SDHI Members
To become a member, please complete our survey on social determinants of health-related issues, linked below. The SDHI has over 500 members in the Portland, Oregon area. Members come from Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, community organizations, governmental agencies, and local health systems. Anyone who is interested in addressing social determinants of health through research, education, or advocacy is welcome to join. Members receive a weekly newsletter and are invited to participate in any SDHI activities, including our weekly Scholarship and Research in Progress Sessions.
Take our member survey.
View our Member Directory.
SDHI Scholars
Scholars are our inner-core group of members who have demonstrated scholarship in the area of SDH, and who are actively involved in initiative activities. Being a part of this group gives Scholars access to peer mentorship and community, admin support, research dissemination, a resource repository, and more.
We also have a searchable member expertise database with additional information. If you are looking for collaborators or mentors who have expertise in specific aspects of SDH or health equity research, please contact us to access our database.
Continue scrolling to read more about the SDHI Scholars and to view our Member Directory. If you are a current member and would like to add, edit, or delete a listing, please email sdhi@pdx.edu with the details of your request.
SDHI Scholars
Christina Nicolaidis, SDHI Director - Professor and Scholar in Social Determinants of Health, PSU School of Social Work; Adjunct Associate Professor in Internal Medicine and Public Health, OHSU; Contact: nicol22@pdx.edu
Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH is the Director of the Social Determinants of Health Initiative and Professor in the School of Social Work at PSU. She also hold a secondary appointment in the OHSU Department of Medicine. As a general internist and health services researcher, Dr. Nicolaidis uses participatory research to improve the health and healthcare of marginalized populations. Many of her current projects focus on autism in adulthood. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE; www.aaspire.org), an international academic-community partnership that uses community-based participatory research to address the priorities of autistic adults. AASPIRE has conducted a series of National Institute of Health-funded studies on health care and employment for autistic adults and has created the AASPIRE Healthcare Toolkit (www.autismandhealth.org) for use in primary care settings. Dr. Nicolaidis is currently leading a large NIH-funded R01 project, in partnership with AASPIRE, to develop and test the AutPROM Toolbox, a set of accessible patient-reported outcome measures that can be used to evaluate services interventions for autistic adults. She also is the founding Editor-in-Chief of a new peer-reviewed journal, Autism in Adulthood (www.liebertpub.com/aut). More broadly, Dr. Nicolaidis works to improve health equity and address social determinants of health. She has led or collaborated on multiple externally-funded projects on intimate partner violence and other trauma, racial and ethnic health equity, chronic pain, substance use disorders, depression, patient-provider communication, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and health system transformation. She is actively mentoring or collaborating with many SDHI scholars. She brings expertise in community-based participatory research, survey development and adaptation, qualitative and mixed-methods research, and intervention development and evaluation. Dr. Nicolaidis teaches research methods in the School of Social Work at Portland State University (PSU), teaches and practices general internal medicine at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), and mentors multiple junior faculty members.
Brian Chan, MD, MPH, SDHI Steering Committee Member - Assistant Professor, OHSU Dept. of Medicine; Contact: chanbri@ohsu.edu
Brian Chan is an assistant professor of medicine at OHSU Department of Medicine, division of general internal medicine and geriatrics. He attended Stanford University as an undergraduate, SUNY Downstate for medical school, and completed internal medicine residency at OHSU. He then completed the UCSF primary care research fellowship under mentorship from Dr. Margot Kushel where he studied quality of care for low-income, older populations. Brian returned to OHSU in 2015 as junior faculty and practice primary care at Central City Concern, and hospital medicine at OHSU hospital. Brian studies the effect of clinical innovations on improving the quality and care for patients with substance use disorders who are medically and socially complex. He is the primary investigator of an evaluation of a novel integrated primary care model of care to improve outcomes for medically and socially complex patient populations with substance use disorder. His research interests are in health systems improvement, access to substance use treatment, integration of bio-psychosocial factors and social determinants of health in primary care, patient centered healthcare, clinical reasoning, and resident education. This year, he entered into his second year as an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) K12 researcher (PI: Guise) conducting a mixed methods wait-list control evaluation of an ambulatory intensive care unit intervention for high-utilizers at a federally qualified health center. He is also leading an AHRQ led rapid review of interventions to improve retention in medication assisted treatment for patients with opioid use disorder.
Susanne Klawetter, PhD, LCSW - Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Portland State University; Contact: skla2@pdx.edu
Dr. Klawetter is an Assistant Professor in the PSU School of Social Work. She is a maternal and child health disparities scholar with particular interests in maternal/early childhood mental health. She conducts research that sits at the intersection of policy advocacy (e.g., universal paid leave) and improving clinical care for women of color and low-income women (e.g., integrated behavioral health in novel settings). Through impacting policy and clinical care, her research aims to positively impact maternal/child health equity. Susanne is currently working on several projects. Her project, “Integrated Behavioral Health Support for OHSU NICU Families,” funded through NW Center of Excellence & K12 in Patient Centered Learning Health Systems Science, aims to identify individual- and systemic barriers and solutions to integrating a behavioral health and parenting support program within the OHSU NICU. In partnership with Dr. Roberta Hunte and Multnomah County’s Healthy Birth Initiative, she is also working on a project funded through PSU’s School of Social Work which aims to explore the impact and responses to race-related stress among program staff and program participants. Her project, “Barriers and facilitators to maternal visits in the NICU and impact of visiting on infant development,” examines maternal engagement in multiple Colorado NICUs and its relationship to maternal mental health and infant health outcomes. Lastly, “Program development and evaluation of Warm Connections,” evaluates and an integrated behavioral health program located within multiple Colorado WIC clinics.
Julie Reeder, SDHI Steering Committee Member - Senior Research Analyst, Oregon WIC Program, Oregon Health Authority; Contact: julie.a.reeder@state.or.us
Julie Reeder, Ph.D., MPH, MS, CHES is the Senior Research Analyst with the State of Oregon WIC Program. In her 17 years in the position she has conducted multiple mixed methods studies that have explored the influence of peer counselors and changes to the WIC food packages on long term, exclusive breastfeeding. She has also studied the integration of motivational interviewing in WIC, periconceptual health, the pros and cons of technology in the program, and recently published articles on the role of WIC in identifying developmental delays, and a systematic review on the evidence for cooking-related interventions. Current work focuses on better integrating WIC in to Clinical and Early Learning systems and creating a postpartum quality of life tool for the later postpartum period. Julie is also a member of the National WIC Association Evaluation Committee, Program Planning Committee member for the Textbook and Academic Authors Association, serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, and is Chair of the American Public Health Association Food and Nutrition Section.
Anna Steeves-Reece, PhD, MPH, MA, SDHI Steering Committee Member - Investigator I, OCHIN Contact: steevesreecea@ochin.org
Anna Steeves-Reece, PhD, MPH, MA is a qualitative and mixed methods health researcher with a background in public health, medical anthropology, and Latin American studies. Her work broadly focuses on health equity, patient-centered care, and social-medical integration. Anna’s past research projects have explored a wide range of topics, including the role of community health workers in ameliorating perinatal mental health in rural Nicaragua; equity implications regarding a paid family leave policy in Oregon; and how to better integrate patients’ perspectives and recommendations into healthcare-based social needs screening and referral interventions.
Dr. Anais Tuepker, SDHI Steering Committee - Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC); VA Portland Health Care System, Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, OHSU; Contact: tuepker@ohsu.edu.
Anaïs Tuepker is a sociologist, health services researcher, and Qualitative Core Director with the Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) at the VA Portland Health Care System, as well as Co-Research Director for the Relational Leadership Institute, and Assistant Professor (Research) in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at OHSU. Her research interests include building more equitable, inclusive, and participatory workplaces for health care teams, and improving quality of care and relevance of services for patients experiencing intersecting barriers to health, such as houselessness or Intimate Partner Violence. She also researches engagement, resilience, and interprofessional culture among health care workers and as factors affecting the performance of health care teams. Her work often utilizes realist, action-oriented, and/or participatory approaches to engage health system workers and patients in co-creating knowledge for health system redesign. She has conducted research and evaluation work in academic and community settings, including with immigrant and refugee communities in Portland and elsewhere. Alongside her work as a researcher, she is a climate justice activist and organizer and is the current Board President for 350PDX, a climate justice organization. She is an affiliated researcher with the National Center on Homelessness among Veterans and has been a Co-investigator on several studies with a specific focus on care for Veterans experiencing homelessness. She is also a Site Co-Lead for the VA’s Women’s Health Practice Based Research Network.
C. Estela Vasquez Guzman, PhD - Post-doctoral Scholar, Family Medicine, OHSU; Contact: vasquest@ohsu.edu
Dr. Vasquez Guzman has received extensive training in medical sociology, health policy, and leadership. As a policy analyst, she was deeply involved with economic, immigration, and health policy. Her broader research agenda is concerned with inequities in medicine, health, and health delivery among populations of color, particularly immigrant communities. She utilizes the SDOH framework and uplifts Anti-Racist and Whiteness theories in order to engage with meaningful transformation and uplift the lived experiences of BIPOC patients. At OHSU, she is part of the NNACOE, RELATE, as well as BACKGROUND/PAST-DUE/FOCUS teams engaged in increasing the representation of Native American Medical Students, emphasizing the importance of relationships and leadership among healthcare professionals, and researching cervical cancer inequities among Latinas emphasizing the intersection between reproductive health, healthcare policy, and the need to reform medical education training.
Dawn Richardson, former SDHI Steering Committee Member - Associate Dean for Social Justice, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: drichar2@pdx.edu
Dawn Richardson, DrPH, MPH is the Associate Dean for Social Justice in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health (SPH), and she works in partnership with those advancing racial equity efforts at both OHSU and PSU. In this role she is advancing the school’s antiracism initiative, which includes guiding and evaluating the SPH’s (1) Antiracism Faculty Fellows Program; (2) capacity building efforts around antiracist pedagogy and practice for faculty and staff; (3) advancing related social justice efforts including the Social Justice Working Group and Caregiver Equity Working Group; and (4) serving as the Dean’s Team Liaison to the Community Engagement Committee and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Her efforts in the Dean’s office are informed by her scholarship as an Associate Professor: Dr. Richardson is a social epidemiologist whose research is informed by the principles of community-based participatory research. With her research Dr. Richardson seeks to build understanding of how structural inequities impact health and to develop upstream interventions to advance health equity. Specifically, her research questions focus on the pathways by which the unequal distributions of income, power and wealth (shaped and reified by structural racism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy) affect social and geographic mobility, access to opportunity, and ultimately health outcomes. Working in partnership with community, Dr. Richardson works to incorporate research findings into concrete programs and policies to promote population health. A growing focus of her scholarship is on the development and incorporation of “pathway” programs intended to center and celebrate the expertise of Black, Indigenous, and other Scholars of Color in the academy, particularly in public health. Her most recent research efforts include: an NIH-funded study examining the role of documentation status on immigrant women's health; an evaluation of paid leave policies and related analysis of structural racism as a driver of barriers to accessing such policies; and a pilot project aimed at understanding how to best support BIPOC Women Scholars pursuing STEM-focused degrees to promote public health.
Wayne Wakeland, former SDHI Steering Committee Member - Professor and Systems Science Program Chair, PSU Systems Science; Contact: wakeland@pdx.edu
Wayne Wakeland is Professor and Systems Science Program Chair at Portland State University. He earned a B.S. and a Master of Engineering at Harvey Mudd College (1973); and a Ph.D. in Systems Science at Portland State U. (1977). For twenty years he taught as an adjunct while working in the industry. In 2000, he became a fixed-term associate professor in the Systems Science Program. From there, he became tenure-track in 2005, received tenure in 2008, and was promoted to professor in 2014. Wayne teaches computer simulation methods, and his research focuses on the application of systems science methods, system dynamics and agent based simulation in particular, to complex societal problems. This research tends to be highly interdisciplinary and collaborative. Recent research has focused on recovery from concussion, health policy related to drug diversion and abuse, and environmental/ecological sustainability. Emerging collaborative research includes the dynamics of toxic stress in children, and computational models to study complications during human pregnancy. Earlier research focused on biomedicine, including intracranial pressure dynamics, sepsis, and cellular receptor dynamics, and on criminal justice system effectiveness, terrorism, and fishery regulation. Wayne was born and raised in Alaska, and he loves to camp and hike. His main hobbies include motorcycles, listening to music, and fixing up old computers for donation. He also like to read when time allows—mostly science fiction and mysteries.
Shannon Blajeski, PhD, MSW - Adjunct Research Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: blajeski@pdx.edu
Shannon Blajeski, PhD, MSW is an Adjunct Research Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Portland State University, and an Intermittent Lecturer with the University of Michigan, School of Social Work. Her area of research is concerned with (1) improving public mental health services and practice to be more responsive to the poverty and oppression experienced by adults with serious mental illness (SMI); and (2) understanding the additional barriers to employment and education for BIPOC individuals diagnosed with SMI. Her research is informed by a number of frameworks including the social determinants of health, critical disability & race theories, and emancipatory frameworks such as anti-poverty and anti-stigma approaches. Furthermore, she primarily utilizes participatory, qualitative, and mixed-methods to include and empower marginalized voices in the co-construction of knowledge. Currently, she is studying the ways that young adults with early psychosis from disadvantaged backgrounds including those from BIPOC families, from low-income backgrounds, and those with low educational attainment, can improve their educational trajectories while working with early intervention programs. These young people are at a higher-than-average risk for long-term disability and subsequent poverty, due to early disengagement with work and education, and have disproportionately worse outcomes after completing early psychosis programs. She is also organizing participatory stakeholder groups concerned with improving Supported Employment & Education (SEE) in early psychosis programs in Oregon, Washington, & Michigan. Her research on reducing poverty and disability is informed by seven years of direct practice in community mental health settings, including two post-MSW years working with urban adults with mental illness who were predominantly homeless, and disproportionately BIPOC. She then spent ten years implementing the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model for adults with serious mental illness (SMI) in both urban and rural areas across Washington State before returning to the academy to pursue her PhD. She received her MSW and PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Washington in Seattle, and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the University of Michigan, School of Social Work.
Hannah Cohen-Cline - Research Scientist and the Program Director for Research and Evaluation and Providence’s Center for Outcomes Research and Education; Contact: Hannah.Cohen-Cline@providence.org
Hannah Cohen-Cline, PhD MPH is a Research Scientist and the Program Director for Research and Evaluation and Providence’s Center for Outcomes Research and Education. A social epidemiologist by training, her research interests include associations between housing and health, health services transformation efforts to integrate consideration of social determinants of health into medical settings, and analysis of cross-sector data. Her work relies mainly on quantitative methods for analysis of administrative data, as well as community-based surveys. Her current and recent research includes a natural experiment of the impact of receiving Housing Choice Vouchers on families’ wellbeing; the evaluation of a value-based payment model implemented in primary care to improve patient health and health care outcomes; a study assessing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in access to breast cancer screening, and working with an Accountable Community of Health in Washington to help them better understand how their programs and policies are impacting the populations they serve.
Samuel Edwards - General Internist, Physician, and Health Services Research, Portland Veteran's Affairs Health Care System, Assistant Professor of Medicine, OHSU; Contact: edwarsam@ohsu.edu
Samuel Edwards MD, MPH is a general internist, primary care physician, and health services researcher at the Portland Veterans Affairs Health Care System and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Dr. Edwards's research focuses on the role and function of primary care, with a focus on the care of vulnerable populations through Home-Based Primary Care. Dr. Edwards received his medical degree from the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, completed residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and completed fellowship in General Medicine and Primary Care at Harvard Medical School, and the VA Boston Healthcare System. His current projects include, “Optimizing Outcomes in Home Based Primary Care” (VA HSR&D), “Evaluating system change to advance learning and take evidence to scale (ESCALATES)” (AHRQ), “Interprofessional Learning & Practice Partnered Evaluation Center” (VA QUERI), and “Innovators Network - Population factors, Organizational capacity, Workflow and Resources (INPOWR)” (VA QUERI).
Honora Englander - Associate Professor, OHSU Department of Medicine; Contact: englandh@ohsu.edu
Dr. Honora Englander is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in the Division of Hospital Medicine. Dr. Englander graduated from Williams College in 1998, the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2003, and completed Internal Medicine residency at OHSU in 2006. She is an internist and addiction medicine physician whose work focuses on improving care and systems for hospitalized adults with substance use disorder. Dr. Englander founded and is the Principle Investigator for the Improving Addiction Care Team (IMPACT), a nationally recognized model for hospital-based addiction care. Her research focuses on needs of hospitalized adults with substance use disorder, peers in hospital settings, and implementation of addiction medicine best-practices across general hospitals. Dr. Englander also co-founded and directed Care Transitions Innovation (C-TRAIN), a transitional care intervention for socioeconomically vulnerable adults. Dr. Englander has received numerous awards for her work transforming health systems including being named one of the Portland Business Journal’s ‘Top Forty under 40’ in 2015 and one of the American College of Physician’s Hospitalist TOP DOC in 2012. She has published research in numerous medical journals including JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Journal of Hospital Medicine, and the Journal of Addiction Medicine.
Taylor Geyton - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: tgeyton@pdx.edu
Dr. Geyton is an assistant professor at Portland State University in the school of social work. She earned her PhD from Morgan State University where she studied urban social work. Dr. Geyton's scholarship is focused on health and mental health disparities among black women, specifically as those disparities link and are linked to systems of racism and sexism. Her most recent study explored the experiences of Black women across the US engaged in activism and earned the CSWE doctoral student award. Additional interests include health disparities, mental health disparities, decolonizing mental health treatment, global social movements, and anti-colonial healing perspectives.
Willi Horner-Johnson - Associate Professor, Institute on Development and Disability, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: hornerjo@ohsu.edu
Dr. Willi Horner-Johnson, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Her research is based in OHSU’s Institute on Development and Disability and is focused on identifying and addressing health and healthcare disparities experienced by people with disabilities. She has particular interest in reproductive health of women with disabilities and compounded disparities experienced by people with disabilities who also belong to other marginalized groups. Willi is currently PI of the CDC-funded Oregon Office on Disability and Health, which analyzes surveillance data on health and social determinants of health among people with disabilities, provides targeted health promotion training, and engages in efforts to promote systems and policy changes to promote inclusion of people with disabilities.
Kate LaForge - Research Associate II, Comagine Health; Ph.D. Student, Medical Sociology, UCSF Contact: kate.laforge@ucsf.edu
Kate is a Research Associate II at Comagine Health and Ph.D. student in Medical Sociology at UCSF. Her professional research focuses on injection drug use, reducing the risk of overdose, fentanyl, alternatives to opioids, chronic pain, and health services delivery. Her academic research explores questions about chronic pain, financial stress, and suicide. She is primarily interested in how socioeconomic conditions shape experiences of pain. Kate also volunteers as a crisis text counselor and is interested in understanding, improving, and developing telemental health crisis services. Kate received her Master's in Public Health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in 2017 and is the founder of the Network of Early Career Researchers in Suicide and Self-harm Qualitative Methods Group.
Ximena A. Levander, MD, MCR - Assistant Professor and Clinician Investigator, OHSU; Contact: levander@ohsu.edu
Ximena A. Levander, MD, MCR is an Assistant Professor and Clinician Investigator at Oregon Health & Science University in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, Section of Addiction Medicine. Her research interests focus on developing and implementing effective interventions for delivering evidence-based addiction and substance use disorder treatment and care in a patient-centered approach to people who use drugs/substances. She recently completed a 3-year combined Addiction Medicine and Samuel H. Wise General Internal Medicine Clinical Research Fellowship. Her main research project during fellowship focused on addressing gaps in the Hepatitis C (HCV) care continuum in people who use drugs (PWUD) and explored how hospitalization could be a reachable moment for PWUD to address their HCV and to better understand the relationship between substance use treatment engagement and patient interest and/or readiness for HCV direct acting antiviral treatment. Her current research interests include evaluation of telemedicine for treatment of opioid use disorder with buprenorphine and how to ensure equitable access to addiction treatment using telemedicine/telehealth (including addressing digital literacy, technology availability). She is also interested in how telemedicine could expand access to addiction treatment particularly to those with barriers to care including those living in rural communities.
Mitra Naseh, PhD - Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Portland State University; Contact: mitra.naseh@pdx.edu
Mitra Naseh is an Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Brown School and an adjunct research assistant professor at Portland State University. Mitra’s area of scholarship focuses on wellbeing, inequality, and poverty among minorities with migration background. She also has an interest in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions, specifically cognitive conditions associated with the trauma caused by forced migration. Mitra’s scholarly work is guided by her previous professional work experience as a staff member of Non-governmental organizations and United Nations (UN) office on Drugs and Crime and UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in the Middle East and South Asia. Mitra is the co-author of the second edition of the Best Practices for Social Work with Refugees and Immigrants. She is also the founding member and research director of the Initiative on Social Work and Forced Migration at FIU. Mitra earned her MA in Development and Urban Planning from Alzahra University, and her BAs in Computer Software Engineering and Economics from Azad and Tehran Universities.
Dora Raymaker - Research Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work / Regional Research Institute; Contact: draymake@pdx.edu
Dora M. Raymaker, Ph.D., is a systems scientist and Research Assistant Professor at Portland State University’s Regional Research Institute for Human Services in the School of Social Work, Co-director of the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (aaspire.org), and associate editor of the academic journal Autism in Adulthood. Dr. Raymaker’s research interests include community-engaged practice, systems thinking, measurement, disability, and the dynamics at the intersection of science and society. Dr. Raymaker conducts intervention services research in collaboration with the Autistic and mental health communities to improve employment outcomes and reduce discrimination and stigma. In their remaining three minutes of time, they enjoy writing own voices speculative fiction and making multimedia art (doraraymaker.com).
