Challenging the Norm: Redefining Rigor in Health Research

Greta Cappelmann (she/her) comes to this work from experience in non-profit, private and public organizations in the American South. She previously worked to improve healthcare access for people living in Louisiana and worked in food access policy in South Carolina. Currently working as Special Projects Administrator at Partners for Advancing Health Equity, she aims to forward the priorities of the organization through collaborations and learning opportunities. Greta also serves on the Board of Directors for a non-profit organization focusing on transportation equity and education in New Orleans. She is an avid cyclist and believes in the power of the bicycle to change how we interact with our built environment and each other. She received her MPH from Tulane University, and her BS in Public Health from the College of Charleston.

Omar A. Dauhajre is the Administrative Director for Partners for Advancing Health Equity (P4HE Collaborative) at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. At P4HE he oversees administration, programming, partnerships, and membership. Prior to Tulane, he was Assistant Director at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU. He is originally from Puerto Rico and has two decades of professional experience in the nonprofit world, both academia and community-based organizations. He holds an MS in Mass Communication from Florida International University, and a BA in History of the Americas from the University of Puerto Rico. Omar is also a musician, a DJ, and a podcast producer.

Natalie DiRocco (she/her) is the Strategic Initiatives Manager at Evidence for Action, where she oversees the execution of large-scale projects such as the Ways of Knowing Symposia. She also plays a key role in crafting and launching calls for proposals. For over a decade she’s been providing strategy and program management services for the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors in the social impact space. She holds an MPH from Boston University School of Public Health and a BS in BioBehavioral Health from Pennsylvania State University.

Claire Gibbons, PhD, MPH, who joined the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2007, is a senior program officer dedicated to understanding and measuring key health and healthcare issues and analyzing programs that seek to improve the value of the nation’s healthcare and public health systems. She views the Foundation as a “unique organization dedicated to building a national Culture of Health, now and for generations to come. Claire has authored numerous papers and presented widely in the areas of healthcare quality, disparities, evaluation and research methods and approaches, child welfare services, substance abuse, child victimization, diabetes, and end of life care. She earned a PhD from the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MPH from the University of Rochester, New York, and two BA degrees, in Economics and in Health and Society, from the University of Rochester.

Erin has worked across the non-profit, academic, and public sectors. Her experience spans social justice and health equity advocacy, public policy, business, and research. Prior to joining Evidence for Action, Dr. Hagan was the acting Director of Policy and Government Affairs for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. She also previously worked for PolicyLink – a national research and action institute advancing racial and economic equity. She has served as a Commissioner on the Alameda County Public Health Commission, and as co-chair of the Commission’s Health Equity in All Policies sub-committee. Erin received her PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Connecticut, her MBA from Seton Hall University, and her B.S. in Nutrition and Fitness from the University of Missouri. When not working, she can usually be found surfing near her home on the North Shore of Oahu, HI.

Ye Ji is a social epidemiologist and currently an E4A Postdoctoral Scholar. Her professional passion is centered in reaching racial and health equity through evidence-based research, with a particular emphasis on the health and healthcare access of immigrant populations in the U.S. and the application of social epidemiologic methods.

jaboa lake (she/her), Senior Director of Impact Evaluation, Learning, and Research at Race Forward, a national racial justice organization, is a sister, auntie, organizer, and liberation researcher based in DC. As an anti-oppressive methodologist, jaboa has worked with nonprofits, grassroots organizations, city and county governments, school districts, labor unions, and academic research centers to provide research guidance and support. jaboa serves on the board of the Community Legal, Education, and Referral (CLEAR) Clinic, chairs the Policy Committee for the international Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), was a founding organizer for the Black Lives Matter PDX (Oregon) chapter, and is a SPSSI, APA, and MFP Fellow. jaboa has a MS in Applied Psychology and is (very close, she promises) to completing her PhD in Applied Social and Community Psychology, with a focus on mixed research methods. You can find jaboa outside somewhere, learning a new craft, and at the next rally.

Thomas LaVeist is dean of the Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine and Principal Investigator for Partners for Advancing Health Equity. His career has been dedicated to understanding the causes of inequity in health and its potential solutions. He has an extensive record of publication in scientific journals as well as numerous mass media outlets and is director and executive producer of “The Skin You’re In,” a documentary series about racial inequalities in health. He is also author of six books including “Minority Population and Health: An introduction to health disparities in the United States” (the first textbook on health disparities). An award-winning research scientist, Dr. LaVeist has received the “Innovation Award” from National Institutes of Health, the “Knowledge Award” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2013.

