Kellogg
Health Scholars Program:
Annual Networking Meeting 2008: Speaker Bios
Rajni Banthi, PhD, a is a Program Associate at PolicyLink where she contributes to projects that increase opportunities for physical activity and access to healthy foods by providing research and technical assistance. Her efforts are focused upon health behavior promotion and chronic illness prevention through public policy initiatives that target neighborhood factors, reduce health disparities, and foster new opportunities. She helps convene and engage stakeholders to address social determinants of health through a community and environmental justice lens. Based on findings from empirical studies, Banthia develops policy briefs, grants, and reports that will inform advocacy and policy initiatives on local, state, and national levels. Over her career, she has forged relationships with stakeholders in governmental, community, medical, and academic settings with the intent of creating bridges between scientific and policy applications. Banthia earned a BA in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley with a minor in South Asian Studies, and a PhD in behavioral medicine from the University of California San Diego/San Diego State University joint doctoral program in clinical psychology. She completed her clinical internship at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Scholars in Health Disparities program.
Lee R. Bone, RN, MPH, is an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society. Mrs. Bone has joint appointments in the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Arts and Sciences. She currently serves as the co- director of the Community Health Scholars Program Training Site at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also co-directs the MHS degree program in Health, Behavior and Society. Her research interests are in the design, implementation and evaluation of community-based educational and behavioral interventions affecting vulnerable populations Her current research includes: “Developing Strategies to Reduce to Tobacco Use Among 18-24 year old, Urban African Americans.”, “Cancer Screening and Treatment Navigation Services for African American Seniors.” for which she is co- Principal Investigator, “Evaluation of the Program Effectiveness of a Diabetes Educator-Nurse and Community Health Worker Team Approach to Improving Diabetes Care and Management,” “Expanding the Role of Home Health Aides as Disease Management Coaches,” and “Diabetes Care and Health Literacy for Korean Americans”. These research initiatives include: interfacing community and academic health centers, integrating public health approaches into managed care; evaluating "best practices" -mobilizing community and provider leadership and use of community/ neighborhood health workers/ navigators as interventionists and members of provider teams. Additionally, she is working with a team of investigators to enhance research and practice in strengthening families in the prevention of youth violence She has worked to develop employment opportunities and mentoring for high school students who are interested in health careers. Mrs. Bone’s courses include; “Introduction to Community-Based Participatory Research: Principles and Methods”, “Health and Homelessness”, and “Practicum in Community Health” a “Seminar Series in CBPR” and the Department of Health, Behavior and Society “Summer Institute in CBPR”. She has helped initiate a Baltimore Albert Schweitzer Fellows Program. The Program provides volunteer service opportunities and support for health and human service graduate students from the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University and College of Notre Dame.
Cheryl Dudley Brewster, EdD, MA, Founding Partner The Brewster Group, Miami, obtained her BA from the University of Maryland in 1988 and MA in counseling from Clark Atlanta University in 1999. While residing in Atlanta, she received her initial experience with HIV/AIDS first through volunteer work with a leading AIDS serving organization then by developing a sexual health program for a local Upward Bound program. A native of New York City, Dr. Dudley Brewster returned to receive her doctoral degree from Columbia University, Teachers College in 2004. While there she worked at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies managing a 5-year NIH funded grant which examined the psychosexual development of urban adolescent girls and developing a pilot HIV intervention for similar populations. Simultaneously, she taught undergrad and grad Public Health courses for four years. In January 2004, Dr. Brewster began her Kellogg post-doc completing in October 2005. She subsequently relocated to London, UK where she took courses on the intersection of race, gender and ethnicity on sexual health. Upon returning to US in Fall of 2006 she opened a consulting firm, The Brewster Group, Miami working on various health issues including breast cancer and HIV/AIDS. Currently, Dr. Brewster is a consultant with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in the Dept of Family Medicine and Community Health. She is currently developing myriad research projects including an examination of the psycho-social and sexual development of newly emigrated Haitian adolescent and teen girls. She also continues to teach graduate level Public Health courses.
