Phillip W. Schnarrs, Ph.D., is an associate professor of community-based participatory research in the Department of Population Health. He is an applied health researcher and expert in LGBTQ+ populations specializing in sexual health, mental health and substance use disorder.

As an applied scientist engaged in community-based participatory research, Schnarrs engages the community as co-collaborators throughout the research process and develops meaningful programs to address the health of marginalized populations and shift social policies that contribute to mistreatment and discrimination of these groups.

Schnarrs received his doctorate in health behavior from Indiana University School of Public Health in Bloomington with an emphasis in community engagement and social justice. In addition to his academic work, he was a pre-doctoral fellow in the Center for Population Research in LGBT Health at the Fenway Institute in Boston.

For the past two years, Schnarrs has been a fellow with the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL) program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is currently co-PI of Strengthening Colors of PRIDE San Antonio, a project funded through the IRL fellowship focused on understanding the role of resilience and trauma in LGBTQ+ adult health. In its second year, Strengthening Colors of PRIDE is building on the past work related to adverse childhood experiences by identifying and measuring queer- and trans-specific childhood adversity linked to poor adult health outcomes in these populations.