Anna Rockhill - Senior Research Associate, PSU School of Social Work Regional Research Institute; Contact: rockhill@pdx.edu
Anna is a Senior Research Associate at the Regional Research Institute. She has lived in Portland and worked at PSU as a researcher for nearly 25 years. Prior to that she lived in Ann Arbor, Washington DC, and Honolulu. Most of her work has focused on a small handful of areas including child protection/child welfare services, intimate partner violence, the intersection of substance abuse and child welfare, and most recently, procedural justice and equity in legal systems (broadly conceived). Anna has done quite a lot of program evaluation including studies of Family Group Decision Making, Peer Parent Mentors and co-located IPV advocates in both child welfare and health care settings. She also led two evaluations of Home Visiting services. Current projects include improving services for (IPV) survivors of color, immigrants and refugees, who are pursuing divorce, custody and parenting time, with an emphasis on procedural justice principles funded by the Office of Violence Against Women. She is also co-leading an Evaluation of Oregon’s Title IV-E (foster care) Waiver, an intervention that includes frequent family team meetings and peer parent mentoring services for families involved with the child welfare system funded by ACYF. As with most program evaluators, she is conversant in both quantitative and qualitative methods, but increasingly disillusioned by the standard approach to evaluation, at least in child welfare and related fields. Within the past few years, she has become very interested in realist approaches to evaluation and research. Anna is currently part of an international team conducting a realist synthesis of the Family Group Decision Making literature, and she’s leading a small realist evaluation of a child welfare intervention model. She is also part of group of researchers trying to launch a Realist Evaluation and Synthesis affinity group in North and South America to compliment the group that many of the scholars in the UK, Australia and Europe are connected to. Additionally, she is also wanting to expand her repertoire of qualitative approaches; she used interpretive description this winter and is currently doing an institutional ethnography of casework in the context of family team meetings.
Jessica Rodriguez-Jenkins - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: jesrodr2@pdx.edu
Jessica is a PhD trained child and family researcher with a primary interest in supporting parenting in highly stressed families, particularly in the Latinx community, through culturally appropriate intervention and engagement strategies targeting access to resources, parent mental health, and parenting skills. Her research is practice-informed, uses qualitative and quantitative methods, and centers on how to best support vulnerable Latinx families, while illuminating assets and within-group differences among Latinx communities. Jessica is committed to research that includes partnerships with community providers to develop sustainable, culturally responsive interventions. Her work focuses on supporting multi-level factors that affect parent-child relationships particularly among those served by the child welfare system and other public agencies to decrease the alarming extent to which Latinx children and families experience social and health disparities throughout their childhood. One of her current projects, “Oregon Kinship Navigator Project,” funded through Oregon DHS, has been a collaboration between Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services and Oregon Department of Health Services to recommend an Oregon specific kinship navigator model. To help Oregon plan for this new program funded by the federal Families First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) legislation, the Portland State University (PSU) research team had conversations with caregivers, youth, professionals, and advocates around Oregon. Her team identified key design principles and considered federal requirements.
Lalaine Sevillano, PhD, MSW - Assistant Professor, School of Social Work at Portland State University; Contact: l.sevillano@pdx.edu
Dr. Sevillano is an Assistant Professor in the PSU School of Social Work. Her specific research interests include social and cultural determinants of health in minoritized populations, mental health problems, and factors that promote resilience. She has expertise in how minoritized groups internalize oppression and its impact on their health and life trajectories. She also studies how minoritized groups can leverage sources of resilience such as cultural continuity, critical consciousness, and positive identity development. Dr. Sevillano completed her doctoral studies from the University of Texas at Austin where she was awarded a 2021-22 University Continuing Graduate Student Fellowship. Her dissertation was a sequential explanatory mixed-methods study which explored the relationships between internalized colonialism, psychological distress, and academic success. Her scholarship was recognized at the 2022 CSWE conference and awarded the 2022 API Social Work Educators Association's Doctoral scholarship. Most recently, Dr. Sevillano has been invited as a Fellow of the NIH-funded Indigenous Substance use and addictions Prevention Interdisciplinary Research Education (INSPIRE) program.
Christina Sun, PhD - Associate Professor, College of Nursing, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Contact: christina.sun@cuanschutz.edu
Christina Sun, PhD, MS is an Associate Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She previously held a position as an Assistant Professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and postdoctoral training in community-based participatory research and HIV intervention research at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Her scholarship is focused on reducing HIV and LGBTQ health disparities, community-based participatory research, HIV prevention, mHealth, intervention research and behavioral clinical trials.
Stephanie Sundborg - Contact: ssund2@pdx.edu
Stephanie Sundborg, Ph.D. is the Director of Research and Evaluation for Trauma Informed Oregon. Dr. Sundborg's research and consultation focuses on trauma informed care (TIC) implementation and factors involved in organizational change. Much of her current work focuses on measurement, including the development of instruments that can be used to assess TIC implementation. As part of understanding what factors support trauma informed care, she is interested in the characteristics of leadership and staff that support and build commitment to a trauma informed approach. Dr. Sundborg comes to this work with years of experience focused on early childhood adversity. With a background in cognitive neuroscience, she has always been interested in the neurobiology of trauma and toxic stress and the developmental implications related to attention, memory, and emotional regulation. Stephanie currently lives in Bend. She is married and has three children and a yellow lab named Moose. In her free time, she’d chose to hike, travel, or hang out with family and friends.
Alan Teo - Associate Professor, OHSU Department of Psychiatry; Core Investigator, Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care; Contact: teoa@ohsu.edu
Alan Teo, M.D., M.S., is a psychiatrist and health services researcher, having completed his education and training at Stanford University, University of California San Francisco, and University of Michigan. He holds appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University and the VA HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care at the VA Portland Health Care System.
Dr. Teo’s works intersects the fields of health services, behavioral science, and social and cultural psychiatry. The overarching theme of his research is the role of social relationships in influencing mental health outcomes, especially depression and suicide. In this work, he attempts to understand ways to mitigate social isolation and loneliness, and also harness the benefits of social support in real-world settings. Dr. Teo is also an international expert in a severe form of social withdrawal called hikikomori.
In current and recent intervention studies funded by the VA he is conducting the first evaluation of S.A.V.E., a form of “gatekeeper training” designed to help individuals assist a military veterans experiencing a mental health crisis, and conducting a pragmatic trial of Caring Contacts in older veterans who have chronic medical or psychiatric conditions and limited engagement in the VA.
Dr. Teo’s research has been disseminated by national and international media such as the New York Times, NPR, TIME, and the Wall Street Journal. In his personal time, he enjoys dispersed camping with his wife and two daughters and running mountain ultramarathons.
Matthew Town, PhD, MPH - Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, PSU; Contact: mtown@pdx.edu
Dr. Matthew Town is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a behavioral scientist, and an advocate for social justice in health. His research focuses on social inequality, diversity science, and health behavior among American Indian and Alaska Native communities, sexual and gender diverse communities, and other underserved populations. His interests include global health, mental health, prevention research, indigenous health, HIV/STI, health care services research, and substance abuse. Dr. Town is the Principal Investigator of the Native Access project, a NIH funded research project exploring the experience of initiation and sustained use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV among American Indian and Alaska Native sexual and gender diverse men. He is also a Co-Research Workgroup Lead and a member of the Project Coordination Team for the LGBTQIA2S+ In Oregon Initiative that aims to conduct a health needs assessment for Queer and Trans communities in Oregon. Dr. Town has experience working with a variety of agencies and organizations including Tribal communities, Tribal Epidemiology Centers, County and State Health Departments, local community organizations and federal agencies including the Indian Health Services and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducting outreach, program management, and program evaluation. Dr. Town also worked in public health practice in several county health departments in Oregon including the Medical Monitoring Project as well as supervising the Disease Control and Prevention programs.
Mathew Uretsky - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: muretsky@pdx.edu
Mathew Uretsky, Ph.D., MSW, MPH is an applied social scientist with advanced training in the use of linked administrative data systems, program evaluation, and extensive practice experience serving students youth and young adults with academic, behavioral, and mental health challenges. Dr. Uretsky’s recent research has focused on using advanced quantitative methods with large-scale multi-system linked administrative data to examine inter-system and cross-level influences on the academic and behavioral development of emerging adults. Dr. Uretsky has substantive academic and practical experience with quantitative methodologies and data analysis including multilevel modeling, growth mixture modeling, and structural equation modeling including the use of linked statewide administrative data to answer practical policy questions.
De'Sha Wolf - Research Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; KL2 Scholar, Oregon Clinical & Translational Research Institute, OHSU; Contact: desha.wolf@pdx.edu
De'Sha Wolf is a social scientist and Research Assistant Professor at PSU's Regional Research Institute for Human Services (RRI) in the School of Social Work. She formally transitioned to the health sciences in Fall 2021, after devoting the first 10 years of her professional career to addressing disparities in education through the design and implementation of research-based interventions that improve access, research training, and retention of marginalized undergraduates. Dr. Wolf joined the PSU community in Spring 2015 as the Project Manager and Managing Director of the BUILD EXITO program--an undergraduate research training program funded by the NIH to support students on their pathway to become biomedical researchers. Her research interests center on chronic health conditions facing African American communities, chronic pain, trauma-informed care, patient-centered qualitative research, and complementary and alternative care. Dr. Wolf completed her doctoral training in Higher Education & Organizational Change at UCLA, where she was selected to participate in a three-year fellowship in interdisciplinary relationship science with funding through the National Science Foundation's IGERT program. She is currently pursuing advanced training in clinical research at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), where she is an NCATS-funded KL2 Scholar in the Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute (OCTRI).
Liu-Qin Yang - Associate Professor, PSU School of Psychology; Contact: lyang@pdx.edu
Dr. Liu-Qin (LQ) Yang is an Associate Professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Portland State University. To date, she has published dozens of peer-reviewed research articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries. Her work has appeared in high-impact journals in the fields of psychology, management, international business, and nursing, such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of International Business Studies, and the International Journal of Nursing Studies. She serves on the editorial board of multiple respected journals including Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Business and Psychology, Applied Psychology: An International Review and Occupational Health Science. Dr. Yang’s expertise includes occupational health, work motivation and quantitative methodologies. She and her research team mainly studies the health, safety, and performance consequences of workplace relationships such as workplace interpersonal mistreatment, as well as effective ways to promote positive engagement and to manage stress resulting from negative relationships. In both U.S. and China, she has worked with various for-profit and nonprofit organizations to improve the functioning in their personnel management. In her free time, Liu-Qin loves exploring beautiful nature and different cultures around the world.
Jane Zhu, MD, MPP, MSHP - Division of General Internal Medicine, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: zhujan@ohsu.edu
Jane M. Zhu, MD, MPP, MSHP, is a practicing primary care physician and assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine. She holds a secondary appointment in Health Systems Management & Policy at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health and is an adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Zhu's research and academic interests include health care markets; provider behavior and incentives; organizational responses to payment reform and their effects on health care access and quality, particularly in the care of vulnerable populations. She obtained her BSc degree in global health and international development from Duke University, where she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship. She received dual degrees in medicine and public policy from Harvard Medical School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. After internal medicine residency training at the University of California, San Francisco, she was selected as a National Clinician Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania where she completed a two-year fellowship.
Katharine Zuckerman - Associate Professor, OHSU Department of Pediatrics; Contact: zuckerma@ohsu.edu
Katherine is a general pediatrician who has received additional research training in public health and health services research. For the past 10 years she has focused my research on health care quality and disparities for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. She has in particular expertise in early identification of autism spectrum disorder in minority communities. Her research, which has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Autism Speaks, and several local foundations, involves qualitative techniques, survey research, secondary analyses of large datasets, and community based interventions. The goal of her research portfolio is to better understand gaps in health care quality for children with developmental disabilities and to develop effective interventions to close these gaps.
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Monica Abdul-Chani, MA - Doctoral Student at University of Alabama at Birmingham; Contact: mabdulch@uab.edu
My research interests involve understanding the barriers to care and diagnosis, particularly stigma, amongst underserved and Spanish-speaking populations, primarily those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I am also interested in understanding how stigma affects quality of life and social support for individuals with autism and their families.
Sy Adler - Professor, PSU School of Urban Studies and Planning; Associate Dean, College of Urban and Public Affairs; Contact: adlers@pdx.edu
Dr. Adler has taught at PSU since 1982, during which time he taught Health Policy for a dozen years, created the Healthy People/Healthy Places upper division cluster within University Studies, and co-authored published papers about mid-twentieth century global discourse among planners, designers, public health leaders and others that led to the creation of the UN's Healthy Cities program. This program was about the incorporation of active living by design principles into an urban growth boundary expansion-related planning process in the Portland metropolitan area. In regards to the social determinants of health, he teaches Healthy Communities, and is interested in the relationships between urban planning and public health, and between the built and natural environments and health.
Jennifer Aengst, PhD - Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, PSU; Contact: jaengst@pdx.edu
Jennifer Aengst received her doctorate at the University of California, Davis in 2011. She has taught in the Anthropology department at Portland State University and currently works at OHSU as Senior Research Associate in the Center for Women's Health. Her research has primarily been on contraceptive decision-making, the development of contraceptive technology, and reproductive politics in South Asia. Additional interests include health disparities, social determinants of health, and access to healthcare.
Jennifer Allen - Associate Professor, PSU Institute for Sustainable Solutions and School of Government; Contact: jhallen@pdx.edu
Dr. Allen's areas of research encompass environmental and natural resource policy and administration and sustainable economic development, with particular focus on green buildings and rural-urban market connections. Prior to September 2009, she served as interim director of the Center for Sustainable Processes and Practices where she supported the development of sustainability-related research and curricula across campus, as well as fostering partnerships between PSU and other institutions in the region and internationally. Dr. Allen is interested in understanding how ISS can support efforts in social determinants of health.
Ted Amann - Director of Health System Development, Central City Concern; Contact: ted.amann@ccconcern.org
Tina Anctil - Assistant Professor, PSU Counselor Education, College of
Education; Contact: anctil@pdx.edu
Tina Anctil’s research and scholarship focus is on career development for children and adolescents from underrepresented groups, including children in foster care, persons with disabilities, and racially and ethnically diverse populations. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Anctil is interested in the delivery and access to career development and counseling services to K-12 students with lower SES; and their post high school career and employment opportunities.
Kris Anderson - Executive Director, The Portland Clinic Foundation; Contact: kanderson@tpcllp.com
Through evidence-driven, results-oriented philanthropy, the Portland Clinic Foundation supports Portland-based nonprofit initiatives that improve holistic community wellness and advance the social determinants of good health. More information can be found at www.theportlandclinic.com/foundation
Sarah B. Andrea PhD, MPH - Assistant Professor & MPH Epidemiology Program Director, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: andreasa@ohsu.edu
As a social epidemiologist, Sarah Andrea's (she/they) research investigates strategies to mitigate inequities in health throughout the life course. Their research largely interrogates precarious employment -- that is, work that is poorly paid, insecure, and unprotected - as a modifiable driver of health inequities rooted in racism, classism, sexism, and other interlocking systems of oppression. As a queer, first-generation student form a working-class family, their lived experience has dramatically shaped their career path. Their ever-evolving social location drives their research and underlies a deep passion for advocacy, and not just "lifting while they climb" but instead turning the ladder on its side.
Elena Andresen - Executive Vice President and Provost, OHSU; Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: andresee@ohsu.edu
Elena Andresen received her doctorate in epidemiology at the University of Washington in 1991. She trained dually in the health services research, and completed a predoctoral fellowship at the Seattle VA medical center in health services research. She was a faculty member at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, and the University of Florida School of Public Health and Health Professions before joining OHSU in July of 2011. Prior to her current position as OHSU Provost, Dr. Andresen was the Interim Dean of the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health from 2014 to 2016. Professor Andresen’s research has been primarily in the areas of health outcomes, especially health related quality of life (HRQoL), and aging and disability population-based research. One of her areas of emphasis is the influence of neighborhood context on health and HRQoL outcomes. Dr. Andresen has served in numerous national service activities, including work with the Institute of Medicine, and grant peer-review to the CDC, VA, AHRQ, NIH, and PCORI. Professor Andresen’s graduate teaching experience includes epidemiologic methods; epidemiologic analysis using the BRFSS; disability epidemiology; and research measures and field methods. She has published over 130 peer-reviewed publications, and contributed as an editor or coauthor to ten books.
Kent Anger - Associate Director of Applied Research, OHSU CROET; Contact: anger@ohsu.edu
Heather Angier - Research Associate, OHSU School of Medicine, Family Medicine; Contact: angierh@ohsu.edu
Olivia Arar, MPH - Epidemiology, OHSU; Contact: arar@ohsu.edu
Steffani R. Bailey - Associate Professor, OHSU Family Medicine; Contact: bailstef@ohsu.edu
Dr. Bailey earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Purdue University. She completed her pre-doctoral training at the Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium and her postdoctoral training at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, an affiliate investigator at OCHIN, and a licensed psychologist in the state of Oregon. Her research focuses on the treatment of tobacco use in safety-net settings.
Robin Baker - Doctoral Student, PSU Department of Public Administration and Policy; Contact: rlynnbaker@gmail.com
Robin Baker is a Ph.D. candidate and an Adjunct Instructor in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. She recently finished a summer internship with the Oregon Patient Safety Commission collecting information about state based adverse events reporting programs in the United States. She received her B.S. in Sociology at Portland State University in 2006. She also received her M.A. in Sociology at Portland State University in 2009; her thesis focus was formerly incarcerated women and their post-prison experiences. Prior to beginning the Ph.D. program, she worked with Dr. Johanna Brenner on the development and implementation of a research project to assess the various reasons that crime survivors do not report crimes. She also worked with Dr. Matt Carlson as a research assistant on the Oregon Health Care Lottery Study. Her interests include: The relationship between serious mental illness and the social determinants of health, the integration of behavioral and primary health care, and the organizational and cultural factors that impact the implementation of integrated services.
David Bangsberg, MD, MPH - Dean of the OHSU-PSU School of Health; Contact: bangsber@ohsu.edu
Dean of the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health and former Harvard Professor who research social, behavioral, and economic determinants of health care access in the homeless and in sub-Saharan Africa. http://ohsu-psu-sph.org
Lew Bank - Research Professor, PSU School of Social Work, Regional Research Institute for Human Services; Contact: bank@pdx.edu
Dr. Bank has joint appointments as research professor at the School of Social Work's RRI, and as a senior scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center. He is principal investigator for two RCTs: Motivational Parent Training for Corrections – Involved Men and Men (National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH), and Evaluation of Intervention for Siblings in Foster Care (National Institute of Mental Health, NIH). Dr. Bank is an expert in the areas of child, adolescent, adult development, community dissemination, and statistical analysis and methodology. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Bank is interested in child, adolescent and adult mental health, substance use, corrections involvement, and school and employment success.
David Barnard - Miles J. Edwards Chair in Professionalism and Comfort Care, OHSU Center for Ethics in Health Care; Contact: barnardd@ohsu.edu
Chrystal Barnes, BS - Qualitative Analyst; Contact: barnesch@ohsu.edu
Chrystal is a qualitative analyst at OHSU's Oregon Rural Practice-based Research network, as well as a MPH student at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She is passionate about understanding the experiences of rural communities access and quality of primary care and the implementation of interventions that are community driven and culturally competent. She has worked in topic areas of shared decision making, substance use, immunizations, cancer screening, and Veteran healthcare.
Mackenzie Barron - MPH/MSW Candidate, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health/PSU School of Social Work; Contact: mbarron@pdx.edu
Jennifer Barton, MD - Assistant Professor, Portland Veteran's Medical Center; Contact: Jennifer.Barton@va.gov
Talya Bauer Cameron - Professor of Management at PSU; Contact: cetb@pdx.edu
Talya N. Bauer earned her Ph.D. degree in Business with a special emphasis in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources from Purdue University. She is an award winning teacher and was awarded the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Distinguished Teacher Career Achievement Award. She conducts research about relationships at work. More specifically, she works in the areas of recruitment and selection and new employee onboarding which have resulted in dozens of research grants, journal publications, and book chapters. She has been studying the onboarding process for over 20 years and she has acted as a consultant for dozens of government, Fortune 1,000, and start-up organizations. Her work has been covered in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, USA Today, the Oregonian, Portland Business Journal, and Business Week as well as appearing on NPR and KGW News. She has been a Visiting Professor in France, Spain, and most recently at Google, Inc. where she consulted on aspects of onboarding “Nooglers” as new Google employees are called.
Thomas Becker - Professor OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: beckert@ohsu.edu
Dr. Becker is a medical epidemiologist with interests in both infectious and chronic disease epidemiology, with focused interests in viral carcinogenesis as related to cancers in special populations. He has published extensively on American Indian and Hispanic health issues, and is currently funded to carry out etiologic studies of cervical neoplasia in American Indian and Alaska Native populations. In addition to his training in medicine and public health, Dr. Becker also has a PhD in Anthropology, and his research has been designed to combine his experience in all of these disciplines. At OHSU, he teaches courses in epidemiologic methods and in infectious disease epidemiology.
Kristen Beiers-Jones, R.N. & M.N., Assistant Professor of Clinical Nursing OHSU School of Nursing; Contact: beiersjo@ohsu.edu
Ms. Beiers-Jones' nursing students and her work in the community with refugees and immigrants through OHSU's I-CAN program. Where were the leaders of the SMART law (Safe Medications for All Requires Translation) which requires pharmacies to offer medication labels in at least 14 languages. This is a medical safety, cost-savings and health equity issue.
Ryan Bender, MSW - PhD Graduate Student, School of Social Work, Portland State University; Contact: rbender@pdx.edu
Ms. Bender has a long history working with community based organizations in Portland that address educational, housing, and health care inequalities. Primarily, her role has been as a qualitative and quantitative researcher, gathering information about community members’ experiences of social and health disparities. Her research interests include social determinants of health; family-centered diabetes management; community based participatory approaches that focus on community leadership and self-efficacy; and cultural responsiveness within the special education service delivery system. She is a member of the Community Partnership for Health and Equity, which is planning a series of community-driven research projects investigating the problems and priorities neighborhoods affected by health inequities and serious health conditions.
Michelle Berlin - Co-director, OHSU Center for Women’s Health, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology School of Medicine; Contact: berlinm@ohsu.edu
Dr. Berlin is one of the few obstetrician-gynecologists in the United States who is also fully trained in preventive medicine. Her research and clinical interests converge in addressing in screening and prevention services for women, especially for minority and disadvantaged populations. Her clinical work focuses on Pap screening and follow-up evaluation of abnormal Pap smears for the prevention of cervical cancer. Dr. Berlin is Program Director of the Center’s Policy Advisory Towards Health (PATH for women), focusing on health policy issues within women’s health. She also teaches evidence-based medicine and has performed work for the US Preventive Services Task Force.
