Scholars

CHSP Alumni Scholars A - G

Kaytura Felix Aaron, M.D.

Current Position:
Office of Planning and Evaluation
Health Resources and Services Administration

Training Site:
Johns Hopkins University

Education:
M.D., Cornell University Medical College

Research Interests:
Incorporating CBPR methodologies into health services research & policy, Access to care for communities of color

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Felix worked on four community-based projects. In the first, she was involved with the Mid-Atlantic Health Leadership Community Project where she organized a newsletter. She also worked to assist the community to request funding to continue this project. For the second project, Dr. Felix worked with members of a community health worker association to develop an evaluation tool for determining the level of client satisfaction with health workers. Dr. Felix's third project had her participating in the Urban Health Initiative for East Baltimore, where she was studying and trust-building and local governance. In Dr. Felix's fourth project, she was studying the Middle East Community Association-Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition for urban revitalization.

Current Activities:
Dr. Felix is staff in HRSA’s Office of Planning and Evaluation, where she is leading efforts to expand, build, and strengthen community-based program evaluation and research. Prior to that, she was the chief medical officer for the Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), where she served as the Bureau’s major policy advisor on public health program activities and provides executive level management and consultation on public health and clinical affairs. The Bureau’s programs support over 17 million patients across 7500 practices. Prior to that, she was the director of the Office of Quality and Data, where she directed the Health Disparities Collaboratives, Core Clinical Measures implementation, Health Center and Free Clinics Federal Tort Claims Act program, and the re-engineering of BPHC’s online electronic grants application, monitoring and reporting systems, including the Uniform Data System.


Katherine Alaimo, Ph.D, MS

Current Position:
Assistant Professor
Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition
Michigan State University

Training Site:
University of Michigan

Education:
Ph.D, Community Nutrition, Cornell University
M.S., Community Nutrition, Cornell University
B.S., Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University

Research Interests:
U.S. hunger & its consequences for children, community food security, benefits of urban agriculture/community gardening for public health, neighborhood social capital & urban redevelopment, promoting healthy eating and physical activity through policies & environments, community-based participatory research

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Although Flint, Michigan has been challenged more than most communities, a new sense of hope, purpose and possibility is recently visible. One expression of this energy is the Flint Urban Gardening and Land Use Committee. Established in 1998, the Flint Urban Garden and Land Use Committee is an ad-hoc group of community leaders and people from non-profit organizations, neighborhood associations, block clubs, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University Cooperative Extension, and the Genesee County Health Department. Their mission is to provide assistance to groups who are interested in or involved in beautification initiatives and to promote gardening and other land-use projects in Flint and Genesee County. Community gardens, as green spaces, meeting places, and food and flower production systems, have the potential to revitalize distressed neighborhoods and communities. Documentation of these benefits can be used to: improve existing gardens, promote the initiation of new gardens, and secure foundation and city support for gardens and other beautification projects. Dr. Alaimo continues to study the benefits of urban community gardens with the Flint Urban Garden and Land Use Committee.


Precilla Belin, Ph.D, MA

Current Position:

Training Site:
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Education:
Ph.D, Human Ecology, University of Tennessee
MA, Gerontology, University of Arkansas
BS, Health Education, University of Arkansas

Research Interests:
Health Promotion & Disease Prevention, Health Disparities, Cancer Education & Prevention, Community-Based Participatory Research, Implementation & Evaluation of programs designed for African American women/Minorities/Underserved Populations, Faith-Based Public Health

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Belin worked with a dynamic team of both academic and community mentors, along with a group of community-based organizations in The Johns Hopkins Sandtown-Winchester Project. The project was implemented in an African American community (Sandtown-Winchester) in west Baltimore building upon a partnership, which was initially formed by Elder Clyde Harris in the community and by Dr. David Levine and Lee Bone at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Belin collaborated with Dr. J Hunter Young, the Principal Investigator, and they formed a partnership including Community Building and Partnership, Inc., Visions for Health, New Song Family Health Services, and the Sandtown-Winchester Community Health Advisory Board to uncover the causes of high blood pressure within the community so that it may actually be prevented in the future. Just as important, Dr. Belin directed the capacity building portion of the Sandtown-Winchester Project, in which they worked to enable the community to identify health concerns, to plan approaches to better understand them, and to design programs that would be a strong, positive impact on the community's health.