Amani Nuru-Jeter, PhD, MPH, provides the overarching vision and direction for E4A and its administration, sets program priorities, and participates in reviews of applications to recommend for funding. She is Professor of Community Health Sciences and Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, where her research focuses on race and socioeconomic health disparities and the measurement and study of racism as a social determinant of health.

Antwi Akom Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the University of California, San Francisco, and SFSU SOUL Lab and Founder & CEO of DOPE Labs, which stands for Digital Organizing Power Building & Engagement Labs. DOPE Labs is one of the leading community-based research organizations in the world where Equity meets Data, Digital, and Design transformation with BIPOC, Rural, and disability/accessibility populations. Dr. Akom’s work examines the relationship between Community Informatics, Big Data, Asset Based Community Design (ABCD), Decolonizing Design, AI, Race, Power, Public Health, and Social Justice. As a Transdisciplinary Professor of African American Studies, Community-Powered Design, AI, Data Science, and Health Innovation Dr. Akom writes, teaches, and speaks widely about Democratizing Data and Design, Community-Centric Design, Algorithmic Justice, Equitable AI, and prototyping and testing new ways that BIPOC and Rural Populations can co-design with cities, communities, hospitals and health care providers to build power and self-determination, reduce disparities, create healthier neighborhoods, increase health/climate equity, and use the power of real-time data, community/patient-driven data, Big Data, and predictive analytics to create local knowledge ecosystems that improve the Public Health Data Infrastructure, share data across social systems, and lift the voices, priorities, and needs of communities from the margins to the epic-center.

As the Founding Director of the AAMC Center for Health Justice and Senior Director, Health Equity Research & Policy at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Philip sparks, supports, and contributes to community-driven, multi-sector efforts that build evidence for programs, policies, practices, and partnerships that eliminate health inequities. He is a population health scientist whose singular professional commitment to health equity research and action spans nearly 25 years. He is widely published, a frequent public speaker, and has served on advisory boards and expert panels for numerous organizations and federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. He is also the President-Elect of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. In 2021, Philip founded the AAMC Center for Health Justice as the natural next step in a career focused on building evidence in support of the structural changes needed to ensure all communities thrive. Prior to joining AAMC in 2012, Dr. Alberti led research, evaluation, and planning efforts for a Bureau within the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that worked to promote health equity between NYC neighborhoods. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and was a Fellow in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Psychiatric Epidemiology Training program.

Wendy E. Barrington, PhD, MPH (she/her) is an Associate Professor with joint appointments in the Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing in the School of Nursing and the Departments of Epidemiology and Health Systems and Population Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. She is an instructor of public health and healthcare practitioners focused on understanding and addressing the social determinants of health in practice and serves as the inaugural director of the Center for Anti-Racism and Community Health (ARCH). As a health disparities researcher and social epidemiologist, Dr. Barrington’s own program of research falls within two main schema: promoting healthy communities and addressing racial disparities in clinical outcomes. She applies anti-racism and community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles to foster authentic community partnerships, collaborate with community health workers and promotoras, and transform health systems via optimizing policy, practices, and processes to disrupt mechanisms of structural racism and discrimination that limit the accessibility and quality of public health and healthcare services. Dr. Barrington is a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) for which she chairs the Health Equity Committee. She is active in cross-institutional collaborations as part of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN), and as board member of the Intercultural Cancer Council.

Dr. Jemar Bather is the Statistical Director for the NYU Center for Anti-racism, Social Justice & Public Health at the NYU School of Global Public Health. He is a public health scientist whose research centers on novel applications of statistical methods to investigate social, structural, and environmental factors affecting health outcomes. He provides empirical evidence that will inform targeted interventions, policy decision-making, and effective prevention strategies. His work is published in diverse outlets such as JAMA Network Open, Environmental Research, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, Statistics in Medicine, Epidemiology, Health Education & Behavior, and Public Health Reports. Dr. Bather received his PhD and AM in Biostatistics from Harvard University, MS in Applied Statistics from NYU, and BS in Statistics from Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Belcourt (Otter Woman) is an American Indian Professor in the College of Health at the University of Montana’s School of Public and Community Health Sciences Departments and Chair of the Native American Studies Department (she is an enrolled tribal member of the Three Affiliated Tribes: Mandan, Hidatsa, Blackfeet, and Chippewa descent). She completed her doctoral and professional studies in at an APA accredited program in clinical psychology with advanced postdoctoral science training completed at the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health. She has worked clinically with diverse populations focusing on Indigenous populations specializing in posttraumatic stress reactions and multiple psychiatric conditions. Her research and clinical priorities include mental health disparities, posttraumatic stress reactions, risk, resiliency, psychiatric disorder, ethics, and environmental public health within the cultural context of American Indian communities. She has worked in mixed methodological analytic research teams at the University of Montana, University of Colorado at Denver, Black Hills State University, and the University of Washington using both qualitative, quantitative, social, and biomedical approaches. She currently teaches American Indian public health courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. She was selected by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health to serve as a JPB Environmental Health Fellow 2014-2018 and is now a Senior fellow to new scholars selected to advance science and scholarship in the field. She has served as a co-lead investigator of two NIH RO1 5-year intervention grants aimed at improving indoor air quality within both Native and non-Native homes that rely upon wood stoves for heating. She has developed community based participatory efforts with communities using ethnographic digital storytelling and culturally grounded analytic techniques to advance effective scientific knowledge to indigenous communities. Community collaborators include tribal communities in Montana, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, and Alaska. Dr. Belcourt serves as a Faculty Senator for the University of Montana, reviews for the National Institute of Health, has chaired the Ford Foundation Psychology Fellowship review panel guided by the National Academy of Sciences, and is a member of the University of Montana Executive Committee of the Senate. She graduated from Browning High School on the Blackfeet Reservation and has three children.