Shannon Blajeski, PhD, MSW - Adjunct Research Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: blajeski@pdx.edu
Shannon Blajeski, PhD, MSW is an Adjunct Research Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Portland State University, and an Intermittent Lecturer with the University of Michigan, School of Social Work. Her area of research is concerned with (1) improving public mental health services and practice to be more responsive to the poverty and oppression experienced by adults with serious mental illness (SMI); and (2) understanding the additional barriers to employment and education for BIPOC individuals diagnosed with SMI. Her research is informed by a number of frameworks including the social determinants of health, critical disability & race theories, and emancipatory frameworks such as anti-poverty and anti-stigma approaches. Furthermore, she primarily utilizes participatory, qualitative, and mixed-methods to include and empower marginalized voices in the co-construction of knowledge. Currently, she is studying the ways that young adults with early psychosis from disadvantaged backgrounds including those from BIPOC families, from low-income backgrounds, and those with low educational attainment, can improve their educational trajectories while working with early intervention programs. These young people are at a higher-than-average risk for long-term disability and subsequent poverty, due to early disengagement with work and education, and have disproportionately worse outcomes after completing early psychosis programs. She is also organizing participatory stakeholder groups concerned with improving Supported Employment & Education (SEE) in early psychosis programs in Oregon, Washington, & Michigan. Her research on reducing poverty and disability is informed by seven years of direct practice in community mental health settings, including two post-MSW years working with urban adults with mental illness who were predominantly homeless, and disproportionately BIPOC. She then spent ten years implementing the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model for adults with serious mental illness (SMI) in both urban and rural areas across Washington State before returning to the academy to pursue her PhD. She received her MSW and PhD in Social Welfare from the University of Washington in Seattle, and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the University of Michigan, School of Social Work.
Jennifer Blakeslee PhD, MSW - Research Assistant Professor, Portland State School of Social Work; Contact: jblakes@pdx.edu
Jennifer Blakeslee, PhD, MSW, is a researcher at the Regional Research Institute for Human Services at the Portland State University School of Social Work. Her work primarily relates to the experiences of young people transitioning from foster care and mental health systems, and strategies to improve the services they receive. Related projects include development and testing of a brief group-based intervention to increase foster youth self-efficacy around coping and help-seeking to support mental health, as well as dissemination of a more intensive evidence-supported coaching model to increase transition-age youth self-determination, and she conducts community-based program development and evaluation. Other research interests include social network analysis, specifically using support network mapping in both research and practice with young people, and other person-centered approaches. Dr. Blakeslee also teaches research methods in the School of Social Work’s graduate programs, and she mentors undergraduate scholars around academic careers in the biomedical and social sciences.
Piper Block PhD, MPP - Research and Data Manager, Oregon Health Authority; contact: epiperblock@gmail.com
Piper has a background in education and health policy, focusing on child mental health and arts education. She currently works as the Research and Data Manager in OHA's Office of Health Analytics managing three health data teams. She is interested in critical quantitative studies and other work in data justice.
Rebecca G. Block - Assistant Professor; AYA Psychosocial Research Leader, OHSU School of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology; Knight Cancer Institute Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology; Contact: blockr@ohsu.edu
Linda Boise - OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: boisel@ohsu.edu
Dr. Boise holds a Master's degree in Public Health from the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Social Policy from Portland State University. The Director of the Education Core, Linda has carried out research on family caregiver stress and service needs and has developed and evaluated education programs for family caregivers. Dr. Boise has also studied how primary care physicians address symptoms of cognitive impairment and dementia and the barriers to dementia diagnosis in primary care. She is a member of the Executive Council of the Oregon Roybal Center for Aging, Technology, & Community Health (ORCATECH). Currently, with colleagues at the Layton Center and Intel, she is studying the perspectives of older adults, family members of older adults, and providers on the use of technology in monitoring physical and cognitive change in the elderly.
Janne Boone-Heinonen - Assistant Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Epidemiology; Contact: boonej@ohsu.edu
Jane Boone-Heinonen’s research investigates individual and environmental determinants of physical activity, diet, and obesity, with particular interest in neighborhood health research. She uses interdisciplinary cross-sectional and longitudinal statistical methods applied to population-based cohort studies to address methodological challenges of causal inference in obesity epidemiology. Her research includes examination of socioeconomic and race/ethnic disparities in neighborhood environments, behaviors, and health outcomes, with recent focus on identifying social and environmental factors that may underlie disparities in maternal and neonatal outcomes that predict chronic disease throughout the life cycle.
Kori Boyd, MPH; Contact: kori.d.boyd@gmail.com
Eileen Brennan - Research Professor, Social Work, PSU, Regional Research Institute for Human Services; Contact: brennane@pdx.edu
Dr. Brennan's practice experience involves program evaluation, mental health consultation, and workforce development. Her research interests include the following: work-life integration, mental health of children and youth, social sustainability, social support, and health equity. In regards to the social determinants of health, she is primarily interested in health equity as it relates to social sustainability. In particular, Dr. Brennan has an interest in developing healthy habits in children and adolescents from underserved communities, and an interest in social determinants of mental health.
Allison Brenner, PhD, MPH - Research Investigator, University of Michigan Survey Research Center; Contact: abbrenner@gmail.com
My research focuses on exposure to stressors over the life course, including stressors in the residential environment, and racial/ethnic health inequities. I am also interested in working towards elucidation of the mechanisms of racial disparities in late life disability and improving access to healthcare for older adults with disabilities. .
Cynthia Brown, PhD - Assistant Professor and Director of Clinical Training, Pacific University School of Graduate Psychology; Contact: cynthia.brown@pacificu.edu
My current primary research interests include the investigation of risk factors for aggressive and other disruptive behaviors in youths with autism spectrum disorder and the development and evaluation of family-based treatments for serious mental health problems, especially externalizing disorders, in children and adolescents. Additional interests include training and education in professional psychology, improving treatment efforts for individuals involved in the justice system, and assessment and characterization of autism symptoms. I have served as a consultant to mental health provider agencies on the delivery of evidence-based treatment to youths and families in community settings. Specifically, I have expertise in Multisystemic Therapy as a clinician, supervisor, and consultant.
Kristin Brown - Program Manager, Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CORE), Providence Health and Services; Contact: kristin.harding@providence.org
Richard Bruno, MD, MPH - Health Officer, Multnomah County Health Department; Contact: bruno@multco.us
Hi I'm the Health Officer of Multnomah County Health Department, and clinical associate professor at OHSU, and core faculty for the (upcoming) Preventative Medicine residency program at OHSU/PSU. I oversee the Emergency medical System, Medical Examiner Officer, and Public Health Emergency Preparedness programs at the health department, and am working on fostering an Academic Health Department environment.
Stephanie Bryson - Associate Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: sbryson@pdx.edu
Stephanie Bryson is an Associate Professor at the PSU School for Social Work. She joined the faculty at PSU in 2016 after serving as Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Brandeis University, where she was a National Institute Mental Health Predoctoral Fellow in health and mental health service delivery. Stephanie conducts research on the rights and needs of marginalized groups across public systems, with an eye toward reducing coercive, stigmatizing, and carceral responses within these systems. She has served as Principal Investigator or Co-PI of more than 20 projects and has received funding from NIMH, Children’s Bureau, REACH Healthcare Foundation, and the Canadian Society for Social Sciences and Humanities. She is currently completing two projects based in Canada: 1) Co-Investigator of a 5-year RCT examining the efficacy of ACT vs. Contact Based Empowerment Education in reducing mental health stigma among (n=791) self-identified Asian men; and 2) PI of a study testing the efficacy of material and socioemotional asset building among child welfare involved mothers.
Tina Burdsall - Instructor, Sociology and Honors College, PSU; Contact: tinaburdsall@gmail.com
Medical Sociology is the overarching focus of the classes that I teach. My main area of interest is on how disparities are replicated in the dying process and how social inequalities impact the likelihood of experiencing a "bad" death.
Katharine Cahn - Executive Director, PSU School of Social Work, Child Welfare Partnership; Contact: cahnk@pdx.edu
Dr. Cahn is currently directs the Child Welfare Partnership and serves as PI on several other funded research and training programs, all at the School of Social Work at Portland State University. She has been involved in community based participatory action research to explore and address equity issues in public child welfare in several states, and she and her teams provide consultation and training for public, private and tribal child welfare leaders on issues of leadership, equity, and leading organizational change. She is active in efforts to structure in the advocacy voices of youth and parents who have been involved in child welfare, and to promote persistent sustained attention to issues of racial equity in human service programming and policy.
Megan Cahn PhD, MPH - Delivery System & Population Health Research Scientist, Legacy Research Institute, Legacy Health; Contact: mcahn@lhs.org
Megan Cahn received both her PhD in Health Policy and MPH in International Health from Oregon State University. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Legacy Health's Care Transformation (now Population Health) Division. Dr. Cahn currently works as Delivery System and Population Health Research Scientist at Legacy Health in Portland. Her research focuses on healthcare system initiatives to identify and address health inequities and the social determinants in health, particularly in the areas of sexual and reproductive health and behavioral health.
Jessica Calcagni - In-Reach, CODA Inc.; Contact: jessicacalcagni@codainc.org
Melissa Cannon - Graduate Research Assistant, PSU School of Community Health; Contact: mcan@pdx.edu
Melissa Cannon is a doctoral candidate in Urban Studies and a graduate research assistant at the Institute on Aging at Portland State University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in community development, and she recently completed her graduate certificate in gerontology. Her field areas are community development and gerontology, and her research focuses on strategies for creating inclusive, age-friendly cities and communities by fostering physical and social environments that support people of all ages and abilities.
Paula Carder - Assistant Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Institute on Aging; Contact: carderp@pdx.edu
Dr. Carder's interests involve the following: institutional and socio-cultural attitudes about aging, frailty, and dementia; long-term care policies and practices; consumer demand and responses to long-term care; categories of senior housing; and qualitative methods for studying institutional and organizational practices. Current and recent projects include an evaluation of Oregon's long-term care systems, an ethnographic study of medication management practices in dementia care facilities, and a pilot study of barriers and opportunities for sustainable practices in senior housing.
Eugene Cardi - Document Imaging and Process Improvement, OHSU Clinical Informatics Department; Contact: eugenecardi@gmail.com
Kathleen Carlson - Assistant Professor, OHSU Public Health and Preventative Medicine; Contact: carlskat@ohsu.edu
Dr. Carlson’s focus is on injury epidemiology, prevention and control, traumatic brain injury rehabilitation outcomes, and veterans’ post-deployment health. She is a core investigator at the VAMC Portland Center for the Study of Chronic, Comorbid Mental and Physical Disorders.
Matthew Carlson - Professor of Sociology at PSU; Contact: carlsonm@pdx.edu
Professor Carlson’s research focuses on the health care experiences of low income populations including health care access, quality, and satisfaction with care. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Carlson's more recent work addresses the impact of social determinants of health on health and health care among vulnerable populations. Specifically, he is participating in studies of the effects of gentrification on the health of African Americans, and of neighborhood effects on health.
Christopher Carey - Associate Professor, PSU Interdisciplinary Studies; Contact: ccarey@pdx.edu
Christopher Carey, (PhD, The Arizona State University, 2008; JD, Southern Illinois University, 1995), is a former Deputy District Attorney and currently an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Academic Coordinator of the First Year Experience Program at Portland State University. His doctorate is from Arizona State University’s Hugh Downs School of Human Communication where his focus was intercultural communication. His expertise extends to the application of international law with an emphasis on human trafficking and working with groups to improve collaboration within the field of human rights. He served as the Executive Director of a US based 501c(3) international human rights organization that addresses human trafficking, safe migration, and gender-based violence through culturally grounded, rights-based solutions. During his tenure as executive director he helped open offices in Kathmandu, Nepal, Kolkata, India, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Mexico City, Mexico. He is the author of several articles on the subject of human trafficking both in the United States and Mexico. He has been identified as an expert in human trafficking and intercultural communication by the California Judicial System where he testified as an expert witness.
Karen Cellarius - Senior Research Associate, PSU School of Social Work Regional Research Institute for Human Services; Contact: cellark@pdx.edu
Karen Cellarius provides program evaluation and research support to community partners in the areas of social services, homeless youth, education and juvenile justice, as well as primary and behavioral healthcare. Community partners have included Outside In, Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, Wallace Medical Concern, Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center, Volunteers of America Oregon, LifeworksNW, Metropolitan Family Service, the North Clackamas School District, and the State of Oregon.
Nicole Cerra, MA, MPH – Project Coordinator, Central City Concern, HEARTH Project; Contact: nicole.cerra@ccconcern.org
Brian Chan - Assistant Professor, OHSU Dept. of Medicine; Contact: chanbri@ohsu.edu
Brian Chan is an assistant professor of medicine at OHSU Department of Medicine, division of general internal medicine and geriatrics. He attended Stanford University as an undergraduate, SUNY Downstate for medical school, and completed internal medicine residency at OHSU. He then completed the UCSF primary care research fellowship under mentorship from Dr. Margot Kushel where he studied quality of care for low-income, older populations. Brian returned to OHSU in 2015 as junior faculty and practice primary care at Central City Concern, and hospital medicine at OHSU hospital. Brian studies the effect of clinical innovations on improving the quality and care for patients with substance use disorders who are medically and socially complex. He is the primary investigator of an evaluation of a novel integrated primary care model of care to improve outcomes for medically and socially complex patient populations with substance use disorder. His research interests are in health systems improvement, access to substance use treatment, integration of bio-psychosocial factors and social determinants of health in primary care, patient centered healthcare, clinical reasoning, and resident education. This year, he entered into his second year as an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) K12 researcher (PI: Guise) conducting a mixed methods wait-list control evaluation of an ambulatory intensive care unit intervention for high-utilizers at a federally qualified health center. He is also leading an AHRQ led rapid review of interventions to improve retention in medication assisted treatment for patients with opioid use disorder.
Sofia Chapela, M.D. & MSc, OHSU-PSU School of Public Heath, P.h.D. student; Contact: chapelal@ohsu.edu
Louisa Chatroux - Medical Student, OHSU School of Medicine; Contact: chatroux@ohsu.edu
Jason I. Chen, PhD - Assistant Professor, OHSU School of Psychiatry; VA HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC); Contact: jason.chen1@va.gov
Jason I. Chen, PhD, is a Core Investigator at the VA HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Chen is currently funded on a 5-year, VA HSR&D Career Development Award titled, "Enhancing Social Connectedness Among Veterans at High Risk for Suicide through Community Engagement." His research lab, the Connecting Communities for Suicide Prevention Lab (CCSP), studies suicide prevention for high-risk populations, with a focus on care transitions, suicide exposure, community-based approaches, and help-seeking processes including public health messaging. Dr. Chen recently received a new VA research award titled, “Serving All Who Have Served: Enhancing Suicide-Related Care Quality for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Veterans,” which plans to identify ways to improve suicide-related care among Veterans holding BIPOC identities. Dr. Chen also serves on the OHSU Zero Suicide Initiative Committee where he provides technical support and training for OHSU staff and community partners.
Laura Chisholm - Chronic Disease Self-Management Technical Lead, Health Promotion & Chronic Disease Prevention, Oregon Health Authority; Contact: laura.f.chisholm@state.or.us
Laura Chisholm, MPH, MA, MCHES is Self-Management Lead with the Oregon Health Authority’s Public Health Division. Her team supports high-quality, sustainable, evidence-based programs statewide that help tobacco users quit and help people with chronic health conditions stay active and engaged, and take charge of their lives and health care. Much of her work involves establishing systems to connect Medicaid beneficiaries to community resources. She is working toward a PhD in Depth Psychology and Somatic Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she is studying the role of the unconscious aspects of psyche in behavior change. Her dissertation will evaluate integrative, non-pharmacological chronic pain management resources in Oregon's communities.
Esther Choo - Associate Professor, Center for Policy and Research in Emergency Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, OHSU; Contact: chooe@ohsu.edu
Dr. Choo is an emergency medicine physician with interests in health disparities and vulnerable populations. Her research has examined gender differences in substance use disorders and responsiveness to treatment, the intersection of violence and substance abuse, and the use of technology to improve the care of patients in the emergency department.
Kelly E. Coates, PhD, MPH - Adjunct Assistant Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: coateske@pdx.edu
Hannah Cohen-Cline - Research Scientist and the Program Director for Research and Evaluation and Providence’s Center for Outcomes Research and Education; Contact: Hannah.Cohen-Cline@providence.org
Hannah Cohen-Cline, PhD MPH is a Research Scientist and the Program Director for Research and Evaluation and Providence’s Center for Outcomes Research and Education. A social epidemiologist by training, her research interests include associations between housing and health, health services transformation efforts to integrate consideration of social determinants of health into medical settings, and analysis of cross-sector data. Her work relies mainly on quantitative methods for analysis of administrative data, as well as community-based surveys. Her current and recent research includes a natural experiment of the impact of receiving Housing Choice Vouchers on families’ wellbeing; the evaluation of a value-based payment model implemented in primary care to improve patient health and health care outcomes; a study assessing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in access to breast cancer screening, and working with an Accountable Community of Health in Washington to help them better understand how their programs and policies are impacting the populations they serve.
Cliff Coleman, MD, MPH - Associate Professor, and Doris and Mark Storms Chair in Compassionate Communication; Contact: colemanc@ohsu.edu
Educationally-based differences in health literacy have a disproportionately negative impact on specific marginalized populations, contributing to inequitable access to high quality, understandable and actionable health information, with important implications for health disparities. I design, deliver, and evaluate curricula for health care professionals that aim to create clear communication habits and universal precautions practices for mitigating preventable health information inequities. As the Doris and Mark Storms Chair in Compassionate Communication in OHSU Center for Ethics in Health Care, I am working to help OHSU become a health literate organization.
Cynthia Coleman - Associate Professor of Communications at PSU; Contact: ccoleman@pdx.edu
Professor Coleman’s principal areas of inquiry focus on the social construction of science in mainstream discourse. She has held fellowships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Coleman studies message and narrative framing of science, health, risk and environmental information and the effects of framing on bio-political decisions and public opinion related to American Indians.
Kathleen Conte, Ph.D. Public Health - Senior Research Associate, PSU Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative; Contact: kconte@pdx.edu
Kathleen has a PhD in Public Health, and international experience in community-engaged research for health system strengthening. She's currently a Senior Research Associate with PSU's Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative.
Erika Cottrell - Research Assistant Professor, OHSU Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology; Contact: cottrele@ohsu.edu
Sneha Couvillion, PhD - Biomedical Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Biomedical Sciences Division; Contact: sneha.couvillion@pnnl.gov
Sneha Couvillion is a staff scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA. Her research focuses on the application of mass-spectrometry based omics (metabolomics, lipidomics and proteomics) approaches for a molecular level understanding of human health and disease. She is especially interested in understanding the effects of environment, diet and lifestyle on host health and the microbiome. She hopes to apply her expertise to investigate health disparities.
Annette Crawford, MPH, MPA, MS - OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Ph.D. Student, Research Assistant & Bridges Collaborative Care Clinic; Contact: crawfann@ohsu.edu
Annette has spent a decade evaluating healthcare interventions targeting social determinants of health both in the U.S. and internationally. Professionally, she is interested in translating evidence into smart organizational policies and strategic investments in social determinants aimed at improving the quality of healthcare delivery and patient health outcomes. Annette’s research interests broadly encompass behavioral and maternal health. Her current doctoral work focuses on improving care coordination for behavioral health services during the perinatal period, specifically by exploring facilitators and barriers to implementation of patient-centered care practices that comprehensively address patients’ needs. Such practices include working collaboratively with patients to connect them with appropriate behavioral health services, community-based resources, and navigational support for insurance, protected benefits, safe housing, and financial assistance.
Carlos Crespo - Professor of Community Health and Director, School of Community Health; Contact: ccrespo@pdx.edu
Community health professor Carlos Crespo studies the connection between physical activity and health and health disparities among minorities, where ailments like hypertension and diabetes are more common than in the general population. His particular focus is the sedentary lifestyle. He also directs the NIH-funded Portland Bridges to Baccalaureate Program, in which experienced research scientists mentor underrepresented students of color transferring from community college to PSU to pursue careers in biomedical and behavioral sciences
Raina Croff, Ph.D. - Aging & Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Assistant of Neurology, OHSU; Contact: croff@ohsu.edu
Blair G. Darney - Post-Doc, OHSU Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology; Contact: darneyb@ohsu.edu
Melinda Davis - Associate Professor, OHSU Family Medicine & Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network; Contact: davismel@ohsu.edu
Melinda Davis is Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Director of Community Engaged Research for the Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network (ORPRN). She conducts participatory implementation science with primary care, community, and health system stakeholders to reduce cancer disparities in rural and vulnerable populations.
Erin Delaney, MPH - OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: erinedelaney@gmail.com
Lauren Denneson - Core Investigator, HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care, VA Portland Health Care System, Department of Psychiatry, OHSU; Contact: lauren.denneson@va.gov
Dr. Denneson is a social psychologist and health services researcher focusing on strengths-based, patient-centered approaches to care. Topically, her expertise is in suicide prevention and patient-clinician relationships.
Jen DeVoe - Professor and Chair, OHSU Department of Family Medicine; Contact: devoej@ohsu.edu
Liliana Diaz, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Student; Contact: andia2@pdx.edu
Jennifer Dill - Professor, PSU Urban Studies & Planning; Director, Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC); Contact: jdill@pdx.edu
Jennifer Dill is a professor of Urban Studies and Planning and directs the campus-wide Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at PSU. Her research focuses on individual and institutional decision-making involving everyday travel (walking, bicycling, driving, transit), including the influence of the built environment and social factors. She explores the outcomes of these decisions on health (particularly physical activity) and the environment. Dr. Dill uses a variety of methods, including surveys and GPS data collection on travel behavior.
Steven Dobscha - Research Director, Mental Health Division, Portland VA; Professor, OHSU Dept. of Psychiatry; Contact: steven.dobscha@va.gov
Dr. Dobscha is Research Director in the Mental Health and Clinical Neurosciences Division at the Portland VA Medical Center and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University. He also directs the VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Innovation "Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC)" at the Portland VA, and is PI on several ongoing projects related to suicide prevention and chronic pain.