Dr. Belin also served as Co-Investigator on a study entitled: "Development of Adolescent Anti-Smoking Messages" with Dr. Barbara Curbow as the Principal Investigator. This study used participatory research techniques to develop anti-smoking messages for female early to mid-adolescents (13-16 years of age). Dr. Belin worked with the research team to develop a community advisory board and to help build community partnerships to assist in the study. Also, Dr. Belin collaborated with Youth Pastors and teens from the Baltimore community to develop faith-based PSAs to compare them with the non-faith-based PSAs.

Dr. Belin is continuing her long history of breast cancer work, specifically developing, implementing, and evaluating faith-based interventions and community outreach programs that focus on education (early detection and prevention) among African American women.


Nicole Berry, PhD, MA

Training Site:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health

Education:
PhD, Anthropology, University of Michigan
MA, Anthropology, University of Michigan
BA, International Studies, University of South Carolina

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Nicole Berry was working on a proposed intervention project to decrease HIV/AIDS risk among new Latino immigrants to the Durham, North Carolina community.

Dr. Berry also began a group called "Proyecto Padres" (Project Parents), which developed out of sessions of the Cafe de Mujeres, a weekly women's group at El Centrol Hispano in Durham, North Carolina. Proyecto Padres started out of the womens' concern over raising teenagers in the United States, particularly over their daughters' clandestine dating and teenagers moving out of the house before 18 years of age. The project consisted of six, one and a half classes to improve parenting skills with pre-teens and early teens age 9-14. The purpose of the curriculum was to provide parents with greater resources that will help them make healthier familiies.


Ronni Bowen, PhD

Current Position:

Training Site:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Education:
PhD, Community Nutrition, Cornell University
MS, Nutrition Education, Columbia University
BFA, Acting and Journalism, New York University

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Bowen's primary project was with HOPE Works(Health Opportunities Partnerships Empowerment), focusing on improving the health of less advantaged, minority and female residents in rural areas using a participatory model. HOPE Works addresses economic, educational, and health needs of women in HOPE circles, and Dr. Bowen's role was to conduct a process evaluation of the HOPE circle facilitators and document the personal impact of this role and the HOPE Works experience in their lives.


Diane Calleson, Ph.D, MA

Current Position:
Assistant Professor
Department of Family Medicine
Public Health Leadership Program
University of North Carolina

Training Site:
University of North Carolina

Education:
Ph.D, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, North Carolina State University
MA, Sociology, North Carolina State University

Research Interests:
The effect of community involvement on academic health centers and Community-service learning modalities in health professional education

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
United Voices, located in rural Orange County, North Carolina, is a minority-led, community-based organization that has recently acquired its 501C3 status. United Voices is well acquainted with the ideals and principles of participatory action research from its involvement in both the Community-Based Public Health Initiative and the Community Health Scholars Program. As a scholar, Dr. Calleson worked with them to increase their organizational capacity so that they could enhance community programs, and continue to serve as a viable, long-term partner with public and private agencies to improve the health outcomes of their community.

Dr. Calleson's research included working with United Voices leaders to: (1) define goals for recruitment; (2) determine the individuals, agencies and business leaders to interview; (3) develop sets of interview questions; (4) analyze the information gathered in the interviews; (5) and develop strategies for recruitment and retention of United Voices members.


Vivian Chavez, DrPH, MPH

Current Position:
Associate Professor
Department of Health Education
San Francisco State University

Training Site:
University of Michigan

Education:
DrPH, Community Health Education, University of California at Berkeley
MPH, Health Education, University of California at Berkeley

Research Interests:
Youth & community development, Violence prevention, Collaborative leadership, Community-based participatory research

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Chavez was involved in a video ethnography of local community based participatory research in Detroit through the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The project enabled her to: a) learn broadly about the field of CBPR, i.e.: history, values, methodologies, politics; b) learn specific technical skills of documentary video making — a rarely used research method in the field of public health — to educate funding agencies, researchers, and community based organizations in the principles and practice of community-based participatory research; and c) apply principles of CBPR to the video making process. An important component of CBPR is the dissemination of findings. Traditionally, this has meant writing up the results of a study and submitting the product as a presentation and/or manuscript for publication. Principles of CBPR call for this process to be done in partnership with representatives of the community-based organizations that contributed to the research process. Nonetheless, the frame of reference for dissemination of findings is often guided by standards within academia that focus on methodology and outcomes frequently at the expense of process. Although form and content are intricately related, visual arts, music, and other means of interactive education are unusual as sources for dissemination of research findings.


