Community Navigator
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research
Maria Eva is a Community Navigator for the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research. She works to achieve institute goals of connecting diverse communities to research. She is the face of the Institute for the purposes of engaging communities, raising awareness for health research, and partnering with community organizations to promote health research.
Maria Eva is a social science qualitative researcher and has been working on gender and criminal justice system for several years while living in Peru. She is a trailblazer on incarcerated women’s issues in Peru where she conducted several research studies translating women’s needs into correctional policies. In the US, she collaborated with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture office for a section of their 2016 report on Gender and Torture and published an article on the impact of women’s incarceration on their children for the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Washington College of Law at American University. She completed field work as a researcher for a social services agency in NYC serving people living with HIV. She is also very involved volunteering for different organizations as an advocate for children in foster as well as a political organization in congressional district 11.