Dr. McDonald is the Principal Investigator of the Vanderbilt University Drinking Water Justice Lab (DWJL), where she applies geospatial, environmental health, and data-driven approaches to study water injustice in the United States’ drinking water supply, focusing on the relationships among water quality, environmental contamination, and human health. She earned her M.A. in Sociology from the University of Texas at El Paso. Her thesis demonstrated that residents living in Colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border experienced water injustice through unsafe drinking water quality, high water costs, and ongoing gastrointestinal issues, based on a self-reported health survey. She earned her Ph.D. in Geography from Texas A&M University. Her dissertation showed that women in rural communities faced health inequities in access to healthcare services along the cervical cancer continuum of care in New Mexico, USA, thereby being at greater risk for late-stage diagnosis.
Her current research includes a novel spatial epidemiology approach to identify county-level health-based violations of regulated contaminants in the United States public drinking water supply and their associated potential impacts on human organ systems. She also leads the development of a geospatial tool to predict PFAS contamination in Tennessee, USA, community water systems, along with the Responding to Community Needs (RCN) index, which assesses system and community capacity to manage contamination while maintaining affordability. She is a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship recipient and a National Institutes of Health Disparities Research Institute Scholar. Dr. McDonald is passionate about mentoring students through applied, team-based research that bridges geospatial methodologies, public health, and policy.