Dr. Isabelle Kusters is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Rice University, where she teaches and mentors students in the Public Health Sciences program. She holds a secondary appointment as a Health Policy Scholar in the Center for Medical Ethics & Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Kusters’ research focuses on the impact of inequitable access to health care and public health services, digital health technologies, and health information on individual and population health outcomes. She is especially interested in these effects on underserved and historically marginalized populations, particularly immigrant populations and those with limited English proficiency. Her teaching expertise includes the social determinants of health and health disparities, health communication, epidemiology, health care access and quality, and research methods.

Previously, Dr. Kusters was a tenured Associate Professor of public health and graduate program director at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness, and Safety and at Baylor College of Medicine. She earned graduate degrees (PhD, MPH) at the University of Texas School of Public Health and an undergraduate diploma (BA) from the University of Texas at Austin.