Sheryl Mendlinger Biography

About

Throughout her career, Dr. Sheryl Mendlinger has been involved with community outreach programs for health activism and breast cancer awareness.  Her research focuses on the development of a knowledge acquisition model that explains how women acquire new information related to various health behaviors over the life cycle. This model has been used to gain an understanding of knowledge acquisition and its effects on the changes of health behaviors among people originating in several societies and cultures in the Middle East and Africa.

Within this field, Dr. Mendlinger has pioneered a new model for combining qualitative and quantitative data to examine very traditional societies and cultures who are undergoing a modernization process.  The goal of her research is to understand the processes and strains that such change produces as well as to help determine appropriate health strategies for such societies. In addition to her work in the Middle East and Africa, she also researches appropriate educational programs for incarcerated and ex-offenders in the Massachusetts’ prison program.

Dr. Mendlinger tracks the Institute’s grants.  She also developed and serves as the IUHR representative in the Entrepreneurship Training Institute. This program has given formerly incarcerated women the opportunity to focus on their personal growth and determine their path to the future that includes employment, continued education, and the development and a long term plan for the realization of their entrepreneurial ideas.