Dr. Peek is the inaugural Dean of the newly established School of Public and Population Health at UTMB. She has a PhD from Duke University in Sociology and a post-doctoral fellowship from the University of Florida School of Medicine in Epidemiology. She is an active teacher, mentor, and educational leader previously serving as interim Chair, Department of Population Health and Health Disparities, Vice Chair for Education and the Graduate Program Director for Population Health Sciences in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Population Health in the School of Medicine, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and the Director, ad interim, of the MD/PhD Combined Degree Program. For the last 20 years, she has been actively involved in and co-directed training grants for pre and post doctoral fellows and has extensive experience in mentoring students, postdocs, residents, and junior and senior faculty.

Her funded research agenda focuses on the disparate impact of stress on health in disadvantage groups. All funding has focused on aspects of health disparities and inequities, a key theme and vision (Health Equity for All) in the School of Public and Population Health. Her overarching research goal is to investigate the impact of social and environmental factors on the inequitable production of health. This has been manifested throughout her career with foci on two specific areas: 1) social relationships, aging and health among older adults and 2) connections between race/ethnicity, stress, stress-related biomarkers, and health. More recently, she has begun expanding her research to address health inequities in climate change, a burgeoning field of research that significantly affects all communities.