the UAB Minority Health & Health Disparities Research Center (MHRC), and the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS).
Dr. Oates has expertise in social determinants of health (SDH) and the application of SDH measures, tools, and data for health services, health outcomes, and population health research. She investigates the impact of multi-level sociodemographic and environmental factors on outcomes in chronic diseases across the life course. She also has conducted studies that clarify the contributions of race and discrimination for health outcomes.
Dr. Oates received her PhD in Medical Sociology from UAB in 2015, and additional research training through the UAB K12 Patient Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Program and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Summer Institute on Randomized Behavioral Clinical Trials. She has developed expertise in working with data from patient registries and cohort studies and applying geographic information system (GIS) approaches in health disparities research. Her work is funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and the Alabama Department of Public Health, among others.
Interests
Research Interests: Social determinants of health, health disparities, and outcomes and effectiveness research.