Professor Toby Citrin is Co-Director of the Kellogg Health Scholars Program (KHSP) and Director of the KHSP Community Track. He pursued a dual career as attorney/business executive and public health activist after receiving his J.D. degree from Harvard in 1959. Professor Citrin has held numerous positions on state and local public health planning, policy, and advisory bodies, and chaired the Governor's Commission which developed Michigan's first Public Health Code. He serves as the Director of the school's Community-Based Public Health Program, which develops and sustains community-academic partnerships to strengthen research, teaching and practice. He is a member of the School's faculty group in public health genetics, specializing in the ethical, legal and social issues arising from the incorporation of genetics in public health policy and practice. During January-May, 2003, Citrin was Visiting Professor at the National Human Genome Center, Howard University, Washington, DC where he worked on issues of genomics and health disparities. Professor Citrin has played significant roles in developing and coordinating school-wide community-based public health programs to broaden and deepen the interchanges between SPH faculty and students and leaders and workers in community-based public health and social service organizations. These programs funded by foundation and governmental sources involve a variety of school-based and community-based activities in which students, faculty, and community members work in partnerships to identify and solve health-related problems. Professor Citrin is the Director of the Michigan Public Health Training Center, which is engaged in strengthening the competency of Michigan's public health workforce to address current public health challenges. He is also Director of the National Program Office of the Community Health Scholars Program, which provides postdoctoral fellowships to expand the number of faculty members with community competency who teach in schools of public health and related academic institutions. He is Director of the Michigan Center for Genomics and Public Health, which works towards applying genetics to achieve public health goals while preventing misuse of genetics harming individuals or groups.
Eric Clay is the Program Director for Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition (HEBCAC). In this capacity, he implements a strategy designed to address the career develop needs of out of school youth in Baltimore City. Eric manages a 1 million dollar budget that includes resources and support from the Mayor’s Office of Employment and Development, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health--The Center for Adolescent Health. Eric came to HEBCAC in the September of 2005 from Project Garrison were he coordinated efforts with the Department of Labor and local law enforcement to improve public safety and workforce development and training opportunities for distressed communities in West Baltimore. He has also served as a Senior Grants and Contracts specialist for the City of Seattle were he provided technical assistance for community-based organizations. He has a BS in Education from the University of Virginia and is currently working on his Master’s in City Planning at Morgan State University.
Portia L. Cole, ScD, received her BA degree in Sociology at George Washington University, an M.S.W. degree at Catholic University of America and her PhD in Sociology at American University. She was awarded a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship by the American Sociological Association and specialized in mental health and social policy during her doctoral program. Her dissertation explored the impact of Sickle Cell disease (SCD) on the mental health of Black women. In 2004, she was awarded a W.K. Kellogg Health Disparities Post Doctoral Fellowship and was placed at Morgan State University’s Public Health Program where she studied the role of the Black church in cancer prevention. Dr. Cole is currently an Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Social Work and has taught advanced graduate courses in health policy. She also serves as Chairperson of the Improving Access to Care Committee at the VCU Center on Health Disparities. In 2007, Dr. Cole was honored with the award of an H. Jack Geiger Congressional Health Policy Fellowship and served as a health legislative assistant in Senator Edward Kennedy’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee office. In this role, she participated in national public policy decisions and discourse to improve the health status of racial/ethnic minority populations. She will return to VCU in the fall and will continue her research on SCD as well as work-family conflict stress among women of color. Dr. Cole will also serve as an advisor to social work students who are seeking congressional internships/fellowships.
Nicholas Freudenberg, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Social Psychology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of City University of New York and Interim Director of the City University of New York's Doctoral Program in Public Health. Freudenberg's research focuses on the social determinants of the health of urban populations. For the past 15 years, he has implemented and evaluated interventions to reduce drug use, HIV risk and recidivism among young people leaving New York City jails. He has participated in and written about a variety of community-based research efforts to change municipal policies on incarceration, youth violence and other issues. He is currently director of the CUNY Campaign against Diabetes, an effort to strengthen the City University's capacity to contribute to the prevention of diabetes and obesity in New York City. He is also lead editor of Cities and the Health of the Public (Vanderbilt Press, 2006), a synthesis of recent scholarship on how city living affects health. More recently, Freudenberg has investigated how the alcohol, automobile, tobacco, firearms, food and pharmaceutical industries contribute to socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in health and the role of public health advocacy in modifying health damaging corporate practices.
H. Jack Geiger, MD, MsciHyg, ScD, is the Arthur C. Logan Professor Emeritus of Community Medicine, City University of New York Medical School; President of the Committee for Health in Southern Africa; a founding member and Immediate Past President of Physicians for Human Rights; and a founding member and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the U.S. affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1985. Most of his professional career has been devoted to the problems of health, poverty and human rights. He initiated the community health center model in the U.S., combining community-oriented primary care, public health interventions, and civil rights and community empowerment and development initiatives, and was a leader in the development of the national health center network of more than 800 urban, rural and migrant centers currently serving some nine million low-income patients.