Angie Docherty, RN, MPH, NursD - Assistant Professor, OHSU School of Nursing; Contact: docherty@ohsu.edu
Angie Docherty was a Public Health Nurse in Scotland and completed her MPH at the University of Glasgow. She followed this with a Doctor of Nursing focused on socioeconomic inequities in prenatal care. Now working in the US, Angie continues to focus on perinatal equity with a current study focusing on influences and barriers to postpartum depression screening. She is a faculty member in OHSU School of Nursing working in both undergraduate and graduate programs
Jill Dolata, Ph. D. - Assistant Professor, OHSU Pediatrics/Institute on Development & Disability/Center for Spoken Language Understanding; Contact: dolataj@ohsu.edu
Dr. Dolata is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at OHSU. She is a speech-language pathologist at the Child Development & Rehabilitation Center and a clinical researcher at the Center for Spoken Language Understanding. Her recently completed doctoral studies were funded by a training grant at the University of Oregon to support interdisciplinary research on poverty. Dr. Dolata's current research interests are related to the foundations of social language development, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) screening and diagnosis, and the intersection of language and social communication. Her current research projects include analyzing social-emotional screeners for ASD, investigating use of Part C Early Intervention services for children born prematurely, and developing an automated, voice-based assessment of children’s language abilities.
Amy Donaldson, Ph.D. - Associate Professor, CLAS/Speech & Hearing Sciences; Contact: adonald@pdx.edu
Dr. Donaldson's research and teaching interests focus on assessment and intervention of social communication skills with children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). She is interested in treatment efficacy and implementation, particularly within community education and clinical settings, and with identifying family and community factors that may influence intervention accessibility and outcomes. Dr. Donaldson is a member of the PSU Early Childhood Council and collaborates with colleagues across a variety of disciplines to examine issues related to service provision for children with communication needs. She is also a member of Oregon Behavior Analysis Regulatory Board and two subcommittees of the Oregon Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Ted Donlan - Associate Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: donlan@pdx.edu
Dr. Donlan's research Interests involve the development, implementation, and evaluation of culturally-specific and consumer directed services for Mexican and Central American migrants/immigrants in the U.S., in the contexts of education, health and mental health, with a special focus on indigenous groups/cultures from these regions. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Donlan's latest research was focused on the factors affecting the health of indigenous Mexican and Central American migrants and immigrants in Oregon. He is especially interested in migrant and seasonal farmworkers, and in learning how these communities can build organizational capacity.
Treva Drake - Family Medicine Resident, OHSU; Contact: draket@ohsu.edu
Danielle Droppers, LMSW - Regional Health Equity Coalition Coordinator, Office of Equity and Inclusion, Oregon Health Authority; Contact: danielle.a.droppers@state.or.us
Veronica Dujon - Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, PSU; Contact: dujonv@pdx.edu
Dr. Dujon's interests include the following: 1) environmental sociology; 2) sociology of globalization; 3) women in the global economy; and 4) tensions between national development strategies and forces of globalization. She has studied water rights in the Klamath Basin, eco-tourism as a development strategy, and government distrust and alienation among gillnetters and trollers in Oregon. She co-chairs the Social Sustainability Network, which is planning a community-driven research project investigating the problems and priorities of young people in neighborhoods affected by health inequities.
Aileen Duldulao, MSW, PhD - Maternal and Child Health Epidemiologist, Community Epidemiological Services, Multnomah County Health Department; Contact: aileen.duldulao@multco.us
I am the Maternal and Child Health Epidemiologist for Multnomah County where I perform surveillance and complex data analyses exploring the etiology of adverse maternal and child health outcomes (especially premature birth, very low and low birth weight births, infant mortality and small for gestational age/intrauterine growth restriction) at the local county level. Additionally, I provide analyses of racial and ethnic disparities in maternal and child health using a mixture of traditional epidemiological methods, decolonizing research methodologies and community-based participatory research principles to inform the development and improvement of programs in Early Childhood Services and throughout the Health Department.
Cara Eckhardt - Associate Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: c.eckhardt@pdx.edu
Cara is a nutrition epidemiologist. Before joining the PSU faculty, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, where her work focused on the overlap of obesity and micronutrient malnutrition in women from countries undergoing the nutrition transition. Dr. Eckhardt also completed a pre-doctoral traineeship at the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, which included additional training in demography and a focus on interdisciplinary collaborations to address population-based research. Dr. Eckhardt’s publications include articles addressing infant feeding and growth, growth patterns in children from less-developed countries, obesity, and the nutrition transition occurring in middle-income countries. Dr. Eckhardt teaches courses in Global Health and Epidemiology
Samuel Edwards - General Internist, Physician, and Health Services Research, Portland Veteran's Affairs Health Care System, Assistant Professor of Medicine, OHSU; Contact: edwarsam@ohsu.edu
Samuel Edwards MD, MPH is a general internist, primary care physician, and health services researcher at the Portland Veterans Affairs Health Care System and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Dr. Edwards's research focuses on the role and function of primary care, with a focus on the care of vulnerable populations through Home-Based Primary Care. Dr. Edwards received his medical degree from the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, completed residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and completed fellowship in General Medicine and Primary Care at Harvard Medical School, and the VA Boston Healthcare System. His current projects include, “Optimizing Outcomes in Home Based Primary Care” (VA HSR&D), “Evaluating system change to advance learning and take evidence to scale (ESCALATES)” (AHRQ), “Interprofessional Learning & Practice Partnered Evaluation Center” (VA QUERI), and “Innovators Network - Population factors, Organizational capacity, Workflow and Resources (INPOWR)” (VA QUERI).
Katherine Elder - Associate Professor, Pacific University School of Professional Psychology; Contact: elderk@pacificu.edu
Sayla Elsbree-Kraft - OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: sayla@pdx.edu
Honora Englander - Associate Professor, OHSU Department of Medicine; Contact: englandh@ohsu.edu
Dr. Honora Englander is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in the Division of Hospital Medicine. Dr. Englander graduated from Williams College in 1998, the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2003, and completed Internal Medicine residency at OHSU in 2006. She is an internist and addiction medicine physician whose work focuses on improving care and systems for hospitalized adults with substance use disorder. Dr. Englander founded and is the Principle Investigator for the Improving Addiction Care Team (IMPACT), a nationally recognized model for hospital-based addiction care. Her research focuses on needs of hospitalized adults with substance use disorder, peers in hospital settings, and implementation of addiction medicine best-practices across general hospitals. Dr. Englander also co-founded and directed Care Transitions Innovation (C-TRAIN), a transitional care intervention for socioeconomically vulnerable adults. Dr. Englander has received numerous awards for her work transforming health systems including being named one of the Portland Business Journal’s ‘Top Forty under 40’ in 2015 and one of the American College of Physician’s Hospitalist TOP DOC in 2012. She has published research in numerous medical journals including JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Journal of Hospital Medicine, and the Journal of Addiction Medicine.
Rose Englert - Senior Business Leader, Care Oregon; Contact: englertr@careoregon.org
Rose leads the Community Health Innovation Programs at CareOregon which focus on meeting basic, clinically necessary needs for members/patients. The team focuses on housing, food/nutrition, transportation, and social supports.
Margaret Everett - Professor of Sociology and International Studies at PSU; Contact: everettm@pdx.edu
Margaret’s interests include health and migration, diabetes, nutrition, medical Anthropology, Latin American studies, health policy, and the social and cultural implications of new genetics. Her recent projects have involved community-based participatory research with the Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) coalition in north Portland; research on the role of healing in women’s conversion to Pentecostalism in Oaxaca, Mexico; and research on the social determinants of diabetes in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the relationship between local beliefs and practices around diabetes management and the biomedical model.
Lyle J. (LJ) Fagnan - Director, Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network (ORPRN); Professor, OHSU Family Medicine; Contact: fagnanl@ohsu.edu
Erin Fairchild - Defending Childhood Initiative Coordinator, Multnomah County Domestic Violence Coordination Office; Contact: erin.fairchild@multco.us
Erin Flynn; Associate Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: flynn2@pdx.edu
Erin Elizabeth Flynn is an educational researcher who studies the social, emotional, and linguistic power of preschool children’s storytelling in multilingual classroom settings. A social justice perspective permeates Dr. Flynn’s research and scholarship, two closely intertwined pursuits aimed at destabilizing prevalent conceptions of young, lower socioeconomic status children from diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds as less capable learners. Using Systemic Functional Linguistics, Dr. Flynn shows the diversity and sophistication present in young children’s meaning-making when the thoughts, feelings, and values of young children are centered as the catalyzing engine for classroom learning. Dr. Flynn is currently working on the Year in Stories project, completing analysis of the interactional dynamics of storytelling in three Head Start classrooms in which children participated in a small group storytelling activity called story circles over the course of one school year. In 2018-2019, Erin Flynn was also a collaborator on the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy grant funded project on teachers’ experiences with and perceptions of Kindergarten Readiness Assessments in one state. During the 2018-2019 school year, Dr. Flynn published an article and had a second accepted for publication. Translanguaging through story: Empowering children to use their full language repertoire was published in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. Teachers’ perspectives on year 2 implementation of a kindergarten readiness assessment will be forthcoming in the journal Early Education and Development.
Alex Foster, MD, MPH - Assistant Professor, OHSU School of Medicine; Contact: fosterb@ohsu.edu
Dr. Foster works on developing and implementing interventions for early childhood obesity in populations at higher risk (Latino, low-income, rural). The interventions primarily focus on utilizing existing resources to create sustainable interventions that communities can continue on their own.
Emily Ford - Urban & Public Affairs Librarian, PSU; Contact: forder@pdx.edu
Lauren Frank - Associate Professor, PSU Department of Communication; Contact: lfrank@pdx.edu
Dr. Frank’s research involves health, organizational, and mass communication. She is particularly interested in how public health organizations produce and disseminate their messages and what the potential impacts of such messages are. Dr. Frank enjoys using a combination of methods in her research, with a particular emphasis on advanced statistical techniques. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Frank is particularly interested in the influence of social norms and interpersonal discussion on how people make health decisions.
Barbara J. Friesen - Research Professor, Regional Research Institute for Human Services, School of Social Work, PSU; Contact: friesenb@pdx.edu
Carrie Furrer - Research Associate Professor, Center for Improvement of Child & Family Services, PSU; Contact: cfurrer@pdx.edu
Carrie Furrer, Research Associate Professor at the Center for Improvement of Child & Family Services at Portland State University, has been working on behalf of children and their families for over 22 years. Her experience includes program evaluation related to early childhood intervention, child welfare, youth development, peer mentoring, K-12 education, family support, child care, drug and alcohol abuse treatment, and family drug courts; and research on adolescent motivation and health behaviors. Dr. Furrer has served as the Principal Investigator and Project Director for both local and national evaluations of programs serving families and their children. Dr. Furrer has expertise in quantitative methods, research design, systems theory, and lifespan development. In her previous role as a child and family counselor, she worked with homeless youth and families involved in the child welfare system.
Sam Gage, B.A. Pulmonary and Critical Care, OHSU, Research Assistant; Contact: gages@ohsu.edu
Alexa Galluzzo, Director, Legacy Medicaid, PacificSource Community Solutions; Contact: alexashook@comcast.net
Ginny Garcia-Alexander - Assistant Professor of Sociology; Contact: gin5@pdx.edu
Dr. Garcia's research and teaching interests include health disparities, the social determinants of health, race/ethnicity, migration, social demography, and quantitative research methods. Her research agenda focuses on 1) how social processes, including migration and marriage, impact and produce social and health inequities, 2) racial/ethnic and class-based disparities in health status and behaviors, and 3) religion's influence on morbidity and mortality.
Sarah Geenen - Research Associate Professor, PSU School of Social Work Regional Research Institute for Human Services; Contact: geenens@pdx.edu
Sarah’s research interests include foster care, disability, mental health, self-determination, trauma, and positive youth development. She currently leads three randomized trials testing the efficacy of self-determination enhancement and near peer support on the mental health and transition to adulthood outcomes of youth in foster care, including youth with disabilities and mental health issues.
Carol Gelfer, MPH - Principal, Carol Gelfer Consulting; Contact: gelsul@earthlink.net
Sherril Gelmon - Director, Health Systems & Policy PhD Program, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: gelmons@pdx.edu
Dr. Gelmon is Professor of Health Systems Management and Policy in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She is Director of the PhD in Health Systems and Policy program, and her primary teaching is in the School's PhD and MPH programs. Her research interests include community health improvement strategies, health systems design and service delivery, health workforce policy, and community engagement in higher education.
Taylor Geyton; Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: tgeyton@pdx.edu
Dr. Geyton is an assistant professor at Portland State University in the school of social work. She earned her PhD from Morgan State University where she studied urban social work. Dr. Geyton's scholarship is focused on health and mental health disparities among black women, specifically as those disparities link and are linked to systems of racism and sexism. Her most recent study explored the experiences of Black women across the US engaged in activism and earned the CSWE doctoral student award. Additional interests include health disparities, mental health disparities, decolonizing mental health treatment, global social movements, and anti-colonial healing perspectives.
Christina Gildersleeve-Neumann - Associate Professor & Chair, PSU Speech & Hearing Sciences; Contact: cegn@pdx.edu
Dr. Gildersleeve-Neumann's research focuses on speech development and disorder of children from bilingual Spanish-English and culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Her current research focuses on markers for typical and atypical development in 3-, 4-, and 5-year old bilinguals as well as best treatment practices for bilingual speech sound disorder and childhood apraxia of speech.
Monique Gill, PhD, MPH - Research Scientist, Center for Outcomes Research and Education (CORE); Contact: monique.gill@providence.org
Kelly Gonzales - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Community Health, Center for Public Health Studies; Contact: kelly.gonzales@pdx.edu
Dr. Gonzales is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is the first (and only) Native American to be tenured at the OSHU-PSU School of Public health. She completed two years of post-doctoral training at the University of Colorado Denver, Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health. She has served as a board member elect and co-chair for the Native Research Network, Inc. and currently is a member of the Decolonizing BIPOC Data Equity Advisory group of Multnomah County. All of her work is guided by strong, active partnerships with populations of color, particularly Native American tribal- and urban-based communities and organizations. Dr. Gonzales' work examines the role of psychological stress, specifically discrimination, colonialism, and cultural resilience with regard to diabetes-related health outcomes, intervention design with regard to recruitment an retention, reproductive justice, and student success. Most of her work she has explored the influence of discrimination within the context of health care settings and community-based demonstration projects among AI/ANs for diabetes prevention and cardiovascular risk reduction. Her work also examines the psychometric characteristics of discrimination measures, and the ways that discrimination is conceptualized and experienced among AI/ANs.
Finn Gornick - OHSU-PSU School of Public Health/MPH: Health Management & Policy Student; Contact: fgornick@pdx.edu
Beth Green, PhD - Director of Early Childhood & Family Support Research, Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services, School of Social Work, PSU; Contact: beth.green@pdx.edu
Dr. Green has been partnering with community-based programs 25 years to design useful and rigorous evaluation and research studies to help improve services for young children and their families. Dr. Green earned a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Arizona State University, with an emphasis on applied research methods. She then spent 3 years at the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Child Development, where she learned the value of community partnerships as a means to build continuous learning systems for early childhood programs. Her areas of expertise include home visiting, child abuse prevention, early childhood mental health consultation, early childhood care and education, and Prenatal-Grade 3 systems. She partners with early childhood, K12, home visiting and other systems to conduct evaluations that provide useful, timely information for program planning and continuous quality improvement.
Kari Greene, MPH (she/her/hers) - Research and Evaluation Scientist at Program Design & Evaluation Services, Multnomah County Health Department and Oregon Public Health Division; Contact: kari.greene@dhsoha.state.or.us
Carol Greenough, PhD - Washington County Behavioral Health Council Member; Contact: Carol.greenough@gmail.com
Jeanne-Marie Guise - Professor, OHSU Departments of OB/GYN, Medical Informatics & Clinical Edpidemiology, Public Health & Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine; Contact: guisej@ohsu.edu
Jenny Grunditz, M. Sc.- Research Associate, OHSU, CHSE; Contact: youjen@ohsu.edu
Ms. Grunditz is a Research Associate at the Center for Health Systems Effectiveness at OHSU, where she contributes to quantitative health services research and evaluation of Medicaid programs and policies in Oregon. An economist by training, she has experience conducting evaluation and return-on-investment analyses of programs targeting social determinants of health and chronic disease management at OHSU and beyond. She is particularly interested in exploring collaborative financing solutions and novel payment models to promote SDH investment. She obtained a M.Sc. in Economics from University College London, where her dissertation focused on quantifying family-level effects on child health outcomes.
Melissa Haeffner - Assistant Professor, Environmental Science and Management, PSU; Contact: melh32@pdx.edu
Melissa Haeffner, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Science and Management department at Portland State University. Her research unifies several research domains that contribute to the knowledge of local politics in watersheds and how they shape urban water infrastructure development in the past, in the present, and under future predictions. Her ongoing research and teaching commitments investigate water insecurity and justice within municipal water systems and the links between multi-scale policies, infrastructural and environmental conditions, and household behavior. Her work focuses on “just water” and how social, political, and biophysical factors structure access to water, using the concept of environmental justice to draw attention to issues of fairness and equality in the ways different social groups gain access to natural resources. See www.melhaeffner.com, www.oregonwaterstories.com, www.tillamookwatersheds.com
Leslie Hammer - Professor, Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Director, PSU Occupational Health Psychology Program; Contact: hammerl@pdx.edu
Dr. Hammer is the Director of the Center for Work-Family Stress, Safety, and Health, funded by grants from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. This center is one of six centers that make up the national Work, Family, and Health Network (WFHN). Dr. Hammer is also the Director of the Occupational Health Psychology graduate training program at Portland State University that is funded through a training program grant from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). She is the Associate Director of the NIOSH-funded Oregon Healthy Workforce Center (OHWC), one of four centers of excellence in Total Worker Health. Most recently Dr. Hammer was awarded a grant from the Department of Defense to study ways to increase supervisor support and enhance employment retention for veterans reintegrating into the workforce. Her research focuses on ways in which organizations can help reduce work and family stress and improve positive spillover among employees by facilitating both formal and informal workplace supports.
Jessica Hardin, PhD – Assistant Professor, Sociology/Anthropology, Pacific University; Contact: hardin@pacificu.edu
Kathy Harris - Director, Literacy, Language & Technology Research Group, Department of Applied Linguistics, PSU; Contact: harriska@pdx.edu
Kathy Harris is a member of the Literacy, Language, and Technology Research group and the Director of Learner Web. Currently, the research group is focused on disparities of access to the internet, devices, and the skills to use both in the context of health. This includes use of patient portals, finding accurate health information online, using tracking apps for chronic illness such as diabetes and heart disease, online support groups, etc. Increasingly, digital literacy is functioning as a social determinant of health.
Shelley Hartling, MA - Portland State University; Contact: shelleyhartling@gmail.com
Dorit Harvey Skidmore - School of Social Work, College of Education; Contact: doritharvey@gmail.com
Susan Hedlund, MSW, LCSW - PSU School of Social Work and OHSU School of Medicine Faculty, Director of Patient & Family Services; Contact: hedlunds@ohsu.edu
As an oncology social worker and long time faculty member at both PSU's School of Social Work and OHSU's School of Medicine, the impact of health disparities is palpable. People of color are diagnosed with cancer much later than their white counterparts which impacts both treatment and survival. Other social determinants such as poverty, history of systemic racism, and health literacy also affect access to care. I co-chair the Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the Association of Oncology Social Work, and am working with OHSU on their disparity issues and potential solutions.
Michelle Helman, MA - Pronouns: she/her
Michelle works with organizations to strengthen their resiliency through adaptive change management and MERL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning) strategies. Her technical skills and experience at the intersection of public health, conflict resolution, and violence prevention are trauma-informed and equity driven. She is bilingual in English and Spanish, is a beginner in French, and has worked internationally throughout Latin America and the South Pacific.
Tia Henderson - Research Manager, Upstream Public Health; Contact: tia@upstreampublichealth.org
William Hersh - Professor and Chair, OHSU School of Medicine, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology; Contact: hersh@ohsu.edu
Hollie Hix-Small, PhD - Associate Professor, Program Coordinator, Early Intervention Program, College of
Education, PSU; Contact: hixsmall@pdx.edu
Hollie Hix-Small's work focuses on very young children, birth to age five and their families, who experience developmental difficulties, social emotional or behavioral needs, or disabilities. Hollie has partnered extensively with international organizations on early childhood development and early childhood intervention systems and service delivery over the last 15 years. She was awarded a Fulbright to Myanmar in 2019. Her research interests include the timely identification of children with developmental delays and disabilities, infant and toddler mental health, development of coordinated systems, and professional development. She prepares licensure and master's students to work in the field of early childhood intervention with emphasis on consultation-based, itinerant services.
James Hodgson - Club Manager, West Side Athletic Club; Contact: James@WestSideAthleticClub.com
So many people out there struggle with motivation, proper information, and affordable access to high quality health services. By consulting with doctors, physicians and all other health professionals who are on the front lines dealing with the most serious health issues, we can find those needing our fitness club services. By using sponsored memberships in specific ways we can have a tremendous impact on our community that will hopefully spread knowledge, positivity, and personal responsibility to encourage citizens to take care of themselves first so they can then take care of family, neighbors, and all others in the microsphere of our community.
While I am representing an organization, joining this initiative is more of a personal choice to have a greater impact in my community. I hope to leverage my position and resources here at West Side Athletic Club to produce real change through services, research opportunities, and more.
Jill Hoffman - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: jill.hoffman@pdx.edu
Jill’s scholarly interests are guided by prior professional experiences with the early intervention system in Philadelphia, PA. As a byproduct of this work, she spoke candidly with professionals and parents who expressed frustrations about systemic issues within the field. From the shortage of high quality and accessible services, to the lack of support for professionals in the field, to families facing increasingly complex challenges, it was evident that many people and organizations within the realm of early childhood were struggling. During her doctoral studies, many of these same frustrations were mirrored in her work with the child welfare system. It is these experiences that drive her work. The ultimate goal of her scholarly agenda is to improve the capacities of systems that serve vulnerable young children and their families, with a particular emphasis on developing systems that are interconnected, accessible, and responsive to the needs of the families they serve.