Jaspal Bhatia serves as a program officer with the AIR Equity Initiative at the American Institutes for Research where he defines and implements the programmatic goals for the Public Safety and Policing grant portfolio and sets strategic initiatives that generate and use research to advance equity in the U.S. criminal-legal system. Prior to joining AIR, Bhatia served as the senior manager for justice reform at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund, and previously held roles at The Pew Charitable Trusts, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and Advancement Project.

Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, MAS is the 17th Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the JAMA Network. She is the Lee Goldman, MD Endowed Professor of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Bibbins-Domingo is a general internist, cardiovascular disease epidemiologist, and a national leader in prevention and interventions to address health disparities.

Nineequa Blanding is Vice President, Health at Social Impact Exchange. In this role, she will lead a national network of funders and nonprofit leaders to help build the field of equitable systems transformation in the Health and Wellness sector. Nineequa is a visionary and facilitative leader who has dedicated the entirety of her career toward working at the intersection of health and social justice. She brings nearly two decades of significant, progressive, nonprofit leadership experience where she served at the helm of several local, statewide, and national collaborative efforts to build long-lasting systemic change within healthcare, public health departments, local and state government, philanthropy, and nonprofits. Nineequa currently co-chairs the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health’s Prevention Research Center Community Advisory Board. She has a BA in psychology from Spelman College, and an MPH with honors from Long Island University.

Courtney Boen is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Brown University. Before coming to Brown, she was an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Axilrod Faculty Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Boen's work aims to uncover the social and political forces generating population patterns of health and mortality. Her research combines critical and relational theories of race and racism, insights from the life course perspective, and a variety of social demographic techniques to: 1) provide detailed and accurate estimates of population health patterns; and 2) interrogate and reveal the structural, institutional, and sociopolitical determinants of health inequities. Dr. Boen’s research has been published in a number of journals, including Demography, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, The Journals of Gerontology, Biodemography and Social Biology, Journal of Marriage and Family, Demographic Research, the Journal of Aging and Health, and Health Affairs, among others. Her work has received funding support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Joia A. Crear-Perry, MD, FACOG, is a physician, policy expert, thought leader, and advocate for transformational justice. As the founder and president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, she identifies and challenges racism as a root cause of health inequities. She is a highly sought-after trainer and speaker who has been featured in national and international publications including Essence and Ms. magazine. In 2020, Dr. Crear-Perry was honored by USA Today in its “Women of the Century” series and featured on ABC Nightline’s “Hear Her Voice.” Dr. Crear-Perry has twice addressed the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to elevate the cause of gender diversity and urge a human rights framework toward addressing maternal mortality. Previously, she served as the executive director of the Birthing Project, director of women’s and children’s services at Jefferson Community Healthcare Center, and as the director of clinical services for the city of New Orleans Health Department. Dr. Crear-Perry currently serves as a principal at Health Equity Cypher and on the Board of Trustees for Black Mamas Matter Alliance, Community Catalyst, National Clinical Training Center for Family Planning, and the University of California, San Francisco Preterm Birth Initiative. She is an adjunct professor at Tulane School of Public Health. After completing undergraduate studies at Princeton University and Xavier University, Dr. Crear-Perry received her MD from Louisiana State University and completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Tulane University’s School of Medicine. She is married to Dr. Andre Perry and has three children: Jade, Carlos, and Robeson. Her love is her family; health equity is her passion; maternal and child health are her callings.

