Dr. Shelby Borowski graduated from UConn in 2014 with a double major in HDFS and Psychology. During her undergraduate studies, an HDFS Research Methods course first sparked her interest in research, leading her to seek out additional research opportunities in the department. She participated in research examining the quality of life among cancer survivors and completed an undergraduate research thesis in the HDFS honors program. She then continued her education at Virginia Tech, completing her MS in HDFS in 2016 and earning both her MPH in Health Education and PhD in HDFS in 2019. During her graduate studies, her research focused on quantitative methods and understanding how stressors impact health outcomes across different populations. She also gained hands-on experience in program evaluation through her work at the Virginia Tech Center for Public Health Practice and Research, collaborating with community partners across southwest Virginia to assess and improve public health programs. After graduate school, she built on this foundation in stress, health, and quantitative research by joining the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at VA Boston Healthcare System as a data analyst and research associate. There, she led quantitative analyses and contributed to federally funded projects aimed at enhancing veteran mental health, well-being, and suicide prevention during the military-to-civilian transition, an often challenging period as veterans separate from military service and return to civilian life.
Currently, Shelby is a research scientist at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Health Care Policy. She has continued her research focusing on mental health and suicide prevention during the military-to-civilian transition. She also collaborates on projects evaluating interventions among active-duty military personnel. These projects use predictive analytics to identify those at greatest risk for suicide-related behaviors and evaluate targeted interventions to support service members during especially vulnerable periods of their service. In the future, she hopes to continue collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to further build and refine predictive risk identification tools and to evaluate practical, real-world suicide prevention strategies within military and VA settings. Her goal is to ensure that research findings translate into meaningful improvements in mental health care and suicide prevention efforts.
Outside of work, Shelby enjoys spending time with loved ones and her dog, reading, and being active. She also loves to travel and explore new places abroad.