Jenn Hollandsworth Reed, MPH - OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Doctoral Student; Contact: jholl2@pdx.edu
Jenn is a PhD student in the Health Systems & Policy program in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Her primary research interest is the relationship between organizational policies and the mental health of law enforcement officers. She teaches Contemporary Issues in Public Health Ethics, as well as Public Health Law, Policy, and Ethics.
Carly Hood-Ronick, MPA, MPH - Director, CCO Strategy and Health Equity, Oregon Primary Care Association; Contact: hood.carly@gmail.com
Elizabeth Hooker, MS, MPH - Biostatistician, CIVIC, Portland VA Medical Center; Contact: Elizabeth.Hooker@va.gov
Megan Hoopes - Project Director, Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board NW Tribal Epidemiology Center; Contact: mhoopes@npaihb.org
Willi Horner-Johnson - Associate Professor, Institute on Development and Disability, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: hornerjo@ohsu.edu
Dr. Willi Horner-Johnson, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Her research is based in OHSU’s Institute on Development and Disability and is focused on identifying and addressing health and healthcare disparities experienced by people with disabilities. She has particular interest in reproductive health of women with disabilities and compounded disparities experienced by people with disabilities who also belong to other marginalized groups. Willi is currently PI of the CDC-funded Oregon Office on Disability and Health, which analyzes surveillance data on health and social determinants of health among people with disabilities, provides targeted health promotion training, and engages in efforts to promote systems and policy changes to promote inclusion of people with disabilities.
Linda Humphrey - Professor, OHSU Department of Publich Health and Preventive Medicine; Contact: humphrey@ohsu.edu
James Huntzicker - Head, OHSU Division of Management; Contact: huntzicj@ohsu.edu
Kay Hutchinson - Director of Programs, REACH Community Development, Inc.; Contact: khutchinson@reachcdc.org
REACH Community Development's mission is to provide quality affordable housing and opportunities for individuals, families and communities to thrive. With over 1800 units of affordable housing, we provide services and programs that address the social determinants of health.
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Passion Ilea, MSW - Doctoral Student, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: pilea@pdx.edu
Betty Izumi - OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: izumibet@pdx.edu
Christina Jaderholm, MS, DC; GRA/PhD Student, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Community Health; Contact: cmj8@pdx.edu
Kelly Jeske, MS, MSW, LCSW - Pediatric Oncology Social Worker, Doernbecher Children's Hospital, OHSU; Contact: jeske@ohsu.edu
Kelly Jeske, LCSW, is a pediatric oncology social worker at Doernbecher Children's Hospital. Kelly's past research includes her sociology master's thesis titled Genderqueer meets the Doc: Masculine-Identified Transgender Individuals and Health Care in Portland, OR.
Jamie Jones, MPH - Teaching Assistant Professor & Director of Applied Learning, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: jijones@pdx.edu
Muriel Jordan - Health Center Manager, Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, Milwaukie Health Center; Contact: muriel.jordan@ppcw.org
Becky Jungbauer, DrPH, MPH - Pacific Northwest Evidence-based Practice Center, OHSU; Contact: jungbaue@ohsu.edu
Kimberly Kahn - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Psychology; Contact: kimbkahn@pdx.edu
Tom Keller - Duncan and Cindy Campbell Endowed Professor for Children, Youth, and Families, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: kellert@pdx.edu
Tom Keller studies a wide array of mentoring programs and relationships, from those geared toward youth, to college students, to adults in the workplace. His research interests include youth mentoring, relationship development, child and adolescent development, attachment theory and research, community-based youth programs, child welfare, child mental health services, youth aging out of foster care. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Keller is interested in social networks and health.
Erin Kenzie, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: kenzie@ohsu.edu
Dr. Kenzie is an Assistant Professor at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health and is affiliated with the Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network and the PSU Systems Science Program. Her research focuses on visualizing complex social and socio-ecological systems to inform decision-making in public health.
MacKenzie Kessler, Public Administration of Health and Community Health Education, School of OHSU-PSU; Contact: keslermackenzie@gmail.com
I am interested in increasing diversity in the healthcare tech industry; mainly encouraging females and female identifying individuals to pursue STEM when they otherwise would not pursue the field.
Alexandra Kihn-Stang, MScN - PhD Candidate, Health Systems & Policy, Adjunct Professor of Public Health Education, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: kih@pdx.edu
Alexandra is a PhD candidate in the Health Systems & Policy program in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Her primary research interests include food access, food security, and rural health. Her dissertation research focuses on understanding how Oregon's Coordinated Care Organizations perceive, engage with, and finance produce prescription programs (Veggie Rx) as an approach to addressing social determinants of health.
Ericka Kimball, PhD, LCSW - Associate Professor, School of Social Work, PSU; Contact: ekimball@pdx.edu
My research is critically focused in the domains of domestic violence and healthcare to understand and develop alternatives to current practices. The typical mainstream responses are mostly focused on secondary and tertiary intervention on an individual level (e.g. shelter, protective orders, healthcare screening, etc.). My interest is in multi-system universal and selective primary prevention and shifting the focus of response from individual-levels to system-levels. This means examining the interactions and influences of systems and challenging the focus of individual intervention as a response to complex social problems.
Anne King, MBA - Associate Director, Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network, OHSU; Contact: kinga@ohsu.edu
Anne King is the Associate Director of the Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network at OHSU where she directs projects related to social determinants of health and health equity, including a large CMS study to understand the social needs of Oregon's Medicaid and Medicare Members, and technical assistance contracts around Medicaid flexibilities for Coordinated Care Organizations to invest in social needs.
Susanne Klawetter, PhD, LCSW - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: skla2@pdx.edu
Dr. Klawetter is an Assistant Professor in the PSU School of Social Work. She is a maternal and child health disparities scholar with particular interests in maternal/early childhood mental health. She conducts research that sits at the intersection of policy advocacy (e.g., universal paid leave) and improving clinical care for women of color and low-income women (e.g., integrated behavioral health in novel settings). Through impacting policy and clinical care, her research aims to positively impact maternal/child health equity. Susanne is currently working on several projects. Her project, “Integrated Behavioral Health Support for OHSU NICU Families,” funded through NW Center of Excellence & K12 in Patient Centered Learning Health Systems Science, aims to identify individual- and systemic barriers and solutions to integrating a behavioral health and parenting support program within the OHSU NICU. In partnership with Dr. Roberta Hunte and Multnomah County’s Healthy Birth Initiative, she is also working on a project funded through PSU’s School of Social Work which aims to explore the impact and responses to race-related stress among program staff and program participants. Her project, “Barriers and facilitators to maternal visits in the NICU and impact of visiting on infant development,” examines maternal engagement in multiple Colorado NICUs and its relationship to maternal mental health and infant health outcomes. Lastly, “Program development and evaluation of Warm Connections,” evaluates and an integrated behavioral health program located within multiple Colorado WIC clinics.
Sean S. Kohles, PhD - Kohles Bioengineering, Research Professor of Biomaterials & Biomechanics (SOD), Research Professor of Emergency Medicine (SOM), OHSU; Contact: kohles@ohsu.edu or ssk@kohlesbioengineering.com
Nancy Koroloff - Professor Emeritus and Research Professor, PSU School of Social Work, Regional Research Institute for Human Services; Contact: koroloff@pdx.edu
Prior to becoming Interim Dean, Dr. Koroloff was the Co-Director of the Research and Training Center (RTC) for Pathways to Positive Futures. She continues, however, to be a principal investigator within the RTC, which is focused on supporting successful transitions to adult life for youth and young adults with serious mental health conditions. Dr. Koroloff’s research focuses on policy issues and service delivery barriers for young people with serious mental health issues. Dr. Koroloff's related research interests include family support and children's mental health services and consumer involvement in policy development.
Todd Korthuis - Associate Professor, OHSU Departments of Medicine & Public Health/Preventive Medicine; Contact: korthuis@ohsu.edu
Liliya Kraynov, MD - Clinical Instructor, Research Fellow; OHSU Human Investigations Program, Department of Emergency Medicine, OHSU; Contact: kraynov@ohsu.edu
Erin Krik - Quality Manager, Family Medicine, OHSU Richmond Clinic; Contact: kirker@ohsu.edu
Yves Labissière - Associate Professor of Community Health, PSU; Contact: labissy@pdx.edu
Yves Labissière teaches undergraduate and graduate level classes and conducts research on the psychology of oppression and empowerment, diversity, and inter and intra-group relations and conflict. He is a core member of the general education program, University Studies. His research on intra/intergroup relations focuses on Blackness, black identity and racial and ethnic identities among groups categorized as Black in the US. Other areas of research include hate crimes, popular culture, and pedagogy. He designs and facilitates workshops on managing diversity in the workplace, and on minimizing the influence of “group think” of highly diverse work teams.
Kate LaForge - Research Associate II, Comagine Health; Ph.D. Student, Medical Sociology, UCSF Contact: kate.laforge@ucsf.edu
Kate is a Research Associate II at Comagine Health and Ph.D. student in Medical Sociology at UCSF. Her professional research focuses on injection drug use, reducing the risk of overdose, fentanyl, alternatives to opioids, chronic pain, and health services delivery. Her academic research explores questions about chronic pain, financial stress, and suicide. She is primarily interested in how socioeconomic conditions shape experiences of pain. Kate also volunteers as a crisis text counselor and is interested in understanding, improving, and developing telemental health crisis services. Kate received her Master's in Public Health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in 2017 and is the founder of the Network of Early Career Researchers in Suicide and Self-harm Qualitative Methods Group.
William Lambert - Professor OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: lambertw@ohsu.edu
Joel Lane, PhD - Assistant Professor of Counselor Education, Coordinator of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at PSU; Contact: lanejoel@pdx.edu
Dr. Joel Lane research interests include the mental health implications of life transitions in young adulthood.
Junghee Lee - Associate Professor of Social Work, PSU; Contact: jungl@pdx.edu
Dr. Lee's interests are in American Indian students’ retention in higher education, political economy and health care for the poor, health disparities, community-based practice, program evaluation, child welfare, and increasing retention in higher education, and research with Asian, Mexican and American Indian communities. In regards to the social determinants of health, she is interested in educational inequity and mental health disparities.
Lielah Leighton, MSW - PhD Candidate, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: lielah@pdx.edu
Lielah is a clinical social worker with a background in public health. She is a current doctoral student in the School of Social Work at Portland State. Lielah’s research agenda is informed by her personal and professional experiences, as well as her lived experience doing sex work for over ten years. Strongly influenced by Post-Marxist and Post-Colonial thought, Lielah’s scholarly interests live at the intersections of marginalized work, trauma politics, social movements, embodied knowledge, and the social determinants of mental health.
Eline Lenne, MA, MOT - Doctoral Student, PSU School of Social Work & OSLER TL1 Training Grant at OHSU; Contact: eline@pdx.edu
Eline is a licensed occupational therapist, doula, and social science researcher bridging social work, justice and medicine. Eline has research experience in public health and medicine (smoking cessation, infant and family health, parent mental health) and public policy (post-secondary education). Eline's current body of research addresses interventions aimed at improving health outcomes for children, families, and LGBTQ+ individuals using community-based participatory methods.
Jessica Leston - Program Manager, Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board Epidemiology; Contact: jleston@npaihb.org
Ximena A. Levander, MD, MCR - Assistant Professor and Clinician Investigator, OHSU; Contact: levander@ohsu.edu
Ximena A. Levander, MD, MCR is an Assistant Professor and Clinician Investigator at Oregon Health & Science University in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, Section of Addiction Medicine. Her research interests focus on developing and implementing effective interventions for delivering evidence-based addiction and substance use disorder treatment and care in a patient-centered approach to people who use drugs/substances. She recently completed a 3-year combined Addiction Medicine and Samuel H. Wise General Internal Medicine Clinical Research Fellowship. Her main research project during fellowship focused on addressing gaps in the Hepatitis C (HCV) care continuum in people who use drugs (PWUD) and explored how hospitalization could be a reachable moment for PWUD to address their HCV and to better understand the relationship between substance use treatment engagement and patient interest and/or readiness for HCV direct acting antiviral treatment. Her current research interests include evaluation of telemedicine for treatment of opioid use disorder with buprenorphine and how to ensure equitable access to addiction treatment using telemedicine/telehealth (including addressing digital literacy, technology availability). She is also interested in how telemedicine could expand access to addiction treatment particularly to those with barriers to care including those living in rural communities.
Sonja Likumahuwa - Research Associate, OHSU Department of Family Medicine; Contact: likumahu@ohsu.edu
Sunny Lin, PhD, MS - Assistant Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: sunlin@pdx.edu
Sunny Lin is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health whose research explores the impact of payment reform, technology, and referral networks on patient experience, quality, and cost of care. She uses quantitative analysis of large datasets to understand how patterns of care can be indicative of care quality. Dr. Lin is particularly interested in understanding how quality of care is impacted by the patient experience, for example, structural and logistic barriers to care access and health information, patient/provider communication, and discrimination within the healthcare system. Her current research focuses on maternal health and the experience of care fragmentation for pregnant patients. Dr. Lin received a PhD in Health Services Organization and policy in 2019 from the University of Michigan, a MS in Health Care Management and Policy in 2014 from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BS in Education from Northwestern University in 2009
Stephan Lindner, PhD - Research Assistant Professor, OHSU: Center for Health Systems Effectiveness (CHSE), Department of Emergency Medicine; OHSU-PSU SPH; Contact: lindners@ohsu.edu
I am a health economist and research assistant professor at OHSU's Center for Health Systems Effectiveness (CHSE) and at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. My work has focused on Medicaid policies, value-based payment reform, primary care, and people with disabilities. Most of my current research work focuses on how states adapt their Medicaid programs to improve the health and well-being of their beneficiaries.
Lauren Lipira, MSW - Doctoral Student, Department of Health Services, University of Washington; Contact: llipira@uw.edu
Yan Liu, MS - Graduate student, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: yliu@ohsu.edu
Yan Liu is a biostatistics graduate student in school of public health of OHSU.
Richard Lockwood, PhD, MPH - Faculty, OHSU/PSU School of Public Health, PSU; Contact: Lockwood@pdx.edu
Dr. Lockwood's courses prepare the future public health workforce by contextualizing health as a product of historical, political, economic and social phenomena. Each year he educates about 600 people on the social determinants perspective.
Judith Logan - Associate professor, OHSU Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology; Contact: loganju@ohsu.edu
Don Lollar - Professor, OHSU Institute on Development and Disability; Contact: lollar@ohsu.edu
For 20 years, Don Lollar was a psychologist in practice working with children, and adolescents living with disabling conditions, and their families. Don was then recruited to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where he led the Office on Disability and Health in the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities or several years, and then became Director of Extramural Research. Dr. Lollar was Associate Director in the OHSU Institute on Development & Disability, and PI for the OHSU University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. Social determinants concepts are not adequately addressing disability. The original WHO report rarely mentioned disability, and then only as a negative outcome. Disability needs to be viewed conceptually and scientifically as itself a social determinant.
Julia Love, MA/PhD - Senior Research and Evaluation Analyst, Multnomah County; Contact: julia.love@multco.us
Julia Love is a Senior Research and Evaluation Analyst with the Multnomah County Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Division. She applies developmental science and utilization-focused evaluation to her daily work and strives to strengthen programs that serve vulnerable communities.
Travis Lovejoy, MPH, PhD - Psychologist and Research Investigator, Mental Health and Clinical Neurosciences, Portland VA Medical Center; Contact: travis.lovejoy@va.gov
Dr. Lovejoy is a clinical and health services researcher at the Portland VA Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Lovejoy's research interests are in the areas of chronic pain management for patients with co-occurring substance use disorders and secondary prevention of HIV infection in underserved populations.
Robert A. Lowe - Professor of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at OHSU; Contact: lowero@ohsu.edu
Robert Lowe, MD, MPH, is a Professor in the Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology, the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, and the Department of Emergency Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU); he is also the founder of the OHSU Center for Policy and Research in Emergency Medicine (CPR-EM). He is residency trained and board certified in both Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine. Before coming to OHSU, he served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Emergency Medicine and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics from 1993 through 2001. Dr. Lowe has performed extensive health services and epidemiologic research, with funding from the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, the National Institutes of Health (NINDS, NHLBI, and NIDA), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and other sources. His major research focus is access to care for vulnerable populations. Within this broad topic, he has studied the role of emergency departments in access to care and – most recently – leads a community-based participatory research project in partnership with Central City Concern and Portland State University collaborators, looking at the relationship between housing, employment, recovery from addiction, and health.
Lynette Lubiak - PHE Clinical/Pre-Nursing Undergraduate Student, PSU; Contact: lanacker@pdx.edu
I have a vested interest in how serious mental health can be overcome to a state of recovery based on what support structures in a whole health aspect are played out and the evaluation of how education/educators can play a vital role in the recovery of a person with a serious mental health condition.
Amy Lubitow - Professor of Sociology, PSU; Contact: alubitow@pdx.edu
In regards to the social determinants of health, as an environmental sociologist, Dr. Lubitow is very interested in ongoing research in Portland. She is a new faculty member who would like to meet other researchers in the area. Her research is focused on environmental justice, sustainability, women’s health, and health social movements in the U.S.
Patrick Lydon - Sustainability Program Manager, Legacy Health; Contact: plydon@lhs.org
I manage and coordinate the sustainability programs for Legacy Health (5 hospitals in the Portland metro area), I'm particularly interested in how the built (physical) environment affects human health.
Rob Lyerla, PhD, MPH - Associate Director for Science, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, DHHS, USG; Contact: rob.lyerla@samhsa.gov
Frances Lynch - Senior Investigator, Center for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente; Contact: frances.lynch@kpchr.org
Dr. Lynch is a health economist whose research interests focus on the organization and financing of care for people with mental health and substance abuse problems. She joined the CHR as an investigator in July 1996. Dr. Lynch has been the principal investigator and co-investigator of several grants funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Drug Abuse. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Lynch is interested in health economics, economic evaluation of complex behavioral interventions, economic evaluations and observational studies for high risk populations, such as children in foster care, and children with mental health and developmental problems.
John MacArthur - Research Associate, ORTEC, PSU; Contact: macarthur@pdx.edu
Julie Maher - Director of Program Design and Evaluation Services, Multnomah County Health Department and Oregon Public Health Division; Contact: julie.e.maher@state.or.us
Dr. Neera Malhotra - University Studies, Trauma Informed Teaching and Sexuality & Intellectual Disabilities at PSU; Contact: neeram@pdx.edu
Eric Mankowski - Professor of Psychology at PSU; Contact: mankowskie@pdx.edu
Eric Mankowski is a community and social psychologist who teaches courses and conducts research on the psychology of men and masculinities, domestic violence, and group dynamics. He has evaluated numerous programs in schools, communities, and prisons across the country that are intended to support male youth and adults to develop nonviolent, healthy relationships. He is a member of the Oregon Batterer Intervention Program Standards Advisory Committee and the Oregon Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team. His interests in the social determinants of health focus on the socialization of masculinity and masculinity ideologies and their relationship to negative social and health outcomes.
Alison Martin, PhD, MA, BS - Assistant Professor, Oregon Center for Children and Youth with Special Health Needs. OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: martial@ohsu.edu
Dr. Martin is the Assessment and Evaluation Manager for the Oregon Center for Children and Youth with Special Health Needs, the state's Title V Block Grant Agency for children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN), is an evaluation consultant to OHSU's University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, and an Assistant Professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She also collaborates with nonprofit organizations, providing program evaluation and evaluation capacity building consultation. Her current projects focus on assessing the needs of Oregon CYSHCN using a participatory approach to needs assessment, evaluating programs that promote care coordination for CYSHCN, and implementing and evaluating interventions to support transition from pediatric to adult health care for young adults with medical complexity. CYSHCN experience greater challenges accessing and receiving health and other care services than children and youth without special health care needs. Dr. Martin has taught Community Based Participatory Research and co-teaches Program Evaluation in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health's Public Health Practice online MPH progra.
Dennis McCarty - Professor, OHSU Department of Public Health & Preventive Medicine; Contact: mccartyd@ohsu.edu
Dennis McCary collaborates with policy makers and with community based programs to translate research into practice for treatment of alcohol and drug use disorders. He is the co-Principal Investigator for the Western States Node of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network. Dr. McCarty continues to be active with investigators at the University of Wisconsin in extensions of the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx) and Advancing Recovery. NIDA awards support studies of the implementation of medication-assisted treatment in clinics contracting with a commercial health plan, an assessment of organizational change in Ohio. Currently, he collaborates with Wayne Wakeland at PSU on a systems dynamic model of opioid misuse and abuse.
John McConnell Ph.D. - Director, OHSU Center for Health Systems Effectiveness; Professor, OHSU Departments of Emergency Medicine and Public Health & Preventive Medicine; Contact: mcconnjo@ohsu.edu
John McConnell directs the Center for Health System Effectiveness (CHSE) at Oregon Health & Science University. CHSE is a health policy center focused on Medicaid, with particular expertise in managing and analyzing Mediciad claims data and linking those claims to other administrative data. The Center’s work has focused on payment delivery and system reform, with particular interest in the ways to control spending growth in Medicaid while maintaining or improving access and quality. Dr. McConnell is currently leading evaluations of the effects of Medicaid waivers in states in the Northwest. His research also examines specific interventions and policies designed to address social determinants of health and health equity, maternal health, behavioral health, and the use of evidence-based protocols.
Barbara McCullough-Jones, MSCI - Executive Director, Q Center; Contact: barbara@pdxqcenter.org
Barbara has been a nonprofit executive for nearly 30 years. A significant amount of that time has been spent developing and administering health and wellness programs for LGBT communities. Projects have included receiving the first ever funding from the Komen Foundation to pay for mammograms for lesbians; serving as a Council member of a Ryan White Planning Council and serving as Administer for the Planning Council; delivering programs for women and children with HIV/AIDS; developing training curriculums such as youth service provides working with LGBT youth & young adults and breast cancer awareness in serving transgender women. Additionally, Barbara has developed a number of health and wellness asset based programs such as Q Sports at Oregon's Q Center in Portland. Barbara created the program motto, "It doesn't matter how you move, it only matters that you get moving".
