Dr. Crista Johnson-Agbakwu is an obstetrician and gynecologist and the Founding Director of the Office of Refugee Health with the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center at ASU. She is also a research associate professor with the School of Social Work.
She received her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University, medical degree from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the George Washington University Medical Center. She subsequently completed a fellowship in Female Sexual Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and then became a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Michigan where she obtained her Masters in Health and Health Care Research examining disparities in reproductive health care among refugees/immigrants through mixed-method Community-Based Participatory Research.
Her current research focuses on investigating strategies to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes for newly-arrived refugee women, particularly those who have undergone Female Genital Cutting (FGC) as well as Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV); with the aim of improving health care access and utilization, sexual and reproductive health education, counseling, community engagement, as well as enhance health care provider cultural competency.
She currently leads a federally funded effort through the Office on Women’s Health to improve the provision of health care services, community engagement and provider cultural competency on FGM/C across the state of Arizona.