Dawnavan Davis, PhD, MS

Training Site:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health

Education:
PhD, MS, Medical Psychology, Uniformed Services University
MS, Community Health Education, Towson University
BA, Psychology, Loyola College of Maryland

Research Interests:
Academic-Community Partnerships, faith and health among African Americans, development and evaluation of community-based obesity and diabetes interventions for African American children and families.

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Dawnavan Davis's primary focus was with the BEAUTY project, examining the effectiveness of using beauty salons and stylists to promote healthy behaviors that target cancer risk factors such as smoking, poor diet, and physical inactivity. The BEAUTY project is in over 40 salons across North Carolina. Dr. Davis's role was on manuscript and presentation development and grant writing, as well as attendance to team meetings and retreats.

As a second project, Dr. Dawnavan Davis was working with "Our Bodies, God's Temples", which is researching the effectiveness of integrating a nutrition and physical activity curriculum into the pre-existing structure of the church school. The project's goal is to provide health education as an ongoing ministry and incorporating key church members in the delivery of health information. In addition, the church school is a supportive learning environment whereby the intersection of nutrition and physical activity education and the Bible and faith-based messages may potentially have a positive impact on health.

Current Activities:
Currently, as Research Assistant Professor and Director of the CBPR Program in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago, Dr. Davis’ has three primary research interest areas. First, involves the examination of the organizational and individual-level factors influencing academic-community research partnership development, specifically with faith-based organizations. Second, explores the intersection of faith and health among African Americans, and how obesity and diabetes interventions can be integrated into the faith organizational educational structure in order to promote social and community change. Third, entails the development and evaluation of community-based obesity and diabetes interventions for African American children and families using a CBPR process. Specifically, Dr. Davis’ work entails working with faith organizations and YMCAs to promote healthy eating and physical activity to prevent childhood obesity and its associated diabetes risk among African American youth and families. Presently, Dr. Davis serves as the lead investigator on studies that aim to develop research collaborations with African American faith organizations to assist health ministries with conducting and evaluating faith-based diabetes-related health programs and interventions, and that examine the after-school food environment of YMCAs located in underserved African American communities on Chicago’s South Side.


Roberta Downing, PhD, MS, MA

Training Site:
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Education:
PhD, Social Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz
MS, Social Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz
MA, General Psychology, Pepperdine University
BA, Comparative Literature and Spanish, San Diego State University

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Roberta Downing's primary work was a Photovoice research project with the Center for Adodescent Health entitled "Love Through the Eyes of Baltimore Youth: Photovoice as a Youth Empowerment Tool." The project had several aims: (1) to desribe how adolescents define and describe the construct of "love", (2) to examine the relationship of love to adolescent health, and (3) to investigate how participating in a Photovoice project impacts youth empowerment. The study of love through the eyes of low-income urban youth of color fills an important gap in the social science and public health literature. By providing positive aspects of the youth's live can counter deficit-oriented models that often problematize youth of color. Such perspectives can provide important insights for health interventions.

As another project, Dr. Roberta Downing was also been working to develop a health disparities index using county level data throughout the United States. The goal of the project is to identify what counties have the largest disparities in health outcomes, and to gain the attention of the elected officals at the county, state, and federal level.