Josué Guillén is the technology manager of the Praxis Project. He is responsible for identifying and implementing ways in which technology can support social justice work. Josué successfully completed the Center for Third World Organizing's organizer training program almost two decades ago. That led to jobs with SEIU (locals 1877 in San Jose and 14 in San Francisco), PUEBLO in Oakland, and the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union (after merging with the Ladies Garment Workers Union, ACTWU became UNITE) all over the country. Josué spent two years with IGC - the Institute for Global Communications, where he ran the LaborNet website, helped unions take advantage of technological advances and helped the staff form a union with SEIU Local 790. Additionally, he was a founding member of PODER, a community organization doing work on environmental and economic justice issues in San Francisco's Mission District, and is a current board member of PTP - The Progressive Technology Project. In February 2001, Josué joined Media Jumpstart, a non-profit worker collective (whose name later changed to May First Technology Collective) dedicated to supporting the technology needs of small non profits in New York City. When that project was shut down in May 2005, it merged with People Link to form a membership based internet company striving to build a technology infrastructure to support the creation of real social change. Josué is a co-director of that venture, not-so-originally named May First/People Link. Josué has helped organize the NYC Grassroots Media Conference for the last couple of years. In 2004 Josué was awarded a Soros NYC Community Fellowship. He developed the Health Justice Report Card (healthjustice.us) in 2006 and was actively involved in organizing the first ever US Social Forum in Atlanta 2007. He is also a staunch supporter of the open source movement, particularly basebuilder, drupal and all of the ubuntu projects.
J Taylor Harden, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA, was appointed Acting Deputy Director on January 7, 2008 and Assistant to the Director for Special Populations at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) in 1997. Prior to joining the NIA, Dr. Harden was a program official at the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) where she managed a portfolio of grants including women's health, aging research, and behavioral and social research. In 1994 she was a tenured associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio with appointments to both the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Nursing. She has been a consultant to the Public Health Service Office of Minority Health, National Institute of Drug Abuse, and the former Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. She served as a reviewer for the NIH Division of Research Grants, now Center for Scientific Review, Nursing Research Study Section. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and the Gerontological Society of America (GSA). Dr. Harden serves or has served on many trans-NIH committees including the Executive Committee and Coordinating Committee on Research on Women's Health, NIH Hispanic Task Force, and recently, the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers. In addition to her administrative responsibilities, Dr. Harden publishes articles and speaks frequently as an invited lecturer on aging research, minority health/health disparities, women’s health and related subjects. Her years of clinical practice and research on women's health (depression, menopausal transitions, and urinary incontinence), minority health and health disparities, in addition to academic teaching, and NIH-training and service have resulted in many honors and awards including the GSA Task Force on Minority Issues Outstanding Mentorship Award and twice the NIH Director’s Award.
Emily S. Ihara, PhD, MSW, is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at George Mason University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on social policy and social justice. Her research focuses on the role of race/ethnicity, immigration, and socioeconomic position as determinants of health; the effect of social policies on health outcomes; and the role of health and social service systems in eliminating or perpetuating health inequities. Dr. Ihara is currently the co-chair of the Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the co-president of the Washington DC chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, and a member of the planning committee for the Kellogg Leadership Fellows Alliance’s (KFLA) Forum 2009. Dr. Ihara is the recipient of the H. Jack Geiger Congressional Fellowship (2005-2006), the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Fellowship in Health Policy Research (1999-2004), and the Okura Mental Health Leadership Foundation Fellowship (2000). As the Geiger Fellow in the office of Congressman Mike Honda (CA-15) and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), she provided legislative assistance on issues such as racial and ethnic health disparities, health care, women, seniors, Medicare, welfare, and housing. She has worked as a researcher and policy analyst for various organizations, including the Center on an Aging Society at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Schneider Institute for Health Policy at Brandeis University. Dr. Ihara brings her extensive clinical experience as a social worker with children, adolescents, and adults experiencing trauma, health, and mental health issues to her understanding of research and policy. Dr. Ihara is a graduate of UC Berkeley (AB), UCLA (MSW), and the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University (PhD, MA).
Barbara Israel, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the School of Public Health, University of Michigan. She received her Doctorate in Public Health and Master in Public Health degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Israel has published widely in the areas of community-based participatory research, community empowerment, evaluation, stress and health, and social support and social networks. Her research interests include: the social and physical environmental determinants of health and health disparities; the relationship among stress, social support, control and physical and mental health; community empowerment and health; and community-based participatory research (CBPR). Dr. Israel has extensive experience conducting community-based participatory research in collaboration with partners in diverse communities. With initial funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1995, she has worked together with community and academic partners to establish and maintain the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center. The Center involves multiple funded research and intervention projects aimed at increasing knowledge and addressing factors associated with health disparities and quality of life of residents in Detroit, Michigan. Dr. Israel is actively involved in several of these CBPR projects examining and addressing, for example, the social and physical environmental determinants of cardiovascular disease, the environmental triggers of childhood asthma, diabetes prevention, and capacity building for policy change.