Dr. Dean is Associate Professor in Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-lead of the Guaranteed Income & Health Consortium. As a social epidemiologist, her work focuses on privilege and health, including social (racism, discrimination, social capital) and economic (consumer credit, socioeconomic position) determinants of disparities in cancer and HIV. She has led several studies as PI of NIH, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Center for AIDS Research, and institutional grants. She holds a doctorate from Harvard School of Public Health and was a J. William Fulbright program awardee to Venezuela.

Dr. Rebecca Delafield (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Native Hawaiian Health at the University of Hawai‘i John A. Burns School of Medicine. She received her MPH in Maternal and Child Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned her PhD in Public Health - Community-based and Translational Research from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her work integrates community-engaged research approaches and largely focuses on identifying and addressing maternal and perinatal health disparities impacting Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities. In addition to her academic research, Dr. Delafield is a member of the Hawai‘i Maternal Mortality Review Committee and is involved with various initiatives working to advance health equity for NHPI communities locally and across the U.S.

Dr. Crystal Ellis is currently the Chief Office of Research for Healing Heights. Dr. Crystal Ellis holds her Ph.D in African and African Diaspora Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the primary focus of her research over the past 10 years has been community development practices, and the transformative impact of these practices on the lives of people impacted by systemic discrimination and marginalisation. Dr. Ellis has been in community organising work for 15 years, starting as an intern at Sherman Park Community Association and since then has had various roles including serving on an ACLU board, Community Organising Director with Freedom Inc, and private community research consultant. Her most recent work is being the principal investigator and coordinating the BPI report in partnership with Black Philanthropy Initiative at the Winston Salem Foundation. Dr. Ellis also wrote the methodology for a shared community engagement research infrastructure across two non profit organizations.

Dr. Chandra Ford is Professor of Behavioral, Social and Health Education Sciences in the Rollins School of Public Health and of African American Studies at Emory University. Prior to joining Emory she founded the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice and Health, which moved with her to Atlanta, GA in 2023. Dr. Ford is lead editor (with Derek Griffith, Marino Bruce and Keon Gilbert) of Racism: Science & Tools for the Public Health Professional (APHA Press, 2019), which the American Library Association named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2020. She earned her doctorate in Health Behavior from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and completed postdoctoral fellowships in Social Medicine (at UNC School of Medicine) and Epidemiology (at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health), the latter as a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Kellogg Health Scholar.

Her areas of expertise include the conceptualization and measurement of race, ethnicity and racism constructs, health equity applications of Critical Race Theory, and the health and healthcare implications of racism. Her work is anchored in Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP), a 4-stage adaptation of CRT that she co-originated with Collins Airhihenbuwa to guide antiracism approaches to health equity research. Dr. Ford serves the profession widely. She is a longstanding member of the American College of Epidemiology’s Minority Affairs Committee and a former president of the Society for the Analysis of African American Public Health Issues. She has received many teaching awards and several notable honors, including the 2020 Wade Hampton Frost Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Black Women Physicians. She served in the leadership of the Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina organizing committee of the Black Radical Congress and is a longtime partner with the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders.

Camille Gamboa is Associate Vice President, Corporate Communications at Sage where she works to support a healthy future for social and behavioral science. She has a Master of Arts in communication from Pepperdine University and a certificate for women and leadership from Antioch University. She lives in the DC area with her husband and two daughters.

Danielle R. Gartner (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) is a mother, sister, daughter, auntie, and relative. As an academic, she identifies as an epidemiologist whose work recognizes and supports Indigenous self-determination, sovereignty, and resurgence. Dr. Gartner’s projects aim to improve the well-being of birth givers and their families and have been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Michigan Health Endowment Fund. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Michigan State University.

Dr. Derek M. Griffith is a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Health in the School of Nursing and a Professor in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, he also serves as a Fellow and Senior Advisor on Health Equity and Anti-Racism in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Outside of the university, Dr. Griffith serves the Chair of Global Action on Men’s Health – a global men’s health advocacy organization and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Men's Social & Community Health. Trained in psychology and public health, Dr. Griffith’s program of research focuses on developing anti-racism approaches to achieve racial, ethnic, and gender equity in health. Dr. Griffith is a contributor to and co-editor of three books, and his fourth co-edited book - Racism: Science and Tools for the Public Health Professional, 2nd Edition will be published in October 2024. He has been the principal investigator of research grants from the American Cancer Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and several institutes within the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Griffith serves on the editorial boards of several public health and men's health journals. Recently, he received a citation from the president of the American Psychological Association, “For his extraordinary leadership in addressing the impacts of racism on the health and well-being of the nation and specifically for African American and Latino men”.

