Dr. Philbin is a social and behavioral scientist who uses mixed methods to examine how social policies and clinical practice shapes inclusion and health equity with a focus on substance use and HIV/AIDS. She has worked in the field of health disparities for over 15 years conducting research that explores how community-, institutional-, and state-level factors drive health outcomes among sexual and gender minority (SGM) young people and pregnant people. Dr. Philbin completed her MHS and PhD at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and her Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Division of Gender, Sexuality and Health (HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies) at Columbia University.

She is Co-PI of a mixed-methods NIDA-funded R01 that is exploring the impact of general and pregnancy-specific opioid policies on substance use and substance use treatment engagement among pregnant people and their newborns. She is also PI of an R34 that is developing a patient decision aid to help minoritized women and providers choose between oral and long-acting injectable HIV medication. She is Co-I on multiple NIH-funded projects, including a COVID RADx grant focused on preventive behaviors among racial, ethnic and SGM youth, an R01 exploring how state-level social policies impact substance use outcomes for racial, ethnic and SGM youth, and two grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health focused on substance use, mental health and SGM individuals. She was recently awarded the 2021 NIH Office of Disease Prevention Early Stage Investigator Lecture Award for her work on HIV treatment and prevention.