Aranthan S. Jones II or “AJ” is the Policy Director for the US House of Representatives (USHR) Majority Whip office, headed by Congressman James E. Clyburn of the 6th district of South Carolina. AJ is directly responsible for shaping policy and legislation in the following committees: Ways and Means, Financial Services, Energy and Commerce, Judiciary, Transportation and Infrastructure, Homeland Security, Small Business, Budget, Education and Labor, and Foreign Relations. AJ is one of four policy directors within the leadership of the USHR, the only African American policy director, and highest ranking African American healthcare advisor. He also serves as policy director for the Congressional Katrina and Rita Leadership Working Group (CKRG) which is charged with coordinating and directing congressional action on Gulf Coast recovery matters. As policy director of CKRG, AJ serves as a lead recovery advisor for the Democratic Caucus and Democratic Leadership (which includes all 233 Democratic members of the USHR). In addition, he serves as the Majority Whip’s led policy liaison to the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Blue Dog Coalition, New Democrat Coalition, and 15 policy oriented Congressional Member Organizations. During his congressional tenure, AJ has received over 60 national awards and citations acknowledging his leadership in a myriad of public policy areas. In 2007, AJ was inducted into the prodigious Stennis Congressional Staff Fellowship for the 110th Congress. As a fellow, he joined 32 other bicameral and bipartisan fellows to outline a strategic and policy framework for Congress to use for addressing future policy challenges. In the fall of 2006, AJ was publicly acknowledged by congressional members, fellow staffers, and The Hill newspaper as one of the “Top 35 staffers under 35.”AJ was recognized by Ebony Magazine in 2005 as one of its top “30 Future Leaders Under 30,” and was profiled by CNN Headline News as one of the top four congressional staffers to be future national policy leaders. Preceding his congressional career, AJ served as a short term consultant with the World Health Organization (WHO), a clinical research associate at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, a program specialist with Fogerty International Center at the National Institutes of Health, and a college research coordinator at the University Of Illinois School Of Public Health (UIC-SPH). He received two Bachelor's degrees in Sociology (with concentrations in medical sociology and socio-economic stratification), Anthropology (with concentrations in health and culture), and a minor in African American studies (with concentrations in critical theory and public policy) from Iowa State University. In addition, he received a Master's of Public Health in International Health Policy (with concentrations in economic and sustainable development) from George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services.
Lovell A. Jones, PhD, is the director of the Center for Research on Minority Health in the Department of Health Disparities Research in the division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. He is also the Founding Co-Chair of the Intercultural Cancer Council, the nation’s largest multicultural health policy group focused on minorities, the medically underserved and cancer. He has edited “Minorities & Cancer,” one of the few comprehensive textbooks on this subject. He is a founding chair of “Minorities and Medically Underserved and Cancer,” the nation’s largest multicultural conference which provides a forum for exchanging the latest scientific and treatment information. Dr. Jones also has spearheaded regional hearing on cancer and the poor for the American Cancer Society. From 1989 to 1995, Dr. Jones was Co-Principal Investigator of the National Black Leadership Initiative on Cancer, the first major minority outreach project sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. He has served on the board of directors of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Prostate Health Council of the American Foundation for Urologic Diseases. In 1991, Dr. Jones chaired the Training Session of the Strategic Fact-Finding Meetings on Minority Health and Training in Biomedical Sciences for the Office of the Associate Director for Research on Minority Health (now the Center for Minority Health & Health Disparities) at the NIH. A co-author of the congressional resolution that designated the third week in April as “National Minority Cancer Awareness Week,” Dr. Jones was honored in May 2000 on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives for his work addressing health disparities among the underserved. Dr. Jones has served on the Breast Cancer Integration Panel for the Department of Defense and has published over 100 scientific articles on subjects ranging from hormonal carcinogenesis to health policy. His work with estrogen has led to major findings, including the discovery that compounds labeled as weak environmental estrogens may cause adverse effects when exposure occurs during a critical time of development. Because of these results, researchers have begun to rethink when they define environmental estrogens as weak.
Ichiro Kawachi, MD, PhD, Professor of Social Epidemiology, Director of the Harvard Center for Society and Health and Chair of the Department of Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Kawachi received his medical degree and PhD, both from the University of Otago, New Zealand. He has taught at the Harvard School of Public Health since 1992. Kawachi has published over 300 papers on the social and economic determinants of population health. He was the co-editor (with Lisa Berkman) of the first textbook on Social Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press in 2000. His more recent books include The Health of Nations with Bruce Kennedy (The New Press, 2002), Neighborhoods and Health with Lisa Berkman (Oxford University Press, 2003), and Globalization and Health with Sarah Wamala of the Swedish National Institute of Public Health (Oxford University Press, 2006). A new textbook on Social Capital and Health is forthcoming in Fall 2007 (published by Springer), with co-editors S.V. Subramanian & Daniel Kim. He has been a member of the MacArthur Network on SES and Health since 1998. Kawachi currently serves as the Senior Editor (Social Epidemiology) of the international journal Social Science & Medicine, as well as an Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology. He has served as a consultant to the Pan-American Health Organization/WHO and the World Bank. Most recently, he served as Special Advisor to the Measurement Knowledge Network of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health.