Jocelyn Hastings is a senior associate with Pew’s evidence project. She supports the Transforming Evidence Funders Network’s (TEFN) efforts to enhance research impact by developing compelling messaging and strengthening engagement across the network’s global community of funders. Hastings works closely with TEFN participants to advance evidence-informed practices and collective action strategies that address complex societal challenges. Before joining Pew, Hastings managed a portfolio of leadership development and evaluation capacity-building programs at ImpactED at the University of Pennsylvania. She also led numerous large-scale research projects in partnership with the City of Philadelphia and other public sector agencies. Hastings holds a master’s degree in education entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania and bachelor’s degrees in public health and Spanish from Temple University. She is strongly committed to advancing equity and building inclusive communities that drive positive social change.

Chien-Chi Huang is the founder of Asian Breast Cancer Project and the founder/former Executive Director of Asian Women for Health, a nonprofit organization providing culturally responsive health education and peer support for Asian women and their loved ones. An immigrant from Taiwan and a breast cancer survivor turned advocate, Ms. Huang has spearheaded several health initiatives in Massachusetts. The Workforce Development Initiative trains those who are under-served and under-resourced and finds them jobs as community health workers, providing an upstream solution to address the unique challenges facing the Asian community. Both mainstream and Asian media outlets have featured Ms. Huang’s efforts and culturally responsive approach to reducing health disparities related to gambling addiction, mental health, women’s health, and cancers. Motivated to lead through her cancer experience, Ms. Huang continues to participate in local, regional, and national efforts on health policy and research impacting the Asian community. Her passion for health equity and women empowerment has changed the healthcare landscape and created a pipeline of future Asian women leaders and peer health educators.

Darrell Hudson, PhD, MPH is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Prior to his appointment at Michigan, he was Professor of Public Health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and Director for the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity at Washington University. Dr. Hudson’s career is dedicated to the elimination of racial/ethnic inequities in health. His research agenda centers on how social determinants of health, particularly racism, affect multiple health outcomes. Dr. Hudson is also striving to develop researchers and professionals who are both well trained and passionate about achieving health equity.

Mira Kahn is the Associate Director, Health at Social Impact Exchange. In this role, she supports the Health Affinity Group with the goal of advancing equitable systems change. Prior to joining SIE, Mira worked for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists managing 2 multi-year federal grants. Mira's work experience also includes grantmaking on the Health team at the Boston Foundation supporting a portfolio of 15 nonprofit partners all working to improve the health of Boston residents and creating workplace wellness programs for Cigna's small business clients. Mira received her Master of Public Health from George Washington University, her BA in French and BS in Kinesiology from the University of Maryland.

Christopher (Ngāi Tahu) is an Assistant Scientist with the Center for Indigenous Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an implementation scientist focused on supporting health systems and communities to deliver services that community members need and want. Christopher has a particular interest in preventive and treatment services related to mental health, HIV, and substance use. He spends his free time in the mountains or on the water with his partner and three small children.

Tené T. Lewis’ primary area of research is in the area of health psychology/psychosocial epidemiology, with an emphasis on cardiovascular health in women. She has a particular interest in understanding how psychological and social factors contribute to the disproportionately high rates of cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality observed in African-American women compared to women of other racial/ethnic groups. Dr. Lewis has two primary projects: one focused on psychosocial stress, resilience, and ambulatory blood pressure in healthy African-American women, and the other focused on psychosocial stress, inflammation and atherosclerosis in African-American women with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. Dr. Lewis’ scientific work has received honors from the American Psychosomatic Society and the Health Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association and has been featured in the Washington Post, USA Today, Essence Magazine, JET magazine and on National Public Radio (NPR).

Dr. Laura Magaña is President and CEO of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH). She is also the founding President of the Global Network for Academic Public Health (GNAPH), an alliance of seven regional associations representing schools and programs of public health worldwide. Under her leadership, ASPPH has continued to advance academic public health by mobilizing the collective power of its members to drive excellence and innovation in education, research, and practice. During her tenure, ASPPH has strengthened academic public health research through the Data Center, launched the academic public health leadership institute, and enhanced the voice of academic public health through advocacy. Dr. Magaña expanded the association’s global reach and is leading five strategic initiatives to address critical issues in public health as part of ASPPH’s Vision 2030: Dismantling Racism in Academic Public Health, Climate Change and Health, Framing the Future 2030, Gun Violence Prevention and the ASPPH Workforce Development Center. Prior to joining ASPPH, Dr. Magaña dedicated more than 35 years to successfully leading the transformation and advancements of public and private universities in Mexico, educational organizations in the United States, United Nations programs, and nongovernmental organizations in Central America and Europe. She was most recently the dean of the School of Public Health at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico. Dr. Magaña’s diverse portfolio features 90 academic publications — many of which relate to learning environments, the use of technology in education, and public health education.

