Matthew Kearney, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health and Associate Director of Penn Medicine’s Mixed Methods Research Lab. He also serves as a Research Fellow with Penn Medicine’s Center for Health Equity Advancement (CHEA). As a CHEA fellow, he has worked as a consultant, collaborator, and mentor on a variety of research projects that use mixed methods to evaluate disparities in care quality and workforce inclusion. Dr. Kearney seeks to identify innovative strategies to investigate, evaluate, and address health behaviors and other phenomena within the digital environment of social media. He has applied his mixed methods research skills to three key areas: 1) social media surveillance and evaluation, 2) health promotion through community-engaged research, and 3) health equity and inclusion.
With expertise in advanced quantitative and qualitative techniques, Dr. Kearney’s primary area of research focuses on understanding the impact of social media health misinformation in unique social contexts and communities. His dissertation research analyzed place-based variations in social media data using mixed methods research, ultimately highlighting potential disparities in e-cigarette marketing, advertisements, and endorsements. Throughout his career in public health, Dr. Kearney has conducted community-engaged research formed from alliances with trusted community organizations. Dr. Kearney received his PhD in Community Health and Prevention from Drexel University in 2021 and his MPH from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016.