Barbara Kivimae Krimgold serves as Director of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Kellogg Health Scholars Program Natioanl Program Office and director of the Multidisciplinary-Disparities track for that program. She also directs the Fellows in Health Policy Research and H. Jack Geiger Congressional Health Policy Fellows programs. These programs have trained a diverse group of over one hundred predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers in scholarship and activism focused on reducing health disparities, understanding and developing partnerships with communities, and translating research to policy and action. Barbara Krimgold serves, in addition, as director of the City Indicators Website project, "Diversity Data: Quality of Life Indicators for Urban Americans" in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health Department of Society, Human Development and Health. She is based at the Center for the Advancement of Health in Washington DC. For over ten years, she worked as a health policy professional within the U.S. Government, serving in high level positions within the Office of Management and Budget -- under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan -- and as the top health policy staffer for the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. She graduated from Harvard College and won a National Defense Education Act Fellowship to study at Harvard's Graduate Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She has lived and worked in France, Egypt, the Gaza Strip, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Ghana. She lives in McLean, Virginia, with her husband Fred and has five daughters.
Bonnie Lefkowitz is a writer and a consultant working on socioeconomic status and health, health care for low income and minority populations, community health issues and the determinants of health policy. Previously she served in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she was Associate Bureau Director for Data, Evaluation, Analysis and Research in the Bureau of Primary Health Care and Director, Division of Health Resources and Services Policy for the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and with the Congressional Budget Office as Principal Analyst. Among other special assignments, Ms. Lefkowitz co-chaired the cluster group on Underserved Populations and Preventive Health for the Clinton Health Reform Task Force, and served as Staff Director for the HHS Interagency Committee on Infant Mortality. Ms. Lefkowitz holds a Master's degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Her new book, Community Health Centers: A Movement and the People Who Made It Happen, traces the history of a major effort to reduce health disparities from its origins in the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty to a national network serving 15 million people. She is also the author of Health Planning: Lessons for the Future, and co-author of Improving Health: It Doesn't Take a Revolution.
Jenifer J. Martin, J.D., is the Director, Government Relations at theUniversity of Michigan School of Public Health. Ms. Martin leads government relations and advocacy strategies to promote and advance University of Michigan School of Public Health research and training expertise to federal agencies, the United States Congress, the State of Michigan, and other public health stakeholders. In addition, Ms. Martin works with two interdisciplinary centers housed in the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Health Management and Policy. She serves as Administrator of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design, which examines health benefit plan design to ensure quality and contain cost, as well as the Center for Risk Science, which conducts research to promote sound risk assessment and communication. In addition, she serves as policy consultant to the Kellogg Health Scholars Program, assisting post-doctoral students in translating their research into policy. She also serves as advisor to the School's Health Policy Student Association, mentoring students interested in policy careers. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Jenifer Martin spent 13 years in Washington, D.C. in various legislative and policy capacities. From 1996-2002, Ms. Martin was an Associate at the law firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, where she represented clients before the United States Congress and the Administration. Prior to joining Verner, Liipfert, Ms. Martin worked on Capitol Hill for Representative Jose E. Serrano and for Senator Paul Simon on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and in the Clinton White House. Ms. Martin received her BA in Spanish, with honors, from the University of Michigan in 1989, and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1996.
Michelle Proser, MPP, is the Director of Research at the National Association of Community Health Centers where she conducts extensive research and writing on health centers, access to and quality of care issues, health disparities, quality improvement, and other health care issues related to medically underserved populations. She is responsible for analyzing data from all Federally-Qualified Health Centers, as well as other data sources. She has authored and co-authored numerous reports, articles, and other publications on Community Health Centers, and has presented her work at Academy Health, the National Conference of State Legislatures, National Managed Health Care Conference, National Eye Institute Health Education Conference, and the UNC Center for Civil Rights Mending the Health Care Divide Conference. In addition, Michelle coordinates activities that promote community-based participatory research as a tool for improving community health. Previously, Michelle conducted research at the Center for Health Services Research and Policy at The George Washington University. While at the Center, her research focus included Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, maternal and child health, women’s health, and safety-net issues. She received her Masters in Public Policy from The George Washington University and is currently working on her Doctorate in Public Policy at the same institution. Michelle is also the co-founder and current chair of the DC Society of Health Policy Young Professionals, which provides networking and career development opportunities for over 650 emerging leaders working in the DC area.