Aresha Martinez-Cardoso is an interdisciplinary public health researcher and Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Chicago. Her research integrates theoretical perspectives from the social sciences with epidemiological methods in public health to examine how social inequality in the US shapes population health, with a particular focus on the health of racial/ethnic groups and immigrants.

Dr. Lauren W. Yowelunh McLester-Davis is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Her research asserts Tribal sovereignty through community-based participatory research practices answering neuroscience-related questions with an emphasis on working for sovereign nations. She is the Director of Indigenous Science Advocacy in the Native American Center for Health Professions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She works with the center's Tribal Engagement Office, engaging in youth science education, as well as capacity building efforts to support Tribal institutional review boards, data sovereignty, and research engagement with Wisconsin's Native Nations.

Aleta Lynn Meyer, Ph.D. Dr. Meyer is Lead for Primary Prevention and Resilience in the Office of Planning Research and Evaluation (OPRE) at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Her work focuses on the translation of theory and empirical research across multiple health and well-being outcomes into effective and feasible prevention programs for communities. At OPRE she leads the cross-cutting priority areas of (1) strengths-based translation of research on early adversity and chronic stress to ACF programs; (2) community-engaged research to evaluate human services programs that serve Indigenous communities in the United States; and (3) developing learning agendas and evidence capacity-building through active engagement. From 2007-2010, she was a health scientist administrator in the Prevention Research Branch at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Prior to joining NIDA, she was an Associate Professor of Psychology in the Clark-Hill Institute for Positive Youth Development at Virginia Commonwealth University. She completed her doctoral work in Human Development and Family Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, with an emphasis in Prevention Science.

Mahasin S. Mujahid, PhD, MS, FAHA, is the Chair of the Division of Epidemiology and holds the prestigious Lillian E. I. and Dudley J. Aldous Chair at the School of Public Health, UC Berkeley. A leading expert in social epidemiology, her research focuses on the social and structural drivers of health inequities, particularly in cardiovascular and maternal health. Dr. Mujahid serves as Principal Investigator of the Social Determinants Core for the RURAL cohort study, examining heart and lung health in rural Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta. Her work, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is widely published in top public health and medical journals.

Dr. Thu Nguyen is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on the impact of social factors on minority health and health disparities. A primarily line of focus of her research is investigating the influence of racism and other forms of biases in creating and perpetuating health equities. She uses a variety of different data sources (including Big Data) and approaches (including quantitative and qualitative research methods) to advance our understanding of social determinants of health. She is the principal investigator of National Institute of Health grants examining the impact of discrimination and racial bias on health using social media data. Through my NIH funded research, she developed a place-level measure of racial climate from social media data and examined its association with health outcomes. In her research, she uses online and social media data to track and detect temporal and geographic changes in area-level racial bias with local and national race-related events, and identifies risk and protective factors for health. Dr. Nguyen also leads the interdisciplinary research collaborative, Big Data for Health Equity (BD4HE). BD4HE is comprised of faculty, trainees, and students from universities across the U.S committed to advancing theories, methods, and findings related to the use of Big Data for health equity research. The group investigates the impact of the social, cultural, and built environment on health inequities and identifies levers for change. An overarching objective of the group is to provide a formal space for training, mentorship, and collaboration.

Dr. Ryan J. Petteway, DrPH, MPH—associate professor in the OSHU-PSU School of Public Health— is a public health scholar, educator, and poet who integrates social epidemiology, participatory research, and creative arts to advance health equity. He engages critical, Black feminist, and decolonial theory and methods to pursue procedural and epistemic justice and advance antiracist praxis within public health research/practice, including via satire/humor, music, and poetry. Prior to his doctoral training, Dr. Petteway served as social epidemiologist and chief epidemiologist for the Baltimore City Health Department. Before that, he sat on bench-backs and sipped “orange drink”, listening to Mobb Deep while conducting observational studies of project life. #FirstGen. He still reps The Ville. – www.rjpetteway.com

Miamon Queeglay is a Public Health Practitioner and Project Manager with Hennepin County Public Health in the Community Well Being and Strategic Initiatives Department. Miamon’s areas of expertise in the public health sector are family and community engagement, adolescent health, health policy, and community-based participatory research (CBPR). She previously worked at the University of Minnesota (School of Public Health, Health Policy Management Division) as the Director of Research Programs, where she worked for Associate Professor Dr Rachel Hardeman, Founding Director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity. Miamon has previous experience working as a Community Schools Manager, where she implemented a holistic approach to health, well-being, and education. She also worked at the Brooklyn Center Police Department as a Community Liaison. Miamon is the daughter of Liberian Immigrants and a mother of three boys. She earned her MPH in Public Health Administration and Policy from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Miamon strives to dismantle structural racism to improve health and well-being.

