Dr. Anne Pebley is a social demographer and public health specialist who works on a wide range of issues related to social inequality and the determinants of health, both globally and in the United States. She is well-known for design, conduct, and analysis of social and health surveys, with the goal of answering key policy and basic research questions. Early in her career, she was involved in the analysis of the pioneering National Fertility Survey 1970-75 in the United States and contributed to the design of the standard abbreviated fertility history questionnaire for the international Demographic and Health Surveys. Pebley designed and directed the Encuesta Guatemalteca de Salud Familiar (Guatemalan Survey of Family Health) or EGSF, with American and Guatemalan colleagues. EGSF used innovative event history calendars to collect more accurate data on mothers' use of traditional and allopathic health care for care during pregnancy and for childhood illnesses. More recently, Pebley initiated and co-directed the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) which is a unique longitudinal study of a representative sample of neighborhoods in Los County and the households and people who live in them and move into and out of them.
Pebley's central research interest is social inequality and the social, economic and policy determinants of health and well-being, both globally and in the United States. Her current research centers on five areas: (1) immigration from Mexico and Central America and its consequences for health, (2) social stratification in the U.S. labor force and Latino-white differences in old age functional limitations, (3) neighborhood change in Los Angeles and family and child well-being, (4) reproductive health in the Tibetan region of China, and (5) prevention and humane responses to forced migration.
Through the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pebley and FSPH colleagues and students developed and implemented the Multilingual COVID-19 Information Project (MCIP) to provide easy to read, accessible COVID information in five languages to limited English speaking communities through social media. More information about the project is available here.