Linda A. Randolph, MD, MPH, is President and CEO of the Developing Families Center, an innovative, comprehensive, one-stop center for childbearing and childrearing families in northeast Washington, DC. She has spent her career promoting the health and well-being of mothers, children, and families through community program development and changes in public policy. As a public health pediatrician, she has worked at the federal, state, and local government levels, in academia, private philanthropy and community-based not-for profit organizations. She is a graduate of the Howard University College of Medicine and the University of California's School of Public Health at Berkeley. Her experience includes completing a pediatrics residency in Harlem; serving as the national director of health services for the Federal Head Start program; directing the New York State Department of Health's Office of Public Health; serving as executive director of the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s “Starting Points” initiative and as executive director of the National Women’s Resource Center addressing Substance Abuse and Mental Illness. Dr. Randolph served as Clinical Professor of Community Medicine, Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in NY and is currently visiting professor at the Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies. Dr. Randolph has served on numerous boards of directors of not-for-profit organizations and is the recipient of many awards, including the American Public Health Association’s prestigious Martha May Eliot Award in 2001 honoring exceptional health services for mothers and children. Dr. Randolph has served on three National Academy of Science /Institute of Medicine study committees: currently the Committee on the Prevention of Mental Disorders and Substance Abuse Among Children, Youth, and Young Adults: Research Advances and Promising Interventions. She is also co-PI on a five year NICHD RO1 research grant with Dr. Sharon Ramey at Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies’ Center for Health and Education on Service Delivery Models to Reduce Maternal and Child Health Disparities.
Kevin J. Robinson, DrPH, MHA, MSW, is currently an Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College’s Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research. Dr. Robinson received his Dr.P.H. from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. He holds an M.S.W (Community Organization/Community and Social Systems) from The University of Michigan School of Social Work and a M.H.A (Public Health Policy and Administration) from The Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Robinson’s dissertation, “Power of the Possible: A Case Study of an African-American Gay Man Living With AIDS,” was a descriptive case study of a 51 year-old African American gay man’s experiences living with AIDS. Dr. Robinson’s research illuminated how race, class and sexuality intersected with the physiological, social and structural challenges of living with AIDS. Dr. Robinson coauthored the HIV/AIDS focus area of the Healthy People 2010 Companion Document for LGBT Health, which was published in the Journal of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association in 2000. While a WK Kellogg Community Health Scholar at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Dr. Robinson employed community-based participatory research methods to test the efficacy of an intervention to increase sexual health knowledge and skills of adolescents and reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in 11-19 year old African Americans residing in Flint, Michigan. He also assisted community partners’ efforts to mobilize African American communities and to increase community awareness, leadership, participation and support for HIV/AIDS prevention. Dr. Robinson has been an invited speaker at the First World Conference for Sexual Health in Sydney, Australia, and will soon be presenting his research at a Race and Disparities Research Forum in Cape Town, South Africa. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors of The Mazzoni Center (the largest LGBT health center in Philadelphia).
Victor Rubin, PhD, is Vice President for Research at PolicyLink, a national nonprofit institute for policy change. He has been an urban planning researcher, teacher, and consultant for more than 30 years. He has co-authored several reports in the past year documenting the evolution of efforts to improve community health, including: Why Place Matters: Building a Movement for Healthy Communities and The Impact of the Built Environment on Community Health: The State of Current Practice and Next Steps for a Growing Movement. He is currently involved in the creation of a health element in the general plan of Richmond, California and in a variety of other local and state policy campaigns. His other recent writing at PolicyLink includes the series of policy briefs, Safety, Growth and Equity: Infrastructure Policies That Promote Opportunity and Inclusion and a chapter on the social roots of the urban greening movement in the forthcoming book, Growing Greener Cities (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.) Victor joined PolicyLink in 2000 after serving as Director of the HUD Office of University Partnerships. He has written extensively on engaged scholarship and community partnerships in higher education, and is currently directing an evaluation for the W. K. Kellogg Foundation of its cluster of grants for community engagement by state universities. Rubin served as Director of the University-Oakland Metropolitan Forum, a partnership for community revitalization based at the University of California, Berkeley. Rubin is also the co-author of two books on educational policy. He is a member of the California Planning Roundtable and was formerly Adjunct Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also received his MCP and PhD.
Mercedes Rubio, PhD, lives in Washington D.C. Dr. Rubio is Program Chief of the Psychopathology Risk and Protective Factors Research Program and Assistant Director to Individual Fellowship Research Programs in the Division of Adult Translational Research and Treatment Development at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Rubio received her BA in sociology at CSU, Bakersfield, and her MA and PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Rubio was a member of the first cohort of Kellogg Scholars in Health Disparities from 2001-2003 at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining NIMH, she was Director of Minority Affairs Program, Program Director and Co-PI to a National Institute of Mental Health/National Institute of Drug Abuse T-32 Diversity Training Grant at the American Sociological Association.
