Dory Escobar, PhD, Asst. Professor and Director of Applied Practice, USF Public Health
While beginning her career in the 1980’s in the field of mental health, Dory Magasis Escobar, PhD has focused her work for the last several decades primarily on community organizing, coalition building, and grassroots leadership development in both Northern California and Central America. As Director of Healthy Communities and Community Benefit at St. Joseph Health Sonoma County, Dory oversaw community organizing, coalition building and the organization’s Community Benefit planning and reporting. Dory’s innovative integration of community organizing and collaboration into hospital Community Benefit work led to her participation in national work groups convened by the CDC, Dept. of Health & Human Services, and the Obama Administration’s White House Office on Neighborhood and Faith-Based Partnerships.
Prior to joining St. Joseph’s, Dory worked for 11 years in El Salvador in the areas of community mental health, community-based rehabilitation, community organizing, and coalition building. Her experience excludes training community health workers, or promotorxs de salud; as well as working with promotorxs and their supervising institutions on how to understand and address the risk and protective factors for secondary stress and traumatization that are experienced at community, institutional and personal levels. Dory founded Coaction Institute to help build capacity of community leaders and institutions such as community-based organizations, hospitals, public health agencies, other community stakeholders seeking to increase and enhance their capacities in collaboration, strategic planning and program evaluation, and authentic community engagement. She has provided technical assistance to organizations such as the Public Health Institute’s Center to Advance Community Health & Equity, Sonoma County Health and Human Services Departments, United Way of the Wine Country, West County Health Centers, Novato Youth Center, Glasswing International, and others.
Currently, Dr. Escobar is an Asst. Professor and Director of Applied Practice with the University of San Francisco’s Master of Public Health program, in which she teaches Public Health Program Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation; Cultural Awareness and Humility for Health; Leadership; Collaboration and Community Organizing; and Applied Practice Experience Preparation and Seminars.