Marian McDonagh - Associate Professor, OHSU Departemnt of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology; Contact: mcdonagh@ohsu.edu
Marjorie McGee - Equity & Inclusion Policy Data Analyst, Oregon Health Authority, Office of Equity & Inclusion; Contact: Marjorie.g.mcgee@state.or.us
Her current research interests primarily focused upon examining the connections between disability status and health, with a focus on the effects of disablism and violence. She is also very interested in doing this research through an intersectional lens, examining the effects of disability status along with other social statuses, such as race/ethnicity and sexual orientation, on social inequities in health, education and employment.
Moriah McGrath - Non-tenure Track Faculty Member, School of Urban Studies and Planning, PSU; Contact: moriah@pdx.edu
Moriah McSharry McGrath works at the intersection of urban planning and public health. Currently a faculty member in the School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, her areas of expertise include environmental justice, sexuality and gender, substance use, housing and displacement.
Corliss McKeever, MSW - President & CEO African American Health Coalition; Contact: corlissm@aahc-portland.org
Jana Meinhold, PhD - Child, Youth, and Family Studies, PSU; Contact: meinhold@pdx.edu
Jana is a life course researcher with an interdisciplinary social sustainability lens in the areas of 1) positive youth development; 2) engagement with the environment (built and natural) and its influence on individual development, as well as family and community health and; 3) the linked lives of siblings through their life transitions.
Lynne Corinne Messer - Associate Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: lymesser@pdx.edu
Dr. Messer is an assistant professor in Community Health. She joined PSU from the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at the Duke Global Health Institute. She received her doctorate in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina in 2005. Her dissertation focused on neighborhood crime, deprivation and preterm birth. Her work focuses on race, class and other social determinants of health, health disparities and health status, environmental and socioeconomic factors in health disparities, and stigma.
Marily Mihasci, BS - Community Health Specialist II, Multnomah County; Contact: marilyn.mihacsi@multco.us
As a Community Health Specialist II for Multnomah County Department of Community Justice's Women and Family Services Unit, Marilyn utilizes the Social Determinants of Health to assess the needs of justice involved women and their families to help identify both risk and protective factors. Marilyn develops rapport and engages with justice involved clients while assisting Probation and Parole Officers with case planning and community program referrals.
Rebecca Miller, M.S.Ed. - Senior Research Assistant and Project Manager for FUTURES and Build EXITO, Regional Research Institute at PSU School of Social Work; Contact: ramiller@pdx.edu
My direct service work supports students with lived experience in foster care on college and university campuses. My research interests include the impact of mental health and trauma on student success, mentoring training and networks, as well as career advising and transition.
Sara Miller, BSN - Student FNP-DNP, School Of Nursing: Family Nurse Practitioner and Doctorate of Nursing Practice Program, OHSU; Contact: SaraSMiller25@gmail.com
Sara is a Family Nurse Practitioner and Doctorate of Nursing Practice student at OHSU. She is involved with the OHSU/PSU Health Equity Circle, Institute for Healthcare Improvement Open School, and the Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good. She is also a Registered Nurse who works at a bilingual community health center in Salem, Oregon that is part of the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinics. She has done research as an undergraduate at Tufts Univeristy on reproductive empowerment of indigenous women in a region of Chile and on rural healthcare dynamics in a region of the Bolivian Amazon. She is devoted to health equity and some of her main interests include reproductive health, cross-cultural health, social justice, and community empowerment.
Ruby Mitchell, MPH - Graduate Student, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: ruby.mitchell@pdx.edu
Lisa Miura, MD - Portland VAMC; Assistant Professor, OHSU; Contact: miural@ohsu.edu
Esther Moe - Research Assistant Professor, OHSU School of Medicine; Contact: Moe@ohsu.edu
Cynthia Mohr - Professor of Psychology at Portland State University; Contact: cdmohr@pdx.edu
Dr. Mohr’s research concerns psychosocial influences on subjective well-being and physical health and in particular the processes by which positive and negative facets of interpersonal relationships and emotions exert effects on health, particularly alcohol consumption. Dr. Mohr's current research projects include a focus on military family health and well-being, social support interventions, and risk and mitigating factors influencing loneliness.
Gabrielle Monaco - Contact: gmonaco@pdx.edu
Daniel Morris - Epidemiologist, Oregon Health Authority, Public Health Division Center for Health protection; Contact: daniel.s.morris@state.or.us
Craig Mosbaek, MPH - President, Mosbaek Consulting; Contact: cmosbaek@gmail.com
Craig Mosbaek works with government agencies and non-profit organizations to improve public health policy through communications, research/evaluation, and strategic planning. Much of this policy work focuses on improving health equity and addressing the social determinants of health.
Kati Moseley, MPH - Health Promotion Strategist, Oregon Health Authority; Contact: katarina.moseley@state.or.us
Miranda Mosier, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor, Child, Youth, and Family Studies, PSU; Contact: miran2@pdx.edu
Miranda is a qualitative researcher whose interests revolve around the lives and experiences of non-materially privileged young people and their interactions with institutions - particularly in child welfare and higher education. Miranda's publications/current work include the emic perspectives of youth aging out of foster care, the experiences of people of color in Oregon's schools, and the relational worlds of (other) first-generation college students.
Ned Mossman, MPH - Program Manager, Payment Reform and Social Determinants of Health at OCHIN; Contact: mossmann@ochin.org
Ned Mossman, MPH, oversees efforts to help clinics in OCHIN's nationwide network of Community Health Centers integrate value-based care and social determinants of health into their processes and clinical systems.
Laurel Mossor, MSW (in progress) - PSU School of Social Work, Children's Cross-System Collaboration Coordinator at Multnomah County Behavioral Health Division; Contact: laurel.mossor@gmail.com
Laurel Mossor is a 2021 MSW degree candidate through the PSU School of Social Work. Within her studies, work, and her graduate internship role as Children's Cross-system Collaboration Coordinator with the Multnomah County Behavioral Health Division, Laurel strives to address system-level issues within her community by addressing barriers to care and understanding the nature of structural change. Addressing social determinants of health is rooted in her background and interests in mental health care and health promotion. By organizing and facilitating the upcoming Children's Cross-system Collaboration Committee, Laurel hopes to meaningfully contribute to the needs of Multnomah County families and providers within the Tri-County System of Care. She joins the SDHI with the goal of gathering valuable and worthwhile data to share with the Initiative in support of addressing social determinants of health.
Makalapu Motuapuaka - Research Assistant, OHSU; Contact: motuapua@ohsu.edu
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Mitra Naseh, PhD - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: mitra.naseh@pdx.edu
Mitra Naseh is an Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Brown School and an adjunct research assistant professor at Portland State University. Mitra’s area of scholarship focuses on wellbeing, inequality, and poverty among minorities with migration background. She also has an interest in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions, specifically cognitive conditions associated with the trauma caused by forced migration. Mitra’s scholarly work is guided by her previous professional work experience as a staff member of Non-governmental organizations and United Nations (UN) office on Drugs and Crime and UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in the Middle East and South Asia. Mitra is the co-author of the second edition of the Best Practices for Social Work with Refugees and Immigrants. She is also the founding member and research director of the Initiative on Social Work and Forced Migration at FIU. Mitra earned her MA in Development and Urban Planning from Alzahra University, and her BAs in Computer Software Engineering and Economics from Azad and Tehran Universities.
Annie Neal - Supervisor for Multnomah County Aging, Disability & Veterans Services, Adult Care Home Program; Contact: annie.neal@multco.us
Cheryl Neal - President, MIKE Program (Multicultural Integrated Kidney Education Program); Contact: cheryl@mikeprogram.org
Lauren Neely - MPH/MSW Candidate, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health/PSU School of Social Work; Contact: lneely@pdx.edu
Luana Nery, BS - Behavioral Health Resource Specialist, OHSU Family Medicine Richmond Clinic; Contact: nery@ohsu.edu
As a Resource Specialist at the OHSU Richmond Clinic Luana provides services to patients at a non-clinical level similar to a Community Health Worker. She connects patients with community resources and encourage individuals as they work towards their health goals. Luana also creates new clinic-wide initiatives to support health and wellness. She supports patient needs as part of a Behavioral Health team that is fully integrated into a primary care clinic. The OHSU Richmond Clinic is a federally qualified health center and has the largest number of Medicaid/Medicare patients in the state of Oregon.
Jason Newsom - Professor, PSU School of Community Health; Contact: newsomj@pdx.edu
Dr. Newsom has served as a principal or co-investigator for studies funded by National Institutes of Health Research that focus on social relationships, health behavior, and caregiving. Current and recent projects include an investigation of changes in health behaviors in mid to late life among those with chronic disease as well as a national longitudinal study of the mental and physical health consequences of negative social exchanges. He is currently editing (with Richard N. Jones and Scott M. Hofer) a book on data analysis of longitudinal studies on aging. Dr. Newsom is interested in social relationships and health.
Summer Newell - Research Associate, PSU Sociology Department; CIVIC, Portland VA Medical System; Contact: newell.summer@gmail.com
Primary interests include (1) reentry period following incarceration (particularly with women and their children), (2) intersection of public health and criminal justice system, and (3) veterans access to and experiences of primary care. Mixed methods approach to research and evaluation.
Christina Nicolaidis, SDHI Director - Professor and Scholar in Social Determinants of Health, PSU School of Social Work; Adjunct Associate Professor in Internal Medicine and Public Health, OHSU; Contact: nicol22@pdx.edu
Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH is the Director of the Social Determinants of Health Initiative and Professor in the School of Social Work at PSU. She also hold a secondary appointment in the OHSU Department of Medicine. As a general internist and health services researcher, Dr. Nicolaidis uses participatory research to improve the health and healthcare of marginalized populations. Many of her current projects focus on autism in adulthood. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE; www.aaspire.org), an international academic-community partnership that uses community-based participatory research to address the priorities of autistic adults. AASPIRE has conducted a series of National Institute of Health-funded studies on health care and employment for autistic adults and has created the AASPIRE Healthcare Toolkit (www.autismandhealth.org) for use in primary care settings. Dr. Nicolaidis is currently leading a large NIH-funded R01 project, in partnership with AASPIRE, to develop and test the AutPROM Toolbox, a set of accessible patient-reported outcome measures that can be used to evaluate services interventions for autistic adults. She also is the founding Editor-in-Chief of a new peer-reviewed journal, Autism in Adulthood (www.liebertpub.com/aut). More broadly, Dr. Nicolaidis works to improve health equity and address social determinants of health. She has led or collaborated on multiple externally-funded projects on intimate partner violence and other trauma, racial and ethnic health equity, chronic pain, substance use disorders, depression, patient-provider communication, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and health system transformation. She is actively mentoring or collaborating with many SDHI scholars. She brings expertise in community-based participatory research, survey development and adaptation, qualitative and mixed-methods research, and intervention development and evaluation. Dr. Nicolaidis teaches research methods in the School of Social Work at Portland State University (PSU), teaches and practices general internal medicine at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), and mentors multiple junior faculty members.
Carrie Nielson - Assistant Professor, OHSU Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine; Contact: nielsoca@ohsu.edu
Laura Nissen - Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: nissen@pdx.edu
Dr. Nissen is interested in culturally relevant and specific adaptations of evidence based practice in adolescent substance abuse programming (and other youth-centered services), the social determinants of adolescent substance abuse, drug policy, juvenile justice response, and the intersection of juvenile justice and adolescent substance abuse treatment. Organizational change dynamics relevant to disparities reduction are another interest, as well as professional identity/leadership development of those working on social determinants of health, and the development of impact measures for effective change strategies.
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Kerth O’Brien - Associate Professor of Psychology at PSU; Contact: obrienk@pdx.edu
Kerth O'Brien is a social psychologist collaborating to conduct research in community or health services settings, on questions related to social issues. She has conducted quite a bit of work on social psychological aspects of HIV prevention and care. She has collaborated to investigate ethnic group differences in patient views of patient-provider relationships and has incorporated some aspects of CBPR approaches. She has used both qualitative methods (for example, focus groups, one-on-one interviews) and quantitative methods (for example, survey research designs; Delphi approaches; a randomized trial of behavioral interventions) in her work.
Jenny O'Connell, MPH - Medical Student, OHSU; Contact: oconneje@ohsu.edu
Jenny is a medical student at OHSU. Before med school, she obtained her MPH with a focus on reproductive health. Her MPH project involved work with Preserve Our Legacy, an organization dedicated to educating individuals, especially those from minority populations, about the benefits of stem cells and treatment options through peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC), bone marrow and umbilical cord donations. She is interested in primary care and working with underserved populations.
Kate O'Donnell - SBHC Systems Development Specialist, Oregon Health Authority - Public Health Division; Contact: kathryn.m.odonnell@state.or.us
Ryan Olson - Associate Professor, Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: olsonry@ohsu.edu
Dr. Olson's research is focused on safety and health interventions for lone workers, and on behavioral self-management methods. The overreaching goal of this research is to understand how organizations can best protect and promote health among workers who are physically isolated from peers. Dr. Olson has extensive experience conducting injury prevention and health promotion research in transportation industries (aviation, bus, trucking), but also has current projects in home health care and construction industries.
Sarah Ono - Core Investigator, Portland VA Medical Center HSR&D; Assistant Professor, Internal Medicine & Assistant Research Professor, Dept. of Family Medicine, OHSU; Contact: sarah.ono@va.gov
Roberto Orellana - Associate Professor, School of Social Work at PSU; Contact: orellana@pdx.edu
Dr. Orellana's research focuses on health and health disparities associated with HIV, substance abuse and interpersonal violence among racial and ethnic minority, indigenous, and other underserved populations in the United States and Central America. His interests include global health/mental health, prevention research, intervention research, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, family violence, and substance abuse. He has conducted street outreach for persons with chronic psychiatric disorders and co-occurring substance abuse. Dr. Orellana also worked as a therapist in an HIV prevention clinical trial that sought to reduce high risk behaviors among men who have sex with men (MSM) at risk for HIV infection.
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José Padín - Associate Professor of Sociology at PSU; Contact: padinj@pdx.edu
Dr. Padín studies the effects of racist cultural norms (implicit or explicit) on the distribution of educational opportunities, and the social barriers to assimilation faced by new immigrants. He is one of the anchor faculty members for the Inequality section of the Sociology PhD program at PSU and has a keen interest in the effect of social inequality on a wide variety of outcomes, including health.
Brian Park - Family Medicine & Preventive Medicine; Contact: brian.jh.park@gmail.com
Brian Park obtained his MD MPH dual degree at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, with a focus on health policy and health disparities. He hopes to leverage community organizing, health policy, and healthcare systems transformation to narrow social inequities.
Rebecca Paradiso de Sayu - Account Manager, Forward Health Group, Inc.; Contact: rebecca.paradiso@gmail.com
Melanie Pascual - Administrative Specialist II, Morrison Child and Family Services; Contact: mpascual@pdx.edu
In the Masters of Public Policy program, I am continuing to pursue and hone my passion for Program Evaluation and statistical analysis of data. As an advocate of providing equitable access to healthcare and mental health care services to clients, I believe listening to those we serve is a fundamental pillar to holistic healthcare. Outcomes data informs providers of aspects such as demographics, risk factors, and positive improvements following post-treatment discharge. I believe tracking and researching such criteria is instrumental in demonstrating that positive change does occur as a result of participating in services. My goal is to help providers know and measure whether their services are delivered to the targeted population if the correct mix of services is provided, if clients are showing positive change, if these positive effects last, and which clients are not benefiting from services.
Rebeca Petean, MS - Sociology PhD Student, PSU; Contact: rpetean@pdx.edu
Shauna Petchel - Doctoral Student, School of Public Health, PSU; Contact: spetchel@pdx.edu
Jana Peterson-Besse - Associate Professor, Social Work & Public Health, Pacific University; Contact: jpb@pacificu.edu
My research focuses on disability and health, including health promotion and access to care for people with disabilities, and health disparities experienced by members of this population. I am interested in social support related to health for members of this population. Current projects focus on social support for women with physical disabilities during pregnancy and the role of siblings in the lives of adults with developmental disabilities.
Lee Ann Phillips - Program Manager, Regional Research Institute, Trauma Informed Oregon; Contact: lphil@pdx.edu
Trauma Informed Oregon (TIO) is a statewide collaborative aimed at preventing and ameliorating the impact of adverse experiences on children, adults and families. TIO works in partnership with providers, individuals with lived experience, and families to promote and sustain trauma informed policies and practices across physical, mental, and behavioral health systems and to disseminate promising strategies to support wellness and resilience.
Tisa Pickering, MSW Candidate - PSU School of Social Work; Contact: tisapickering@pdx.edu
Renata Pieratti Bueno, MD - University of São Paulo; Contact: renatapieratti@gmail.com
Renata is a medical doctor from Brazil, who specialized in Internal Medicine and Critical Care. Their field of interests include: social determinants of health, global health, wilderness medicine, and palliative care.
Wendy Polulech, MPH - Community Health Education, Colorado School of Public Health; Contact: wpolulech@gmail.com
Wendy recently moved to Portland from Colorado where she worked primarily with uninsured or underinsured community members. As a Community Health Educator she focused on health promoting activities to address chronic disease prevention and management.
Vinay Prasad - Strategy and Operations Consultant, Cambia Health; Contact: vinay816@gmail.com
At Cambia, Mr. Prasad has led efforts to increase the awareness around health equity issues with senior leadership and have contributed to the development of a business case for the organization to support upstream interventions. Mr. Prasad represents the organization in a national collaborative involving health plans across the country that are focused on promoting health equity. Additionally, Mr. Prasad is actively involved with community organizations that are focused on addressing the social determinants of health, including Wallace Medical Concern and Upstream Public Health.
Kelsie Priest, MD/PhD Student - OHSU/PSU School of Public Health, School of Medicine, OHSU; Contact: priest@ohsu.edu
Kelsey's professional interests exist at the intersection of social justice, advocacy, and leadership; including action around issues related to addiction medicine, drug policy, gun violence, and women-identified medical trainees.
Laurie Powers - Professor Emeritus, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: powersl@pdx.edu
Laurie studies the effects of self-determination promotion on health and wellness, transition to adulthood, and interpersonal violence and safety, particularly among youth and adults with disabilities, including people of color with disabilities. Her current research focuses on youth led mental health treatment planning; transition to adulthood of youth in foster care, interpersonal violence against men and women with disabilities, and consumer-directed services. She has experience utilizing various research approaches, most intensively mixed-methods, computer-assisted and accessible survey design, and application of CBPR principles.
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Ana R. Quiñones - Associate Professor, Family Medicine, OHSU VA; Contact: quinones@ohsu.edu
Ana Quiñones has expertise in the areas of age-related changes in chronic illness burden and racial/ethnic differences in health outcomes and utilization. This work involves identifying factors that contribute to differences in outcomes and improving prevention and management efforts among racial/ethnic minority older adults with increasingly complex comorbid conditions. She has experience using methodologies to conduct systematic reviews, and is most experienced with analytic methods for large population-based longitudinal and administrative data sets.
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NithyaPriya Ramalingam Ph.D.- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, OHSU Department of Family; MedicineContact: ramalinn@ohsu.edu
Dr. Ramalingam is a postdoctoral research fellow in the OHSU Department of Family Medicine. Her research interests include organizational capacity building, developing and sustaining clinical-community partnerships, preventative health, and pragmatic methods and tools for qualitative research. She conducts implementation science research with primary care, community, and health system stakeholders to improve preventative health services delivery in rural and health disparate populations.
Moira Ray - Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine, OHSU; Contact: raymo@ohsu.edu
Dora Raymaker, SDHI Steering Committee Member - Research Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work / Regional Research Institute; Contact: draymake@pdx.edu
Dora M. Raymaker, Ph.D., is a systems scientist and Research Assistant Professor at Portland State University’s Regional Research Institute for Human Services in the School of Social Work, Co-director of the Academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (aaspire.org), and associate editor of the academic journal Autism in Adulthood. Dr. Raymaker’s research interests include community-engaged practice, systems thinking, measurement, disability, and the dynamics at the intersection of science and society. Dr. Raymaker conducts intervention services research in collaboration with the Autistic and mental health communities to improve employment outcomes and reduce discrimination and stigma. In their remaining three minutes of time, they enjoy writing own voices speculative fiction and making multimedia art (doraraymaker.com).
Julie Reeder, SDHI Steering Committee Member - Senior Research Analyst, Oregon WIC Program, Oregon Health Authority; Contact: julie.a.reeder@state.or.us
Julie Reeder, Ph.D., MPH, MS, CHES is the Senior Research Analyst with the State of Oregon WIC Program. In her 17 years in the position she has conducted multiple mixed methods studies that have explored the influence of peer counselors and changes to the WIC food packages on long term, exclusive breastfeeding. She has also studied the integration of motivational interviewing in WIC, periconceptual health, the pros and cons of technology in the program, and recently published articles on the role of WIC in identifying developmental delays, and a systematic review on the evidence for cooking-related interventions. Current work focuses on better integrating WIC in to Clinical and Early Learning systems and creating a postpartum quality of life tool for the later postpartum period. Julie is also a member of the National WIC Association Evaluation Committee, Program Planning Committee member for the Textbook and Academic Authors Association, serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, and is Chair of the American Public Health Association Food and Nutrition Section.
Michelle Retton - Qualified Mental Health Professional, Oregon Department of Corrections; Contact: mretton@wsu.edu
Colleen Reuland - Executive Director, OHSU Oregon Pediatric Improvement Partnership; Contact: reulandc@ohsu.edu
Maria-Elena Reyes, MSS - Research and Evaluation Analyst, Immigrant & Refugee community Organization; Contact: mereyes5@gmail.com
Amber Richardson, MA - Senior Research Assistant, Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: amrich2@pdx.edu
Amber Richardson holds an MA in Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development.
