Stephanie Koning

Stephanie Koning is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Policy, and Administration Sciences within the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada, Reno. She maintains multiple significant academic affiliations including Faculty Affiliate at the Department of Gender, Race and Identity at UNR, Adjunct Professor at Mahidol University's Faculty of Public Health in Bangkok, Thailand, and Research Affiliate positions at the Carolina Population Center (UNC Chapel Hill), Institute for Policy Research (Northwestern University), Center for Demography & Ecology (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and School of Medicine and Public Health (University of Wisconsin-Madison).

Dr. Koning's research program focuses on how varied sources of contextual stress shape health and inequities across generations, with four key contribution areas: (1) social stress in maternal and child health inequities; (2) violence as a multidimensional determinant of health; (3) biopsychosocial mechanisms underlying early-life health origins; and (4) health implications of migration, forced displacement, and legal status. Her work spans Northern Nevada, North America, and Southeast Asia, with special focus on the Thailand-Myanmar border region where she has conducted extensive fieldwork including the UNESCO Highland Peoples Survey health module - the largest census of statelessness globally covering over 77,000 household members.

Her methodological approach integrates both qualitative and quantitative techniques, including ethnographic fieldwork, surveys, interviews, biostatistics, epidemiology, and quasi-experimental designs. Dr. Koning has led multiple major data collection projects, including a population-based maternal and child health survey of 824 mother-child pairs grounded in over a year of preparatory ethnography and three years of total fieldwork on the Thailand-Myanmar border.

Analysis of Dr. Koning's 15 most recent publications reveals consistent focus on violence, stress, and health inequities across the life course. Her work demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how structural factors like racism, displacement, and early-life adversity manifest through biological pathways to produce health disparities. Key themes include timing of exposure to adversity, intersectional identities, and cross-generational health transmission.

Among her significant scientific contributions are findings on:

• How maternal early-life disadvantage predicts lower birth weight and signs of accelerated maternal weathering
• The development of novel measures for 'toxic stressor landscapes' to predict social patterns of adverse birth outcomes
• How breastfeeding in the first three months explains 80% of the socioeconomic gradient in adult chronic inflammation
• How historical conflict and displacement shape maternal stress and mental health impacts after childbirth
• How harmful chains of violence operate through displacement origin and destination contexts jointly

Dr. Koning currently serves as Principal Investigator on an NIH-funded project (R21 HD115143) investigating racialized inequities in birth outcomes. She teaches graduate courses including CHS 701: Social and Behavioral Dimensions of Public Health, CHS 729: Applied Multivariable Statistics, and CHS 796: MPH Capstone. Her educational background includes a Ph.D. in Population Health (Epidemiology emphasis) and M.S. in Sociology (Demography emphasis) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2018), and a B.S. in Biology from Wheaton College (2008).