Rashawn Ray is Vice-President, and Executive Director of the AIR Equity Initiative at the American Institutes for Research. Launched in 2021, the AIR Equity Initiative is a 10-year, $225M investment in behavioral and social science research and technical assistance to address the underlying causes of systemic inequities and to increase opportunities for people and communities. As a Professor at the University of Maryland and Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Ray has published over 50 books, articles, and book chapters, and over 50 op-eds. He has written for Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, POLITICO, Business Insider, Newsweek, NBC News, The Guardian, The Hill, Huffington Post, and The Conversation. He regularly testifies at the federal and state levels on racial equity, policing and criminal justice reform, health policy, wealth disparities, and family policy. Ray was recently awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.

Paige Castro-Reyes (she/her/gui’) is the Deputy Director of Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH), a national nonprofit that promotes health equity and social justice through community-institutional partnerships. During her 11 years at CCPH, Paige has served and supported multiple multi-partner projects focused on community engagement, community-led research ethics review, and culturally responsive research practices. Outside of CCPH, Paige serves as a founding board member on the Indigenous Roots & Reparation Foundation (IRRF), a nonprofit focused on facilitating cultural reclamation spaces for all Indigenous peoples on Wenatchi/P’Squosa Homelands. Paige is also a member of the Pasifika Village Council facilitated by the Pacific Islander Community Association of Washington (PICA-WA). With deep roots on Guam/Guåhan and into the diaspora, Paige brings her unique lived and learned experience as a mestisa CHamoru woman, artist and mother to her mission-driven work.

Alicia Riley is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Core Faculty in Global and Community Health at University of California, Santa Cruz. She studies the health effects of structural racism, with a particular focus on their modifiability through policy and other types of social change. Much of her recent research focuses on inequities in mortality and bereavement during the COVID-19 pandemic. She co-directs the Pandemic Equity and Analytics Research Lab. She is also currently co-leading a multi-campus research project on Indigenous health and social networks in California. Prior to academia, she worked in community health in non-profit and government settings and she has a longstanding involvement in immigrant rights organizing.

Goleen Samari is an Associate Professor and population health demographer in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California. Dr. Samari’s research considers structural inequities, namely, racism, gender inequities, and migration-based inequities, shaping reproductive and population health with a particular focus on immigrants and populations in or from the Middle East and North Africa. Her recent work includes extending measures of structural racism and sociopolitical environments to include immigrants and/or religious minorities, like her recent measure of structural xenophobia based on state-level immigration policy (the Immigration Policy Climate Index). Dr. Samari also currently serves as an Associate Editor for Health Equity and as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Samari earned a Ph.D. in public health, an MPH in community health sciences, and an MA in Islamic studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Alyasah Ali Sewell (they/she) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University with affiliations in African American Studies and the Rollins School of Public Health. Their research on structural racism, police violence, and racialized bioethics has been featured in hundreds of public media outlets, including national and international policy proceedings. Sewell has been honored as a 2016 "Future" Dream Keeper by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the 2020 Georgia Sociologist of the Year. They are principal investigator of the National LGBTQ+ Women’s Community Survey, fielded by Justice Work and founded by civil rights activist Urvashi Vaid. Sewell co-authored its ground-breaking report, We Never Give Up the Fight, with Jaime Grant. They established the Critical Racism Data Lab and The Race and Policing Project to advance data equity in racism, intersectionality, and injury prevention. Their research has been supported by the National Institute of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Baden-Württemberg Foundation. They received postdoctoral training in Demography from the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania; their Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from Indiana University, Bloomington with a minor in Social Science Research Methods; and their B.A. summa cum laude in Sociology from the University of Florida with a minor in Women’s Studies.

Natalie Slopen (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also an affiliated faculty member at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. As a social epidemiologist, Dr. Slopen works on a range of studies on topics related to the social and structural determinants of children’s health and health disparities across the life course. Her research has focused on the role of socioeconomic disadvantage, racism, housing insecurity, neighborhood context, and other experiences for children’s mental and physical health outcomes.

Monica Valdes Lupi, JD, MPH, joined the Kresge Foundation as the Managing Director for Health in September 2020. With more than 20 years of experience in public health, Monica leads the Foundation’s efforts to build equity-focused systems of health that create opportunities for all people to achieve well-being. She collaborates with other Kresge teams on efforts to lead with equity and partner with communities in their efforts to ensure access to safe and affordable housing, fresh food, clean air, and economic opportunities. She received her JD from the Dickinson School of Law, MPH from the Boston University School of Public Health and BA from Bryn Mawr College.