Dawn Richardson, SDHI Steering Committee Member - Associate Dean for Social Justice, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: drichar2@pdx.edu
Dawn Richardson, DrPH, MPH is the Associate Dean for Social Justice in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health (SPH), and she works in partnership with those advancing racial equity efforts at both OHSU and PSU. In this role she is advancing the school’s antiracism initiative, which includes guiding and evaluating the SPH’s (1) Antiracism Faculty Fellows Program; (2) capacity building efforts around antiracist pedagogy and practice for faculty and staff; (3) advancing related social justice efforts including the Social Justice Working Group and Caregiver Equity Working Group; and (4) serving as the Dean’s Team Liaison to the Community Engagement Committee and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Her efforts in the Dean’s office are informed by her scholarship as an Associate Professor: Dr. Richardson is a social epidemiologist whose research is informed by the principles of community-based participatory research. With her research Dr. Richardson seeks to build understanding of how structural inequities impact health and to develop upstream interventions to advance health equity. Specifically, her research questions focus on the pathways by which the unequal distributions of income, power and wealth (shaped and reified by structural racism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy) affect social and geographic mobility, access to opportunity, and ultimately health outcomes. Working in partnership with community, Dr. Richardson works to incorporate research findings into concrete programs and policies to promote population health. A growing focus of her scholarship is on the development and incorporation of “pathway” programs intended to center and celebrate the expertise of Black, Indigenous, and other Scholars of Color in the academy, particularly in public health. Her most recent research efforts include: an NIH-funded study examining the role of documentation status on immigrant women's health; an evaluation of paid leave policies and related analysis of structural racism as a driver of barriers to accessing such policies; and a pilot project aimed at understanding how to best support BIPOC Women Scholars pursuing STEM-focused degrees to promote public health.
Lindsay Richman, Product Manager, SightX; Contact: lrichman@gmail.com
Traci Rieckmann - Associate Professor, Public Health & Preventive Medicine, OHSU, OHSU - PSU School of Public Health, Adjunct Associate Professor, Psychiatry, UCLA; Contact: rieckman@ohsu.edu
Traci’s interests include implementation, adaptation and clinical evaluation of evidence-based practice in substance abuse and mental health treatment. Her emphasis is on diverse populations, translational research and improving the quality of care through increased access, effectiveness, retention and systems-wide change designed to improve services.
Cassandra Robinson, MS, LPN - Doctoral Student, Community Health, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: robinc@pdx.edu
Cassandra is currently a doctoral student of Community Health at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Prior to starting her doctoral education in 2014, she taught as adjunct faculty at the National University of Natural Medicine in the Masters of Science in Nutrition program and worked in areas of clinical research, pediatric nursing, and health insurance licensing. Cassandra has a strong interest in community based research, qualitative methods, and social justice.
Jeffrey Robinson - Associate Professor, PSU Department of Communications; Contact: jeffreyr@pdx.edu
Dr. Robinson focuses on observed (i.e., videotaped and coded) communication behaviors between patients and clinicians and the effects of these behaviors on patients' psychosocial health outcomes. Dr. Robinson's current NCI grant focuses on pre-surgical consultations between newly diagnosed women with breast cancer and surgeons, and the effects of communication on patients' mental adjustment to cancer (e.g., hope).
Anna Rockhill - Senior Research Associate, PSU School of Social Work Regional Research Institute; Contact: rockhill@pdx.edu
Anna is a Senior Research Associate at the Regional Research Institute. She has lived in Portland and worked at PSU as a researcher for nearly 25 years. Prior to that she lived in Ann Arbor, Washington DC, and Honolulu. Most of her work has focused on a small handful of areas including child protection/child welfare services, intimate partner violence, the intersection of substance abuse and child welfare, and most recently, procedural justice and equity in legal systems (broadly conceived). Anna has done quite a lot of program evaluation including studies of Family Group Decision Making, Peer Parent Mentors and co-located IPV advocates in both child welfare and health care settings. She also led two evaluations of Home Visiting services. Current projects include improving services for (IPV) survivors of color, immigrants and refugees, who are pursuing divorce, custody and parenting time, with an emphasis on procedural justice principles funded by the Office of Violence Against Women. She is also co-leading an Evaluation of Oregon’s Title IV-E (foster care) Waiver, an intervention that includes frequent family team meetings and peer parent mentoring services for families involved with the child welfare system funded by ACYF. As with most program evaluators, she is conversant in both quantitative and qualitative methods, but increasingly disillusioned by the standard approach to evaluation, at least in child welfare and related fields. Within the past few years, she has become very interested in realist approaches to evaluation and research. Anna is currently part of an international team conducting a realist synthesis of the Family Group Decision Making literature, and she’s leading a small realist evaluation of a child welfare intervention model. She is also part of group of researchers trying to launch a Realist Evaluation and Synthesis affinity group in North and South America to compliment the group that many of the scholars in the UK, Australia and Europe are connected to. Additionally, she is also wanting to expand her repertoire of qualitative approaches; she used interpretive description this winter and is currently doing an institutional ethnography of casework in the context of family team meetings.
Keara Rodela, MPH, CHW - Health Programs Coordinator at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organiztion (IRCO); Contact: kearar@irco.org
Keara Rodela earned her Master of Public Health in Global Maternal Child Health from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Community Health Education with a minor in Spanish from Portland State University and is a certified Community Health Worker through the Multnomah County Community Capacitation Center. / / Her areas of interest include infant mortality and low-birth weight in African-American women, reproductive justice, health equity, popular education, and community-based participatory research.
Kelly Rodgers - PhD Candidate in Urban Studies, PSU, and Executive Director of Streetsmart; Contact: kelly@thinkstreetsmart.org
Kelly Rodgers is PhD student in Urban Studies who is studying the use and influence of health indicators in transportation decision-making. Kelly is also the Executive Director of Streetsmart, a non-profit organization developing an evidence-based platform that helps civic leaders integrate health, climate, and equity concerns into transportation. Kelly is the vice-chair of the Institute of Transportation Engineers' Health and Transportation Standing Committee, a member of the Transportation Research Board's Transportation and Public Health Committee, and is an advisory board member of the American Public Health Association's Center for Climate, Health, and Equity. Kelly also serves on the inaugural steering committee of Planning for Health Equity, Advocacy, and Leadership (PHEAL), a group of nearly 80 planning, public health, and other built environment practitioners who have written guiding principles that reaffirm health equity as a superior model for community planning.
Streetsmart is a non-profit research synthesis and resource clearinghouse for integrating climate protection, public health, and equity into transportation. Streetsmart accomplishes its mission by building alliances among diverse partners for transportation reform, advancing best practices in transportation that fully account for impacts on communities, and highlighting evidence-based strategies that meet community goals. http://www.thinkstreetsmart.org/
Jessica Rodriguez-Jenkins; Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: jesrodr2@pdx.edu
Jessica is a PhD trained child and family researcher with a primary interest in supporting parenting in highly stressed families, particularly in the Latinx community, through culturally appropriate intervention and engagement strategies targeting access to resources, parent mental health, and parenting skills. Her research is practice-informed, uses qualitative and quantitative methods, and centers on how to best support vulnerable Latinx families, while illuminating assets and within-group differences among Latinx communities. Jessica is committed to research that includes partnerships with community providers to develop sustainable, culturally responsive interventions. Her work focuses on supporting multi-level factors that affect parent-child relationships particularly among those served by the child welfare system and other public agencies to decrease the alarming extent to which Latinx children and families experience social and health disparities throughout their childhood. One of her current projects, “Oregon Kinship Navigator Project,” funded through Oregon DHS, has been a collaboration between Center for Improvement of Child and Family Services and Oregon Department of Health Services to recommend an Oregon specific kinship navigator model. To help Oregon plan for this new program funded by the federal Families First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) legislation, the Portland State University (PSU) research team had conversations with caregivers, youth, professionals, and advocates around Oregon. Her team identified key design principles and considered federal requirements.
Robert W. Roeser - Professor, PSU School of Psychology; Contact: rroeser@pdx.edu
Ken Rosenberg - Retired MCH Epidemiologist; Oregon Public Health Division (1997-2015); Contact: rosenbergkd@yahoo.com
Dr. Rosenberg was the maternal and child health epidemiologist for the Oregon Public Health Division from 1997-2015. He was the program director for the Oregon PRAMS survey. He continues on the faculty of the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. He has published over 30 articles in peer reviewed journals on a wide range of maternal and child health topics.
Jamie P. Ross - Assistant Professor, PSU Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies and University Studies; Contact: rossj@pdx.edu
Dr. Ross' research is spurred by behavioral and social science research on the causes and solutions to women's health and disabilities disparities in the US population i.e., women’s racial and ethnic populations, women’s lower socioeconomic classes, and rural women residents. Her areas of specialty are feminist philosophy of science & technology's social, political and ethical dimensions. She is Outreach Program director of PATH (Policy Advisory Towards Health) for women, a partnership between OSHU's Center for Women's Health and PSU's Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality, a program that fosters successes in women’s health legislative outcomes.
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Kate Sackett Kerrigan - Ph.D.; Research & Evaluation Analyst, Juvenile Department Washington County (OR); Contact: kate_kerrigan@co.washington.or.us
Kate Sackett Kerrigan, Ph.D., is a community psychologist and applied researcher. She is broadly interested in violence prevention, participatory action research, and systems transformation. She has used quantitative and qualitative methods to study a range of social interventions spanning juvenile and adult community supervision, restorative justice approaches to address intimate partner violence, and sexual assault prevention education programs.
Jeanette Sager - Marketing and PR Coordinator, 2BWell Inc.; Contact: jms24@pdx.edu
S. Hun Seog - Ph.D., Professor, Business School, Seoul National University; Contact: seogsh@snu.ac.kr
S. Hun is studying and teaching about risk, insurance and information related with health and economy. Their recent research interests are with health economics and insurance as well as social and market reactions to general risks including climate changes and information revolution (AI, Big data, etc).
Som Saha - Professor, OHSU Division of General Internal Medicine & Geriatrics, Dept. of Medicine; Contact: sahas@ohsu.edu
Tamara Sale - Director; EASA Center for Excellence, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: salet@ohsu.edu
Tamara Sale's interests are in early psychosis intervention and systemic supports for transition-age youth with mental illness. Related interests include addressing social determinants of health including school and work continuity, social network fortification and building, the process of bridging from family-of-origin or foster care to adult independence (particularly when psychosis is present), and the intersection between developmental stage, social determinants, and culture.
Daniel Salomon, MA - PhD Student, Urban Studies, PSU; Student Representative for Urban Studies Graduate Studies for the Belonging; Justice and Dignity Committee of the Tulan School of Urban Affairs; Contact: salomon@pdx.edu
I am the first Ph.D. student in Urban Studies which is diagnosed and openly autistic. I was just elected to be the student representative for the graduate urban studies students for the Belonging, Justice and Dignity (BJD) committee. My research focus is neurodiversity in urban planning and community development as it relates to climate/environment. I am a 41-year autistic author where you can find more about me on Amazon.com.
Rikka Salonen - Manager, Healthcare Equity and Inclusion, OHSU; Contact: salonenr@ohsu.edu
Riikka Salonen leads the healthcare equity assessment and improvement efforts for the OHSU Clinical Enterprise. Salonen has been guiding this diversity, inclusion, cultural competence and equity strategic work since 2008 at OHSU. Recently this has entailed development of the OHSU Healthcare Disparities Dashboard, that includes granulated information about workforce and patients' racial, ethnic and linguistic diversity. It also measures the patient experience and ambulatory clinical outcomes based on patients race and ethnicity. This assessment tool is used as a baseline and progress assessment during OHSU's journey in eliminating healthcare disparities in its system. Several process improvement projects and outreach initiatives has been generated based on this data.
Jessica Schmidt - Research Associate, Regional Research Institute; Contact: jdsc@pdx.edu
Jessica Schmidt is the project investigator on Pathways Project FUTURES (The focus of this project is to enhance self-determination and community participation to help young adults build skills to navigate the university system and increase postsecondary success and engagement.). She is a Research Associate at the Regional Research Institute through the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University. Her work emphasizes the unique transition experience of youth with disabilities in foster care, including those who experience mental health challenges. She is also interested in issues related to the relationship between trauma and delinquent behavior in young people.
Eli Schwarz - Professor and Chair, OHSU School of Dentistry; Contact: schwarz@ohsu.edu
Sam Settelmeyer - PhD Candidate, School of Social Work, PSU; Contact: settel2@pdx.edu
Sam joined the 2017 cohort of the School of Social Work at PSU to build on his experiences as an educator in an alternative education program at Roseburg High School, in Southern Oregon. Sam hopes to continue being directly involved with students while also analyzing different educational structures, how to foster the inherent capacity of youth, reforming and supporting teacher education programs, as well as many other areas that he has not thought of yet. He is currently exploring the implications of Systems Science and Appreciative Inquiry in this endeavor.
Karen Seccombe - Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: seccombe@pdx.edu
Dr. Seccombe's primary research interests focus on poverty, welfare use, and social inequality and the structure of the U.S. health care system. Her work includes attention to the antecedents and consequences of health insurance coverage for individuals and families, gendered experiences within the family and health care systems, the use of health services among the poor, and the social construction of illness. Dr. Seccombe's teaching interests include families, health systems, and poverty, inequality, and social welfare policy. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Seccombe is interested in families, poverty, and access to health care.
Lalaine Sevillano, PhD, MSW - Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Portland State University; Contact: l.sevillano@pdx.edu
Dr. Sevillano is an Assistant Professor in the PSU School of Social Work. Her specific research interests include social and cultural determinants of health in minoritized populations, mental health problems, and factors that promote resilience. She has expertise in how minoritized groups internalize oppression and its impact on their health and life trajectories. She also studies how minoritized groups can leverage sources of resilience such as cultural continuity, critical consciousness, and positive identity development. Dr. Sevillano completed her doctoral studies from the University of Texas at Austin where she was awarded a 2021-22 University Continuing Graduate Student Fellowship. Her dissertation was a sequential explanatory mixed-methods study which explored the relationships between internalized colonialism, psychological distress, and academic success. Her scholarship was recognized at the 2022 CSWE conference and awarded the 2022 API Social Work Educators Association's Doctoral scholarship. Most recently, Dr. Sevillano has been invited as a Fellow of the NIH-funded Indigenous Substance use and addictions Prevention Interdisciplinary Research Education (INSPIRE) program.
Jenelle Shanley, PhD - Associate Professor, School of Graduate Psychology, Clinical PhD Program, Pacific University; Contact: jshanley@pacificu.edu
Dr. Shanley's research focuses on improving implementation of evidence-based parenting programs for families with young children to reduce barriers to access to and engagement in program to enhance child development. She has extensive experience of national and international dissemination efforts to implement parent programs to address child maltreatment, child disruptive behaviors and childhood obesity. Dr. Shanley also has significant experience in developing, revising and adapting parent program curricula both for domestic and international implementations. Currently, she is the M-PI for an NIH R21 to understand the parenting culture in Kenya to inform the adaptation and implementation of a parenting program for Kenyan families. Dr. Shanley has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and presented at various national and international conferences on parenting and child maltreatment.
Amelia Shelly - Bachelors of Science: Community Health Promotion (in progress) student, OHSU - PSU School of Public Health; Contact: emshelly@pdx.edu
Amelia Shelly is passionate about the social determinants of health, particularly related to income inequality, houselessness, anti-racism, mental health care, collaborative/holistic healthcare and harm reduction therapy. They are excited to work with others to address the roots of these injustices and inequities.
Malinda Shiffer, AA, Associates in Criminal Justice - Certified Addiciton & Drug Counselor; Contact: Shiffermalinda@gmail.com
I feel that the social determinants of health can only be observed by meeting society on their own terms. I aim to help bridge the gap between what's taught in a classroom, what happens in a courtroom, or what social services provide, and what these agencies bring to the table, help match what the needs really are. By going into neighborhoods and helping empower community to communicate these needs in an appropriate way, hearing their struggles, seeing what the experience really is; that I feel is the key to social detriment and health, and you don't have to have a PHD to see that. Just willingness to learn how we do it different together, with education and understanding is detrimental.
Dara Shifrer - Assistant Professor of Sociology, PSU; Contact: dshifrer@pdx.edu
Dr. Shifer uses rich nationally representative data on students and schools to understand the social determinants of educational disabilities, including learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, emotional disabilities, and intellectual disabilities.
Kerri Smith Slingerland, LCSW, MS, CBIS, CADC III - OHSU New Directions Program
Kerri Smith Slingerland, LCSW, CADC-III, CBIS, works with patients with complex trauma who are experiencing homelessness and who visit the Emergency Rooms often to try to get their needs met. She works to care plan and leverage systems resources to meet the untreated and unseen needs of these individuals. Kerri has also worked on efforts to utilize electronic health record SDOH documentation systems to improve overall patient care.
Jo-Ann Sowers - Research Professor, PSU School of Social Work Regional Research Institute; Contact: sowersj@pdx.edu
Anna Steeves-Reece, PhD, MPH, MA (she/her/hers) - Investigator I, OCHIN; Contact: steevesreecea@ochin.org
Anna Steeves-Reece, PhD, MPH, MA is a qualitative and mixed methods health researcher with a background in public health, medical anthropology, and Latin American studies. Her work broadly focuses on health equity, patient-centered care, and social-medical integration. Anna’s past research projects have explored a wide range of topics, including the role of community health workers in ameliorating perinatal mental health in rural Nicaragua; equity implications regarding a paid family leave policy in Oregon; and how to better integrate patients’ perspectives and recommendations into healthcare-based social needs screening and referral interventions.
Kristina Stromvig, RN, BSN, BA - MPH Student, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: stromvig@pdx.edu
Christina Sun, PhD - Associate Professor, College of Nursing, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Contact: christina.sun@cuanschutz.edu
Christina Sun, PhD, MS is an Associate Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She previously held a position as an Assistant Professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and postdoctoral training in community-based participatory research and HIV intervention research at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Her scholarship is focused on reducing HIV and LGBTQ health disparities, community-based participatory research, HIV prevention, mHealth, intervention research and behavioral clinical trials.
Stephanie Sundborg; Contact: ssund2@pdx.edu
Stephanie Sundborg, Ph.D. is the Director of Research and Evaluation for Trauma Informed Oregon. Dr. Sundborg's research and consultation focuses on trauma informed care (TIC) implementation and factors involved in organizational change. Much of her current work focuses on measurement, including the development of instruments that can be used to assess TIC implementation. As part of understanding what factors support trauma informed care, she is interested in the characteristics of leadership and staff that support and build commitment to a trauma informed approach. Dr. Sundborg comes to this work with years of experience focused on early childhood adversity. With a background in cognitive neuroscience, she has always been interested in the neurobiology of trauma and toxic stress and the developmental implications related to attention, memory, and emotional regulation. Stephanie currently lives in Bend. She is married and has three children and a yellow lab named Moose. In her free time, she’d chose to hike, travel, or hang out with family and friends.
David Swanson, Ph.D., PSU - Population Research Center, Research Associate; Contact: davids@pdx.edu
Among other areas, Dr. Swanson has done research on SES and mortality.
Elizabeth Swanson, MD/PhD Student, OHSU; Contact: swansone@ohsu.edu
Joan Teno, MD, MS - Professor of Medicine, OHSU; Contact: Teno@ohsu.edu
Joan M Teno is a physician health services researcher with over 25 years of experience conducting research that has impacted and transformed end of life care in the US. She is a board certified internist with added qualifications in geriatrics, hospice, and palliative medicine. Dr. Teno was a hospice medical director for 18 years. She is currently the project leader of a program project grant studying attending physician staff for persons with multimorbidity, past recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health Policy Investigator Award, and investigator on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) contract on creating the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Hospice Survey and updating the hospice payment model.
Alan Teo - Associate Professor, OHSU Department of Psychiatry; Core Investigator, Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care; Contact: teoa@ohsu.edu
Alan Teo, M.D., M.S., is a psychiatrist and health services researcher, having completed his education and training at Stanford University, University of California San Francisco, and University of Michigan. He holds appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University and the VA HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care at the VA Portland Health Care System.
Dr. Teo’s works intersects the fields of health services, behavioral science, and social and cultural psychiatry. The overarching theme of his research is the role of social relationships in influencing mental health outcomes, especially depression and suicide. In this work, he attempts to understand ways to mitigate social isolation and loneliness, and also harness the benefits of social support in real-world settings. Dr. Teo is also an international expert in a severe form of social withdrawal called hikikomori.
In current and recent intervention studies funded by the VA he is conducting the first evaluation of S.A.V.E., a form of “gatekeeper training” designed to help individuals assist a military veterans experiencing a mental health crisis, and conducting a pragmatic trial of Caring Contacts in older veterans who have chronic medical or psychiatric conditions and limited engagement in the VA.
Dr. Teo’s research has been disseminated by national and international media such as the New York Times, NPR, TIME, and the Wall Street Journal. In his personal time, he enjoys dispersed camping with his wife and two daughters and running mountain ultramarathons.
Olivia Thomas - PSU Department of Sociology; Contact: DrOliviathomas@gmail.com
Melissa Thompson - Associate Professor of Sociology at PSU; Contact: mthomp@pdx.edu
Melissa’s interests include criminology, gender, sociology of mental illness, sociology of law, and illegal substance use. Her current projects focus on the gendered relationship between mental illness, substance use, and crime; the effect of gender on illegal substance use; the effect of childhood ADHD symptoms and labeling on adult outcomes; and the effects of prison and post-prison treatment for mental illness and drug abuse on rates of recidivism.
Annette Totten - Associate Professor, DMICE, OHSU and Oregon PBRN; Contact: totten@ohsu.edu
Annette Totten is a health services research and gerontologist. She is also a core investigator with the Pacific Northwest Evidence-based Practice Center. Her research focuses on advance care planning, shared decision making, long term services and supports and evidence-based policy and practice.
Matthew Town, PhD, MPH - Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, PSU; Contact: mtown@pdx.edu
Dr. Matthew Town is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a behavioral scientist, and an advocate for social justice in health. His research focuses on social inequality, diversity science, and health behavior among American Indian and Alaska Native communities, sexual and gender diverse communities, and other underserved populations. His interests include global health, mental health, prevention research, indigenous health, HIV/STI, health care services research, and substance abuse. Dr. Town is the Principal Investigator of the Native Access project, a NIH funded research project exploring the experience of initiation and sustained use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV among American Indian and Alaska Native sexual and gender diverse men. He is also a Co-Research Workgroup Lead and a member of the Project Coordination Team for the LGBTQIA2S+ In Oregon Initiative that aims to conduct a health needs assessment for Queer and Trans communities in Oregon. Dr. Town has experience working with a variety of agencies and organizations including Tribal communities, Tribal Epidemiology Centers, County and State Health Departments, local community organizations and federal agencies including the Indian Health Services and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducting outreach, program management, and program evaluation. Dr. Town also worked in public health practice in several county health departments in Oregon including the Medical Monitoring Project as well as supervising the Disease Control and Prevention programs.
