Associate Director
Amanda Botticello, PhD, MPH, is an associate director in the Centers for Outcomes & Assessment Research at Kessler Foundation. Dr. Botticello is the project director/principal investigator of the Foundation’s multisite, collaborative Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems project entitled, “The Context of Living with Spinal Cord Injury: A Program of Collaborative Research Advancing the Science of Environmental Factors and Disability.” She is a co-investigator for the Northern New Jersey Spinal Cord System (NNJSCIS), part of a national network of federally funded Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems. Dr. Botticello has led a collection and analysis of the NNJSCIS database since 2007.
Her professional background includes serving as methodology associate editor for the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine since 2015. Dr. Botticello has served as principal and co-investigator on projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute on Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, and the Reitman Foundation. Dr. Botticello is also vice chair of research education at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and a research professor in the school’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She trained in social epidemiology and biostatistics in the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she received her PhD.
Pediatric Rehabilitation Networking Group Poster Award, Annual Meeting of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine, 2021
Research Mentor of the Year, Kessler Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, 2021
Mentor of the Year, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2018
Best Dissertation, Sociology of Mental Health. Received at the American Sociological Association Meetings in Montréal, Canada, 2006
Kenneth G. Lutterman Student Research Award, Exemplary Paper in Mental Health. Received at the 131st Annual American Public Health Association Meeting in San Francisco, CA, 2003
The Honorary Delta Omega Poster Award. Received at the 129th Annual American Public Health Association Meeting in Atlanta, GA, 2001
Dr. Botticello’s current research focuses on advancing the science of the social determinants of health, understanding the relationship between disability and environmental factors, and assessing long-term psychosocial outcomes for people with disabilities. Her latest study encompasses a multisite, collaborative project to build a database resource to identify the neighborhood factors that shape independent community living after spinal cord injury.
For comprehensive listings of Dr. Botticello’s publications, visit ResearchGate and PubMed.