David Vlahov (he/him) is a Professor of Nursing at the Yale School of Nursing and Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. David was formerly at UCSF as Dean of Nursing, New York Academy of Medicine as Director of Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies (Harlem Community Academic Partnership), and member of NYC Board of Health. At Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, established the ALIVE Study. Formerly co-Director of the Evidence for Action and Health & Society Scholars programs of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is currently the Editor of Journal of Urban Health.

Deanna J. Wathington, MD, MPH currently serves as president-elect of the American Public Health Association (APHA). She is the clinical director at REACHUP, Inc., an affiliate professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health and the executive director of the Consortium of African American Public Health Programs. She previously served as dean of the Bethune-Cookman University College of Health Sciences, associate dean for Academic and Student Affairs at the USF College of Public Health, associate dean for Academic Enrichment at the USF College of Medicine and as the director of the Office of Minority Health at the Florida Department of Health.

Dr. Curtis L Webb III is a sociologist whose journey marries rigorous research with impassioned advocacy, echoing the timeless wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois's scholar-practitioner model. Dr. Curtis, an HBCU graduate from Morehouse College, proud son of the Southside of Chicago, and a sociology PhD graduate from the University of Cincinnati, honors his background through his commitment to community-centered approaches to his social impact work. He often asks, “What does this mean to his grandma?”, as a grounding technique, and encourages his collaborators to consider the most vulnerable in their decision-making processes as well. Over the last four years, he has brought his profound acumen in social change and racial analysis, as well as advocating for vulnerable populations to Design Impact as their Director of Systems Redesign and Community-Centered Research. When he is not talking systems, you can find him enjoying music, dance battles, kicking it with loved ones, and indulging in all the good eats.

Kristina Weeks, DrPH, MHS, is an implementation scientist, health services researcher, and faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She serves as co-director of the Accelerating Collaborations for Mentoring and Equity (ACME) program, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) Health Equity Scholars for Action Program (HES4A). The ACME program focuses on advancing the careers of health equity researchers from historically underrepresented groups, helping them progress to tenured academic positions. At the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr. Weeks and the ACME team partner with RWJF to foster meaningful connections between early-stage research faculty and experienced mentors who understand the unique lived experiences and challenges of their mentees. ACME also supports E4A by facilitating collaborations between community-based organizations—such as non-profits, social service agencies, and local governments—and researchers to design and conduct rigorous studies aimed at advancing racial equity.

Nancy Rumbaugh Whitesell, Ph.D., is a Professor at the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Her research focuses on improving developmental outcomes for Indigenous children and adolescents. Dr. Whitesell leads several community-engaged research projects focused on early childhood: the Center for Indigenous Research and Collaboration and Learning for Home Visiting (CIRCLE-HV), supporting research-practice collaborations to build meaningful evidence with Indigenous communities (HHSP233201500133I; Whitesell, PI); the Multi-site Implementation Evaluation of MIECHV Home Visiting with AIAN Families (MUSE), a partnership with 17 tribal communities (47QRAA20D0008; Whitesell, PI); the MUSE State-Tribal Collaboration study (MUSE-STC), exploring partnerships between states and tribal communities to deliver home visiting (47QRAA20D0008, Whitesell, PI); and multiple studies as Director of Research and Measurement for the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center (90PH0027; Sarche, PI). In addition, Dr. Whitesell leads a team of researchers and community partners who have developed (R01DA035111; Whitesell, PI) and are now testing (R37DA047926; Whitesell, PI) Thiwáhe Gluwáš’akapi (sacred home in which families are made strong), a family-based early substance use prevention program for young adolescents. Finally, Dr. Whitesell co-directs the Native Children’s Research Exchange (NCRE) and the NCRE Scholars program (R25DA050645, Whitesell & Sarche, PIs), which provides mentorship and training to early career Indigenous scientists.

Joy Williams, MFA, MDiv, MPH, is a speaker, writer, dancer, and entrepreneur. She is the founder and Executive Director of Hope to Thrive, a nonprofit in Winston-Salem, NC. You can find Joy most days turning her family home into a living and learning homestead, growing and cooking food, making homemade chemical-free cleaning and body products, and hosting indigenous lifestyles programs. Joy believes in modeling a lifestyle rooted in what it means to live simply, off the land, and striving in harmony with God, the earth, others, and oneself–all for the purpose of helping her community have access to locally grown food and a great quality of life.

Maria-Elena Young is an Assistant Professor of Public Health at the University of California, Merced. Her research examines the relationships between federal, state, and local immigration policies and health inequities.