Greg Townley - Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, PSU; Contact: gtownley@pdx.edu
As a community psychologist, Greg Townley's research examines the impact of individual and environmental factors on community participation and inclusion of individuals experiencing serious mental illnesses and homelessness. He is also interested in sense of community theory and measurement among members of marginalized groups. Central to Greg's work is the promotion of positive, reciprocal relationships between academic and community stakeholders. He is the Director of Research for the Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative at Portland State University. He also directs the Community Inclusion Research Group and collaborates with numerous local service providers and community organizations, including Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, Central City Concern, Street Roots, and p:ear, to address and evaluate issues surrounding homelessness, supportive housing, and community attitudes about mental illness. Finally, he collaborates closely with the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion, funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).
Sarah-Truclinh Tran, MPH - Epidemiology PhD Student, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: transar@pdx.edu
Sarah-Truclinh Tran is a PhD candidate in the Epidemiology track who is examining maternal, perinatal health outcomes in disaggregated Asian American groups for her dissertation. In addition to highlighting health disparities by Asian ethnic-origin and nativity status, she is interested in elucidating how residential factors (e.g., residential segregation) impact the health of Asian subgroups.
Alma Trinidad - Associate Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: atrinidad@pdx.edu
Alma’s interests include sociopolitical development among youth and young adults; critical pedagogies of place and social justice work; indigenization of social movements; health and mental health promotion among Asian Pacific Islanders and other marginalized populations; determinants/disparities of health and mental health with specific attention to socio-economic, cultural, and historical contexts, and the dynamics between agent (individual) and structure (resources both informal and formal); culturally responsive health interventions and services that enhance positive pathways to healthy adulthood, empowerment and resiliency; and culturally responsive research methodologies.
Donald Truxillo - Professor, PSU School of Psychology; Contact: truxillod@pdx.edu
Dr. Anais Tuepker, SDHI Steering Committee - Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC); VA Portland Health Care System, Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, OHSU; Contact: tuepker@ohsu.edu.
Anaïs Tuepker is a sociologist, health services researcher, and Qualitative Core Director with the Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) at the VA Portland Health Care System, as well as Co-Research Director for the Relational Leadership Institute, and Assistant Professor (Research) in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at OHSU. Her research interests include building more equitable, inclusive, and participatory workplaces for health care teams, and improving quality of care and relevance of services for patients experiencing intersecting barriers to health, such as houselessness or Intimate Partner Violence. She also researches engagement, resilience, and interprofessional culture among health care workers and as factors affecting the performance of health care teams. Her work often utilizes realist, action-oriented, and/or participatory approaches to engage health system workers and patients in co-creating knowledge for health system redesign. She has conducted research and evaluation work in academic and community settings, including with immigrant and refugee communities in Portland and elsewhere. Alongside her work as a researcher, she is a climate justice activist and organizer and is the current Board President for 350PDX, a climate justice organization. She is an affiliated researcher with the National Center on Homelessness among Veterans and has been a Co-investigator on several studies with a specific focus on care for Veterans experiencing homelessness. She is also a Site Co-Lead for the VA’s Women’s Health Practice Based Research Network.
Ozcan Tunalilar, PhD - Assistant Professor, Institute on Aging & Urban Studies, PSU; Contact: tozcan@pdx.edu
Dr. Tunalilar received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Florida in 2016. His current work focuses on families, resident well-being, health inequalities, and measurement issues in community-based care and nursing homes.
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Mathew Uretsky - Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: muretsky@pdx.edu
Mathew Uretsky, Ph.D., MSW, MPH is an applied social scientist with advanced training in the use of linked administrative data systems, program evaluation, and extensive practice experience serving students youth and young adults with academic, behavioral, and mental health challenges. Dr. Uretsky’s recent research has focused on using advanced quantitative methods with large-scale multi-system linked administrative data to examine inter-system and cross-level influences on the academic and behavioral development of emerging adults. Dr. Uretsky has substantive academic and practical experience with quantitative methodologies and data analysis including multilevel modeling, growth mixture modeling, and structural equation modeling including the use of linked statewide administrative data to answer practical policy questions.
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C. Estela Vasquez Guzman, PhD - Post-doctoral Scholar, Family Medicine, OHSU; Contact: vasquest@ohsu.edu
Dr. Vasquez Guzman has received extensive training in medical sociology, health policy, and leadership. As a policy analyst, she was deeply involved with economic, immigration, and health policy. Her broader research agenda is concerned with inequities in medicine, health, and health delivery among populations of color, particularly immigrant communities. She utilizes the SDOH framework and uplifts Anti-Racist and Whiteness theories in order to engage with meaningful transformation and uplift the lived experiences of BIPOC patients. At OHSU, she is part of the NNACOE, RELATE, as well as BACKGROUND/PAST-DUE/FOCUS teams engaged in increasing the representation of Native American Medical Students, emphasizing the importance of relationships and leadership among healthcare professionals, and researching cervical cancer inequities among Latinas emphasizing the intersection between reproductive health, healthcare policy, and the need to reform medical education training.
Michelle Van Bogart - Population Health & Quality Program Strategist, OHSU Richmond Clinic; Contact: vanbogar@ohsu.edu
Michelle is interested in collaborating across sectors to create health promotion programs built on a foundation of equity, particularly around data collection and quality improvement measures. The democratization and disaggregation of data is crucial piece of understanding how to allocate resources to humanize healthcare and thus, reduce disparities. Michelle is a staff and community core member of HEAL-R (Health Equity and Leadership at Richmond), which is a member of MACG (Metropolitan Alliance for Common Good). Other interests include meaningful language access, health literacy, housing justice, incorporating SDH screening into all roles of healthcare, community-based participatory research, program evaluation, and bringing story-telling into our collective consciousness.
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David Wagner, PhD - Associate Professor & Research Director for Novel Interventions in Children's Healthcare (NICH), OHSU; Contact: wagnedav@ohsu.edu
I am a clinician-scientist with a line of research emphasizing the identification and effective treatment of youth with medical conditions who are experiencing health disparities due to social inequity. I specifically focus on how multisystem, community- and family-based interventions can reduce health disparities, improve care access, and reduce medical complications in youth with chronic health conditions –and how to identify youth in need of alternative treatment approaches to prevent health problems and associate impact on quality of life
Juniper Wagner, BA - Graduate student, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: mwagn2@pdx.edu
Stephanie Wahab - Professor, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: wahabs@pdx.edu
Stéphanie Wahab’s interests tend to revolve around four distinct and frequently intersecting substantive areas of focus including intimate partner violence, commercial sex work, motivational interviewing, and much more broadly-social justice. Feminisms, postmodernism, critical and post-colonial theories inform her work, and she has a particular passion for interpretive research methodologies. Her scholarly projects typically revolve around the intersections of privilege, oppression, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and violence (individual and structural).
Wayne Wakeland, SDHI Steering Committee Member - Professor and Systems Science Program Chair, PSU Systems Science; Contact: wakeland@pdx.edu
Wayne Wakeland is Professor and Systems Science Program Chair at Portland State University. He earned a B.S. and a Master of Engineering at Harvey Mudd College (1973); and a Ph.D. in Systems Science at Portland State U. (1977). For twenty years he taught as an adjunct while working in the industry. In 2000, he became a fixed-term associate professor in the Systems Science Program. From there, he became tenure-track in 2005, received tenure in 2008, and was promoted to professor in 2014. Wayne teaches computer simulation methods, and his research focuses on the application of systems science methods, system dynamics and agent based simulation in particular, to complex societal problems. This research tends to be highly interdisciplinary and collaborative. Recent research has focused on recovery from concussion, health policy related to drug diversion and abuse, and environmental/ecological sustainability. Emerging collaborative research includes the dynamics of toxic stress in children, and computational models to study complications during human pregnancy. Earlier research focused on biomedicine, including intracranial pressure dynamics, sepsis, and cellular receptor dynamics, and on criminal justice system effectiveness, terrorism, and fishery regulation. Wayne was born and raised in Alaska, and he loves to camp and hike. His main hobbies include motorcycles, listening to music, and fixing up old computers for donation. He also like to read when time allows—mostly science fiction and mysteries.
Janet Walker - Research Professor, School of Social Work, Regional Research Institute for Human Services; Contact: janetw@pdx.edu
Dr. Walker is co-director of the Pathways to Positive Futures Research and Training Center and the National Wrap-Around Initiative. Her expertise is in program design and evaluation, fidelity assessment, workforce development, training and evaluation. Dr. Walker's research interests include implementation of effective practices, empowerment-oriented interventions in human services; youth and young adults. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Walker is interested in the impact of social hierarchies and social comparisons on health and mental health.
Larry Wallack - Professor and Director, Center for Public Health Studies, School of Community Health, College of Urban & Public Affairs; Contact: wallackl@pdx.edu
Dr. Wallack’s current work focuses on translating the science of developmental origins of health and disease into public health policy and practice on a community, regional, and statewide level in Oregon. He is also part of the team evaluating Voices for Healthy Kids, a national effort funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Heart Association to reduce childhood obesity through passing and implementing policies at the local and state level.
Pei-ru Wang, PhD - Senior Research/Evaluation & Financial Analyst, Multnomah County Health Department; Contact: pei-ru.wang@multco.us
Xue Wang - Shandong College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Yantai, China; Contact: snowinner@163.com
Lisa Weasel - Associate Professor of Biology at PSU; Contact: lisaw@pdx.edu
Dr. Weasel is an advisory board member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Epigenetics, Science and Society (ICESS) at OHSU, which is funded through NIH's ELSI program. Epigenetics has a number of implications for rethinking social determinants of health, at both the basic science as well as the policy levels. ICESS promotes projects that draw on epigenetics to address the social determinants of health, through both community outreach and basic and applied research. Her own longstanding work has focused on the intersections of race, gender, class and other socially-determined categories in biological and social understandings of health disparities. Dr. Weasel is interested in forming collaborations within and across PSU and OHSU that involve interdisciplinary approaches to understanding social determinants of health and health disparities.
Alanna Welsh ND, MS - Clinical Research Coordinator, Legacy Health; Contact: alanna.j.welsh@gmail.com
Alanna Welsh received her doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine and Master of Science in Integrative Medicine Research from the National University of Natural Medicine. Her work focuses on complementary and traditional medicine practices as well as integrative oncology. She is passionate about understanding how social determinants of health and health inequality impact patient outcomes, especially oncology patients.
Marisa Westbrook, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: marisaw@pdx.edu
Marisa Westbrook, PhD MPH, is an Assistant Professor in Community Health/Health Promotion at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Her community-engaged research focuses on inequity, mental health, city politics, and housing and homelessness. Current and recent projects include: an ethnographic study of residents' embodied experiences of exclusionary displacement pressure in early-stage gentrifying neighborhoods, the impact of state-led neighborhood transitions (highway expansion, public housing redevelopment) on residents' wellbeing, and an evaluation of unconditional cash transfers on the health of people experiencing homelessness.
Diana White - Senior Research Associate, PSU Institute on Aging; Contact: dwhi@pdx.edu
Dr. White’s research interests include workforce development in areas of nursing, direct care workers, and options counseling. Education, training, work environment, and earnings all affect worker well-being. Dr. White has also been involved in research related to person-directed care in long-term care settings and intergenerational family relationships.
Noelle Wiggins - Director, Community Capacitation Center, Multnomah County Health Department; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Community Health at PSU; Contact: noelle.wiggins@multco.us
Dr. Wiggins' practice experience includes recruiting, training and supporting Community Health Workers (CHWs); developing CHW programs; using popular education for health promotion; and conducting community-based participatory research. Her research interests encompass comparative effectiveness of popular and conventional education; role of popular education in reducing health inequities; and role of CHWs as community organizers. She teaches health education and promotion, community organizing for health, research paradigms and methods, and popular and adult education. Dr. Wiggins is particularly interested in the potential of popular education, the CHW model, and CBPR to build capacity in communities to address the social determinants of health.
Heather Wild, PhD - Psychology, Psychology, PSU & Portland Community College; Contact: wild@pdx.edu
Dr. Wild holds a PhD in Cognitive Science and Quantitative Psychology from Indiana University and trained as a postdoc in Neurology at OHSU. Dr. Wild teaches Psychology and Neuroscience courses at PSU and PCC. She currently researches systems of stress dysregulation in children. Dr. Wild's expertise is in neuroscience and electrophysiology, stress physiology, quantitative modeling, and statistics.
Jaclynn Winfree, MS - Research Analyst at Institute of Aging, PSU; Contact: jwinfree@pdx.edu
Jim Winkle, MPH - Research Associate, Family Medicine at OHSU; Contact: winklej@ohsu.edu
Jim Winkle has trained hundreds of physicians, behaviorists, and clinic personnel how to implement Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) in primary care settings. This work involved integrating new clinic workflows, building electronic health record tools, designing screening forms, and creating interactive online curricula. Website: www.sbirtoregon.org
Dilafruz Williams - Educational Leadership & Policy/Leadership for Sustainability Education at PSU; Contact: williamsdi@pdx.edu
In much of her policy work as an elected member on the Portland School Board (2003-2011), Dilafruz Williams has championed the cause of equity in our public schools. As a professor and administrator at PSU, where she has been since 1990, she co-founded Sunnyside Environmental School in PPS and Leadership for Sustainability Education (Master's program) at PSU, and built strategic partnerships to engage her students with the community in meaningful ways. Her latest scholarly passion is in the area of Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education where food, social justice, and academics intersect.
Liana Winett - Research Associate Professor, PSU Field Experience Coordinator of Community Health; Contact: lwinett@pdx.edu
Dr. Winett’s research uses qualitative and quantitative content analysis methods to explore portrayals of public health and health policy in popular discourse, and in particular, the news media. Her work has included focus on interpersonal violence; breast, cervical and prostate cancers; childhood lead poisoning; California’s Three Strikes incarceration initiative; the anthrax/bioterrorism scares of 2001; Oregon’s Measure 7; major causes of death in Oregon; and H1N1 influenza. In regards to the social determinants of health, Dr. Winett is interested in research and instructional implications of public policy and discourse for population health.
De'Sha Wolf - Research Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work; KL2 Scholar, Oregon Clinical & Translational Research Institute, OHSU; Contact: desha.wolf@pdx.edu
De'Sha Wolf is a social scientist and Research Assistant Professor at PSU's Regional Research Institute for Human Services (RRI) in the School of Social Work. She formally transitioned to the health sciences in Fall 2021, after devoting the first 10 years of her professional career to addressing disparities in education through the design and implementation of research-based interventions that improve access, research training, and retention of marginalized undergraduates. Dr. Wolf joined the PSU community in Spring 2015 as the Project Manager and Managing Director of the BUILD EXITO program--an undergraduate research training program funded by the NIH to support students on their pathway to become biomedical researchers. Her research interests center on chronic health conditions facing African American communities, chronic pain, trauma-informed care, patient-centered qualitative research, and complementary and alternative care. Dr. Wolf completed her doctoral training in Higher Education & Organizational Change at UCLA, where she was selected to participate in a three-year fellowship in interdisciplinary relationship science with funding through the National Science Foundation's IGERT program. She is currently pursuing advanced training in clinical research at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), where she is an NCATS-funded KL2 Scholar in the Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute (OCTRI).
Willie Wolf - Research Associate, PSU Regional Research Institute for Human Services, Director of Center for Native Education; Contact: redroadconsulting@gmail.com
William Wolf is the director for the Center for Native Education (CNE). He work with a number of tribal communities which have major health issues on suicide, diabetes, eating disorders, substance abuse, and cancer to name a few. He would like to know what prevention and treatment resources are available for this population.
Hyeyoung Woo - Professor of Sociology, PSU; Contact: hyeyoung@pdx.edu
Dr. Woo is interested in family behaviors, social attainments, and their associations to health and well-being over the life course. She has published a number of articles and book chapters as well as edited volumes, Redefining Multicultural Families in South Korea (2022, Rutgers University Press) and Korean Families Yesterday and Today (2020, University of Michigan Press). Currently, she is working on a project looking at family and work among women in Korea, which is funded by the Academy of Korean Studies.
Dagan Wright - Affiliate Assistant Professor, OHSU Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine; Contact: daganw88@gmail.com
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Kristin Yarris PhD, MPH, MA - Associate Professor, University of Oregon Department of Global Studies; Contact: keyarris@uoregon.edu
Yarris is an Associate Professor in the Dept of Global Studies at UO, where she previously served as Director of the Global Health Program and is a founding member of the UO Center for Global Health. Yarris' research and teaching focus on global health, global mental health, and transnational migration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been conducting community-based research on Latinx disparities alongside the Lane County Public Health Department. https://blogs.uoregon.edu/kristinyarris/
Liu-Qin Yang - Associate Professor, PSU School of Psychology; Contact: lyang@pdx.edu
Dr. Liu-Qin (LQ) Yang is an Associate Professor of industrial and organizational psychology at Portland State University. To date, she has published dozens of peer-reviewed research articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries. Her work has appeared in high-impact journals in the fields of psychology, management, international business, and nursing, such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of International Business Studies, and the International Journal of Nursing Studies. She serves on the editorial board of multiple respected journals including Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Business and Psychology, Applied Psychology: An International Review and Occupational Health Science. Dr. Yang’s expertise includes occupational health, work motivation and quantitative methodologies. She and her research team mainly studies the health, safety, and performance consequences of workplace relationships such as workplace interpersonal mistreatment, as well as effective ways to promote positive engagement and to manage stress resulting from negative relationships. In both U.S. and China, she has worked with various for-profit and nonprofit organizations to improve the functioning in their personnel management. In her free time, Liu-Qin loves exploring beautiful nature and different cultures around the world.
Bobbi Jo Yarborough - Investigator, Science Programs Department, Kaiser Permanente Northwest Center for Health Research; Contact: bobbijo.h.yarborough@kpchr.org
Dr. Yarborough is a clinical psychologist and mental health services researcher. Her work focuses on improving care and outcomes and promoting recovery among individuals with serious mental illnesses and/or substance use problems.
Diane Yatchmenoff - Research Professor, Regional Research Institute for Human Services, PSU School of Social Work; Contact: yatchmd@pdx.edu
Dr. Yatchmenoff is currently the director of the Trauma Informed Care and Recovery Services Project at PSU, with research interests focusing on the role of complex prolonged trauma in the lives of vulnerable children, adults, and families. These include chronic homelessness or housing instability, as well as mental, physical and behavioral health challenges. Findings from the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) study reinforce the importance of trauma as a public health issue.
Mitzi Yates, BA - CareOregon Claims; Contact: mitziyates1@aol.com
Emily York, MPH - Climate and Health Program Lead, Oregon Health Authority; Contact: emily.a.york@state.or.us
Emily York coordinates the State of Oregon's Climate and Health program. The program works with inter-disciplinary partners to study and plan for the health effects of Climate Change in Oregon. Through diverse stakeholder engagement, Emily led the development of a new statewide Resilience Plan that emphasizes the social determinants of health. Drawing from her studies in public health, sustainability, and community planning, she is especially interested in solutions that are community-driven, that advance health equity and take a systems approach. Before joining the State's Public Health Division, Emily worked on local policy initiatives at the City of Portland and with the Coalition for a Livable Future. She currently serves on the board of the Oregon Farmers Markets Association and is a community facilitator with the Pachamama Alliance.
Hyunwoo Yoon, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, PSU; Contact: yon8@pdx.edu
Dr. Hyunwoo Yoon, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in School of Social Work at Portland State University. As a fellow of the Federal Mental Health and Substance Abuse Fellowship Program funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), his primary research goals are to advance the understanding of the unique mental health challenges of racial/ethnic older minority population and to reduce health disparities they face. Recently, he has developed his interests in physical health such as oral health and dental care in older Asian Americans and plan to pursue his program of research in this much-needed area. Generally, he is interested in psychosocial and cultural barriers to health service use in diverse groups of older minorities as well as built environment such as neighborhood walkability and medical infrastructures. The focus of his scholarly work is on developing innovative methods of interventions, such as technology-based mental health/health literacy interventions for older minorities. His research has significant implications for social work and public health by aiding in the prevention of diseases/disorders, facilitating access to appropriate and high-quality prevention and treatment services, and improving self-recognition of diseases/disorders and public understanding about mental health/health.
Kexin Yu, Postdoc Fellow, Department of Neurology, OHSU; Contact: yukex@ohsu.edu
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Tosha Zaback, MPH, Research Administrator, Domestic and International Outreach, OHSU, Casey Eye Institute; Contact: 503-494-3034, zabackt@ohsu.edu
Suzanne Zane - Maternal and Child Health Epidemiologist/CDC Assignee, Oregon Public Health Division; Contact: szane@npaihb.org
Jane Zhu, MD, MPP, MSHP - Division of General Internal Medicine, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health; Contact: zhujan@ohsu.edu
Jane M. Zhu, MD, MPP, MSHP, is a practicing primary care physician and assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine. She holds a secondary appointment in Health Systems Management & Policy at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health and is an adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Zhu's research and academic interests include health care markets; provider behavior and incentives; organizational responses to payment reform and their effects on health care access and quality, particularly in the care of vulnerable populations. She obtained her BSc degree in global health and international development from Duke University, where she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship. She received dual degrees in medicine and public policy from Harvard Medical School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. After internal medicine residency training at the University of California, San Francisco, she was selected as a National Clinician Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania where she completed a two-year fellowship.
Katharine Zuckerman - Associate Professor, OHSU Department of Pediatrics; Contact: zuckerma@ohsu.edu
Katherine is a general pediatrician who has received additional research training in public health and health services research. For the past 10 years she has focused my research on health care quality and disparities for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. She has in particular expertise in early identification of autism spectrum disorder in minority communities. Her research, which has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Autism Speaks, and several local foundations, involves qualitative techniques, survey research, secondary analyses of large datasets, and community based interventions. The goal of her research portfolio is to better understand gaps in health care quality for children with developmental disabilities and to develop effective interventions to close these gaps.