Stanley N. Bernard is
a graduate of Columbia University with a B.A. in Psychology and of Yale with
an M.P.H.
in Health Policy and Management. He is currently
taking a year off before resuming his doctoral studies. After obtaining his
M.P.H., Mr. Bernard worked at Bridgeport Futures Initiative as the manager
of a case management system that provided services to children and families
at risk. He later was appointed Director of Research at the same organization,
where he developed the agency’s capacity to provide low-cost program
evaluations for social services at Bridgeport. Mr. Bernard worked at the National
Center for Children in Poverty, where he co-authored two major reports, Map
and Track: State Initiatives to Encourage Responsible Fatherhood (1997, 1999),
as well as issue briefs on the effects of welfare changes in fatherhood policy
and on how the law affects vulnerable children. He taught courses in the community
and technical college system in Connecticut, and is currently director of The
Park Project for Children, which will provide research information for his
dissertation. The topic of his dissertation is “The Effect of Father
Presence on Children’s Mental Health.” Mr. Bernard anticipates
building on this experience, combining policy with quantitative research and
honing his skills in socio-medical sciences. His ultimate goal is to teach
at the university level as well as to do research and program evaluation, activities
he sees as “intertwined and essential parts of [his] being.”
Kristopher Chrishon is
interested in assessing the mental health needs of ethnic minorities and
using this
information to design appropriate interventions.
He would like to develop “a valid definition of caseness that remains
functional across ethnic groups” and that “captures mental disorder
as it relates to ethnic minorities.” A graduate of Morehouse with a B.A.
in Psychology, Catholic University with a M.A. in Psychology, and the University
of Michigan with an M.P.H. in Health Behavior and Health Education, Mr. Chrishon
has had fellowships and research internships that allowed him to hone his research
skills. He worked in the Army Personnel Survey Office and with the Army Selection
Assignment Research Unit on a longitudinal study examining why soldiers drop
out before completing their first term of enlistment. At the University of
Michigan, he did internships at the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture,
and Health and with the Program for Research on Black Americans, experiences
that further spurred his interest in how race affects mental health. This topic,
together with this desire to address issues of validity and reliability in
defining the prevalence of mental conditions, has led him to pursue a doctoral
degree in psychiatric epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at
Columbia University.
Carl Vincent Hill is a
graduate of Morehouse College with a B.A. in Health Education and Morehouse
School
of Medicine with an M.P.H. in Family Health.
After obtaining his M.P.H. as part of Morehouse School of Medicine’s
charter M.P.H. class, he joined the CDC’s first group of Public Health
Prevention Service fellows. As a PHPS Prevention Specialist, Mr. Hill worked
with the National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention. He was also involved
with developing policies for the Center for Bioethics in Research and Healthcare
in Tuskegee, Alabama, as a part of the Presidential Apology for the Tuskegee
Syphilis Study. He assisted the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School
Health with the analysis and drafting of the 1997 National Youth Risk Behavior
Survey, and was assigned to the Harris County (Texas) Health Department, where
he coordinated the administration of the YRBS in several school districts.
His most recent assignment within the CDC involved evaluating HIV prevention
programs throughout the country with the Division of HIV/AIDS prevention. His
research interests include analyzing the cultural differences between rural
and urban African American adolescent risk behaviors, particularly in the areas
of unintentional injury, violent behavior, substance abuse, and sexual activity.
He is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan School of Public
Health. The topic of his dissertation will cover links between racial discrimination,
stress, and health behavior. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Center
for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health and the Institute for Social
Research – Program for Research on Black Americans at the University
of Michigan.
Laurie Nsiah-Jefferson describes herself as a “strong resilient African-American
woman who deserves to fulfill her dreams to the fullest.” She is a graduate
of Brandeis University with a B.A. in Politics and Afro-American and African
Studies and Yale with an M.P.H. in Health Administration. Her career has been
devoted to addressing the factors that affect the health status of emerging
majority populations through research, evaluation, administration, and policy.
In her most recent position she led initiatives to ensure cultural and linguistic
competency in health services for the State of New Jersey. She has consulted
on projects with Rutgers School of Law and Social Work, the Mailman School
of Public Health at Columbia University, and the National Institutes of Health,
and has participated on national, state, and local task forces, advisory committees,
and grant review committees. She has lectured across the country and published
articles on issues related to reproductive genetics, prenatal screening, and
minority health. She is a doctoral candidate at the Heller School at Brandeis
University, where she is studying racial inequalities in access to medical
treatments and interventions. Her tentative dissertation title is “The
Impact of Evidence-based Guidelines: Is this Enough? A Critical Race Theoretical
Approach.” She is the author of a chapter titled “Pharmacogenomics:
Considerations for Communities of Color,” Rothstein, Ed. ¬Pharmacogenomics:
Social, Ethical and Clinical Dimensions¬, Hoboken, NJ:John Wiley and Sons,
Inc., 2003, pp. 267-290.
Emma Sanchez emigrated
from Mexico more than twelve years ago and underwent a process of “rebirth and continuous adaptation” from a timid,
monolingual immigrant to a senior research associate in evaluation research
at San Francisco State University, from which she obtained an M.P.H. degree.
Her work experience includes the night shift at a “maquiladora,” picking
apples in Washington State, line work in a fruit-packing company, and working
as a teacher, case manager, and social worker with Latinos in the U.S. These
varied challenges have given her a multicultural perspective as well as an
interest in health and social policy research, leading her to develop and teach
an online course titled “Structural Inequities and Public Health” at
SFSU. She is now a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health and Social
Behavior at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she has developed critical
tools that allow her to conduct “sound credible research and policy analysis” and
to focus on the impact of electricity deregulation policies on the health of
populations in California.