Brian D. Smedley, PhD, is Research Director and a co-founder of a new communications, research, and policy organization, The Opportunity Agenda (www.opportunityagenda.org), where he focuses on linking social science and public health research with communications and advocacy strategies to center equity in public discussions of health policy and health care reform. He is also co-editor, with Alan Jenkins, of a book, All Things Being Equal: Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time, published by the New Press. Formerly, he was a Senior Program Officer in the Division of Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine (IOM), where he served as Study Director for the IOM reports, In the Nation’s Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity in the Health Care Workforce and Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, among other reports on health disparities, social and behavioral influences on health, diversity in the health professions, and minority health research policy. Smedley came to the IOM from the American Psychological Association, where he worked on a wide range of social, health, and education policy topics in his capacity as Director for Public Interest Policy. Prior to working at the APA, Smedley served as a Congressional Science Fellow in the office of Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-VA), sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Among his awards and distinctions, in 2004 Smedley was honored by the Rainbow/PUSH coalition as a “Health Trailblazer” award winner; in 2002 he was awarded the Congressional Black Caucus “Healthcare Hero” award; and in August, 2002, was awarded the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest by the APA.
Lisa Cacari Stone, received her PhD in health and social policy in 2004 at Brandeis University. From 2005 to 2008, she served as an H. Jack Geiger Congressional Health Policy Fellow for Senator Edward M. Kennedy with the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and as a W.K. Kellogg and Alonzo Yerby post-doctoral scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Cacari Stone’s program of research combines over 18 years of public health practice and policy analyses with the academic scholarship on the socio-determinants of health and health services and policy research. Her research focuses on public policies as determinants of health, Latino heterogeneity in health status, access and service utilization and the role of community engagement in the design and translation of research for health disparity elimination policies. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Senior Research Fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center.
Kim Dobson Sydnor, PhD, is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Community Health and Policy, Department of Behavioral Health Sciences at Morgan State University, an historically Black university in Baltimore City. At Morgan, Dr. Sydnor also serves currently as Site Director for the W.K. Kellogg Health Scholars program – the multidisciplinary track and will become a Site Director for the Community-Based Participatory Track beginning this fall. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Morgan State University and her doctorate in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. She is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. Her current research interests focus on prevention and intervention strategies for children’s healthy development with emphasis on mental health. This approach applies a life course framework that examines the key contexts of school and family. This interest is expressed through her work with a local Head Start to assess program effectiveness for both parents and children and similar work with a local community based organization focused on facilitating creation of healthy families. She serves as an Associate Editor for Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research Education and Association and for the Californian Journal of Health Promotion. She is on the Executive Board of DRU Mondawmin Healthy Families.
S. Leonard Syme, PhD, has been a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1968. His major research interest has been psychosocial risk factors such as job stress, social supp
ort and poverty. In doing this research, he has studied San Francisco bus drivers; Japanese living in Japan, Hawaii and California; British civil servants; and people living in Alameda County, California. Dr. Syme has written two books and over 150 published papers, and has been a visiting professor at universities in England and Japan. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and has received several honors related to his teaching and research, among them the Lilienfeld Award for Excellence in Teaching, the J.D. Bruce Award for Distinguished Contributions in Preventive Medicine from the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the University of California Distinguished Emeritus Professor Award. Now retired, Dr. Syme is Principal Investigator of The Wellness Guide Project in California which is attempting to empower people and communities using printed materials, television, and community resource development.
Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, is director of the Center for Minority Health (CMH) and the Philip Hallen Professor of Community Health and Social Justice in the Graduate School of Public Health University of Pittsburgh. One of the nation’s leading scholars in the effort to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities, Dr. Thomas has applied his expertise to address a variety of conditions from which minorities generally face far poorer outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and HIV/AIDS. He is principal investigator of the Research Center of Excellence on Minority Health Disparities, funded by the NIH-NCMHD ($10M). Under Dr. Thomas’ direction, CMH has developed a number of scientifically sound, culturally relevant, community-based interventions designed to close the gap in health outcomes between whites and racial/ethnic minority populations. These initiatives are embodied in the highly successful Healthy Black Family Project that provides health coaches for lifestyle behaviors such as physical activity, nutrition education, stress management, smoking cessation and social support. The program has offices in the heart of Pittsburgh’s African American community. Since launching in 2004, the program has enrolled over 6,000 participants. Additionally, CMH has established innovative community outreach efforts through a network of ten black barbershops/salons located in the Health Empowerment Zone, a geographic space identified by the county health department as high risk for chronic disease. Dr. Thomas has been recognized at the national level for his professional accomplishments, receiving the 2005 David Satcher Award from the Directors of Health Promotion and Education for his leadership in reducing health disparities through the improvement of health promotion and health education programs at the state and local levels and the 2004 Alonzo Smyth Yerby Award from the Harvard School of Public Health for his work with people suffering the health effects of poverty. A leading scholar on the legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972), Dr. Thomas was an invited White House guest to witness the Presidential Apology to Survivors of the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee on May 16, 1997. After completing his undergraduate degree in school health education at The Ohio State University, Dr. Thomas went on to earn his master’s degree in health education at Illinois State University and later earned his doctorate in community health education from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Dr. Thomas believes that the successful elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities depends upon the ability to establish trusting community partnerships designed to increase the participation of minority populations in biomedical and public health research.
