Julianna M. Dean, Ph.D.

Biography

Julianna M. Dean, Ph.D., M.S. is the director of the B.S. in Fitness and Human Performance and is an assistant professor in the department of Clinical, Health, and Applied Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in rehabilitation sciences from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. During her time there, her research included exercise rehabilitation after severe burn injury in children, visual analytics of big data, and geographic variation in post-acute care. Her doctoral dissertation examined the influence of structural social capital (e.g., community resources) on the odds of successful discharge after post-acute care rehabilitation for joint replacement and hip fracture among Medicare beneficiaries. 

Dr. Dean is also an alumna of UHCL. After having lived and worked in St. Petersburg, Russia for many years, she pursued and earned an M.S. in exercise and health sciences from UHCL. Her experiences in Russia continue to shape her attitudes toward the interaction between health, culture, economics, and policy. 

Dr. Dean’s research interests include geographic variation in rehabilitation and health services, the implementation, promotion, and sustainability of community-based exercise programs, the influence of social capital on health, health policy, and education in R coding.

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Areas of Expertise

• Health services
• Geographic variation
• Post-acute care
• Rehabilitation
• Medicare data
• Big data
• Social determinants of health
• Social risk factors
• Exercise science
• Health policy
• R coding

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