James William Amell, MSW, MPH, PhD

Jim received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Social Welfare (minor Sociology) in July, 2006. He received his MPH in Maternal and Child Health and his MSW in 1997 from the University of Minnesota. His dissertation entitled “An Examination of Mental Health and Mental Health Trajectories among African American and White Men: The Effects of Perceived Social Supports and Poverty on Psychological Distress, Self-Esteem, and Life Satisfaction” has a two fold purpose: to describe men’s mental health outcomes by race, and, to explore how men who are considered at-risk due to poverty may maintain positive mental health. He received a Health Administration Traineeship from the UW-Madison MCH Lend Program to gain interdisciplinary leadership training regarding neurodevelopmental disabilities. He co-wrote a successful grant from the State of Minnesota Department of Health to provide family planning services at an urban community health center. He also participated in an evaluation of “Family Care”, Wisconsin’s Home and Community Based Long-Term Care Demonstration Program. His goals for the Kellogg fellowship are to bridge his practice and research experiences in order to become an applied, community-based participatory researcher, and, to re-frame the direction of his research via qualitative input from community members and leaders.

Shawn David Kimmel, MA, PhD

GiShawn Atara Mance, MS, PhD

Dr. Mance earned her doctorate in Clinical Child Psychology from DePaul University in 2006.  Her primary research interest is examining how context and culture influence symptom presentation for youth exposed to chronic stressors. Dr. Mance’s research goals include developing, implementing, and evaluating empirically-supported treatments for youth who have witnessed or experienced multiple traumas that create vulnerability to depression.  Additionally, she is interested in determining if community networks such as familial relationships and community prevention and intervention programs act as protective factors, how these protective factors change over time, and how to maintain the protective nature of these networks.  As a W.K. Kellogg Community Health Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health,  Dr. Mance worked collaboratively with Dr. Darius Tandon and Dr. Freya Sonenstein on the Health and Opportunity Partnership (HOPE) project.   The HOPE project used a community-based participatory approach to integrate health promotion strategies to reach out-of-school youth ages 18 to 24 who are also disconnected from the workforce and enrolled in a job training program.  Using Structured Psychotherapy for Adolescents Responding to Chronic Stress (SPARCS) as a framework, Dr. Mance partnered with the youth to develop a contextually- and culturally-appropriate mental-health intervention to reduce depressive symptoms.  As a means to disseminate her work, Dr. Mance presented at numerous national conferences (e.g., Society for Community Research and Action, Society for Prevention Research, American Public Health Association).  Currently, Dr. Mance is the first author on a manuscript that details the adaptation process of SPARCS utilizing a CBPR approach.  The manuscript, The Cultural Adaptation Process of an Empirically-Validated Intervention for African American Young Adults Using Community Based Participatory Research, was submitted for publication.  

Caryn Rodgers, PhD

Dr. Caryn Rodgers earned her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from St. John’s University in Jamaica, NY in 2005. Following the completion of her doctorate, Dr. Rodgers completed the Leadership in Education and Adolescent Health (LEAH) psychology fellowship in adolescent medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston/ Harvard Medical School. Currently, she is a W.K. Kellogg Community Health Scholar in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Her research examines protective and risk factors for adolescent problem behaviors (i.e. substance use and youth violence). As a W.K. Kellogg fellow, Dr. Rodgers collaborated with Dr. Tina Cheng on a violence prevention intervention for middle school students.  Dr. Rodgers partnered with parents of middle school students to adapt an evidence based violence prevention intervention for parents of middle school students in a community with high rates of community violence.  This intervention is currently being implemented in the community. Dr. Rodgers research interests focus on adolescent health promotion in low-income urban communities. Through the employment of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) as a research approach, Dr. Rodgers will continue to partner and work with communities, families, and youth to further understand protective factors that promote resiliency, strength and adaptive functioning, as well as risk factors that may impede successful outcomes in low-income urban youth of color. With these findings, she intends to develop and promote effective prevention and intervention programming to increase adaptive and successful outcomes for low-income urban youth and families of color. 

Dionne Maria Smith, PhD, MA Ed

Dr. Smith is a fellow with the W.K. Kellogg Health Scholar fellowship program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention/Department of Health Behavior and Health Education). She earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from The University of Tennessee-Knoxville in August of 2004.  From 2004-2006 she was a research fellow in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2005, she was named a National Center on Minority Health & Health Disparities Scholar. Dr. Smith has collaborated with various prevention, intervention, and community-based participatory research projects that targeted dating violence, mental health, and sexual health among African American adolescents. These projects involved consistent collaboration with community partners, a clear focus on relationship building, networking, equal power, and attention to policy issues. Dr. Smith’s research goals are to continue to work collaboratively with communities to address health disparity issues affecting adolescents and families, and to effectively integrate research, practice, and policy.

Larkin Louise Strong, MPH, PhD

Prior to becoming a Kellogg Health Scholar at the University of Michigan, Dr. Strong received her PhD in 2006 from the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington School of Public Health.  Dr. Strong's research interests revolve around how aspects of neighborhood environments contribute to health, with a specific emphasis on opportunities for physical activity, access to healthy foods, and issues of environmental justice. An important component of her research interests involves working in partnership with communities to investigate and address health issues of local relevance.  During her fellowship, she worked with the Healthy Environments Partnership to develop and evaluate a neighborhood walking group pilot program situated in community- and faith-based organizations in Detroit.  Part of the evaluation focused on the experience of the organizations that hosted the walking groups and identified lessons learned for use of a participatory process to pilot community interventions.  Larkin also worked with the Community Action Against Asthma partnership, which focuses on improving the health of children with asthma in east and southwest Detroit.  Using longitudinal data from a prior intervention study, she examined the relationship between perceptions of and activism in neighborhood environments with various health outcome measures in caregivers of children with asthma.  She also helped prepare for an upcoming intervention that will examine the effects of air filters and air conditioners on children’s asthma health status above and beyond the effects of a community health worker household intervention.