Pamela L. Thornton, PhD, MSW, currently teaches at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and consults with the MITRE Corporation to support public health efforts with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to these roles, she worked for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Health Policy Institute as a senior research analyst on maternal and child health initiatives as well as a national project to improve social determinants of health in communities of color. Her primary research interests concern utilizing community-based participatory strategies to promote minority women and children’s health. Her research activities have focused on the role of psychosocial factors in the etiology of health and illness, particularly on maternal stress and health. Dr. Thornton received her B.S. from Howard University in Psychology and English, M.S.W. from Catholic University, and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland Baltimore in Social Work. She studied international health policy at the University of Bristol in England. Dr. Thornton was a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Scholar in Health Disparities and National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research.
Donele Wilkins is Executive Director of the Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice. Ms. Wilkins has over two decades of experience in occupational and environmental health as an educator, consultant, trainer, administrator and advocate. In 1994, she co-founded and currently serves as the Executive Director of Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, a non-profit organization addressing urban environmental issues in the City of Detroit. Ms. Wilkins is sought after as a public speaker addressing local and national audiences on topics of community driven sustainable development, environmental justice, and occupational and environmental health advocacy. She has coordinated and organized several conferences and gatherings to highlight the plight of her community. As a consultant, Ms. Wilkins has assisted several community organizations and put them on the correct path toward increasing their capacity to transform their communities. She is a mom of two, which motivates her to change conditions in her community so that they can have a brighter future. With her leadership, DWEJ was able to shut down the Henry Ford Hospital Medical Waste Incinerator. Donele sits on The Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, Southeast Michigan Council of Governments- transportation advisory committee, Founder and Co-Chair of the National Black Environmental Justice Network, Colin Powell Academy board of education and many other committees and forums. She is the recipient of several awards, fellowships and special recognition for her contribution on behalf of the community. In recent years she has also served as a community mentor for the Kellogg Health Scholars Program at the University of Michigan.
Natasha H. Williams, Esq., PhD, MPH joined Bailey & Glasser LLP in March 2008. She will provide legal and strategic business guidance to clients on healthcare, government affairs and corporate compliance. Natasha's legal capacity extends far beyond the courtroom as she has served as the A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Research Fellow in Social Justice at Harvard Law School and as a postdoctoral fellow in urban health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Williams also has served on Capitol Hill as part of a Congressional Health Policy Fellows Program. Throughout her career she has published journal articles and presented on various health policy and social welfare issues around the world. Dr. Williams is licensed to practice in Maryland.
Joy Johnson Wilson is Federal Affairs Counsel and Health Policy Director at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). NCSL represents the legislatures of the 50 states, its commonwealths, territories and District of Columbia. As Federal Affairs Counsel, she assists with overall government relations, administrative, and public affairs activities in the NCSL Washington Office and is responsible for the operation of the Washington Office in the absence of the Director. As Director of Health Policy, she designs and implements the lobbying strategy for the conference on health care issues. Ms. Wilson has been with NCSL since 1978. She took a leave of absence in 1989 to serve on the staff of the U.S. Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care, better known as the “Pepper Commission.” On the Pepper Commission staff, she was the liaison to groups representing state and local elected officials, organized field hearings and worked on issues related to the impact of health care reform on small business. She was recently appointed to serve as non-voting member of Medicaid Commission established by Mike Leavitt, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ms. Wilson received a Bachelor of Science from Keene State College in New Hampshire and a Master of Regional Planning degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Gina E. Wood is the deputy director of the Health Policy Institute (HPI) at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The Joint Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, conducts research and analyses on public policy issues of concern to African Americans and other minorities. Gina Wood currently directs the Health Policy Institute which focuses on key health policy issues for African Americans and other communities of color. The HPI was operationally launched in 2002 with a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The Foundations' purpose was to enable the Joint Center to build a health policy institute that would facilitate the participation of "neglected" or "unheard" voices in health policy debates and that would improve the health of underserved and diverse people by supporting national partners in efforts to help communities inform policy and sharing promising practices. Gina Wood has a long career in public service at the state and federal levels working to improve the lives of children, youth and families which includes serving as the director of the Department of Juvenile Justice in South Carolina and staff director for the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In addition, she has led major federal interagency collaborations including the creation of a National Center on Education, Disabilities and Juvenile Justice. She serves on the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice, the Executive Board of the National Coalition for Juvenile Justice, the board of directors of the William E. Doar, Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts and Florence Crittenton Services of Greater Washington.