Cheryl Dudley-Brewster, EdD

Current Position:

Training Site:
University of Michigan

Education:
EdD, Health Education, Teachers College - Columbia University
MA, School Counseling, Clark Atlanta University
BA, Psychology, University of Maryland

Research Interests:
African American Adolescent Health, STDs and HIV/AIDS

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Cheryl Dudley-Brewster worked on the project, Physical Activity Promotion among Pregnant Latinas and African Americans (PAPPLAA), developing written health education materials promoting exercise among pregnant African American and Latino women. In conjunction with the written materials an exercise video was made. This project was funded by a supplemental grant to the Promoting Healthy Lifestyles Among Women, (PHLAW), renamed Healthy Mothers on the Move (Healthy MOMs) is a 5-year NIH funded community based randomized controlled clinical trial study. The overall aims of PAPPLAA are:

  1. Develop culturally and linguistically (Spanish and English) appropriate materials and methods that promote and support moderate physical activity among African American and Latino women.
  2. Develop materials that are useful for women with low literacy levels; and include images, terminology, and role models with whom the women can identify.
  3. Evaluate the acceptability and usefulness of the materials by pregnant African American and Latino women residing in Detroit communities.

As the Project Manager she worked with a community committee that had been formed to create the materials previously mentioned. Dr. Dudley-Brewster was also responsible for evaluating the materials, which included the development of evaluation tools for the project.The second project, Teen-Adult Partnerships: Examining Roots of Success and Developing a Model for Teen-Driven Centers (TAPRoot), on which she was working was based at a teen-driven center, The Neutral Zone, located in Ann Arbor. Because this teen-driven approach model is relatively new, little systematic information is available about what contributes to the successful operation of teen-driven centers. Thus, there is a great need in local communities for comprehensive information about best practices in establishing and running teen-driven centers. The proposed project is an 18-month pilot that will assess the program development and evaluation issues. The project has produced multiple materials, including a meta-analysis of successful teen centers, to be disseminated to Michigan non-profits and other community groups interested in teen-driven approaches. As a member of the project team, she worked to secure funding for this project and with different stages of program implementation.


Stephanie Farquhar, Ph.D, MA

Current Position:
Associate Professor
Portland State University's School of Community Health
Portland, Oregon

Training Site:
University of North Carolina

Education:
Ph.D., Health Behavior and Health Education, University of Michigan School of Public Health
M.A., Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder

Research Interests:
Social & Environmental Equity, Environmental Health Policy, Effects of Grassroots Participation on Health and the Role of the University in Academic-Community Public Health Partnerships

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Farquhar worked on a community-driven research project that was initiated by the social justice organization, Workers and Community for Relief and Aid Project (WCRAP). The data that was collected in the project was submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and local government representatives in an effort to change discriminatory and inadequate emergency environmental and housing policies. Illustrative statistics and interview quotes from over 200 interviewees, as well as qualitative and quantitative data collection methods and analyses was presented. With the assistance of her community mentor Naeema Muhammad, Dr. Farquhar continues working towards changes in policy and the establishment of a Survivors' Organizing Council.

Current Activities:
Dr. Farquhar draws from the principles of community-based participatory research to address issues of social and environmental equity as it relates to health. In partnership with Multnomah County Health Department and several community organizations, Dr. Farquhar completed a 3-year Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant to examine the role of Community Health Workers and popular education in Latino and African American communities in Portland, Oregon. She is currently a researcher on a National Institutes of Health grant that seeks to reduce pesticides exposure and occupational stressors among indigenous farm workers in Oregon. Dr. Farquhar is on the Board of Directors of Upstream Public Health, and served as a commissioner on the city/county Sustainable Development Commission. She teaches Community Organizing, Foundations of Public Health, and Program Planning in the Oregon MPH program.


Shannon Frattaroli, Ph.D, MPH

Current Position:
Assistant Scientist
Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health

Training Site:
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg University

Education:
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins Bloomberg University
MPH, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg University

Research Interests:
Role of policy in improving the health of populations, Effects of firearm injury prevention policies, Role of advocacy and communities in the policy process

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
The potential of policy to influence the public's health has long been recognized by our profession. However, policy interventions are a rarity among community-based public health initiatives. More common are educational interventions which aim to change individual behavior, and health service interventions which provide specific services to community members.

In order to better understand the role of policy in community-based initiatives, Dr. Frattaroli partnered with two policy-oriented community organizations in Baltimore. One organization, the Neighborhood Congress, is a city-wide coalition of neighbors and neighborhood associations working to bring a community voice to local government policies that affect community health. The second organization is comprised of victims of gun violence working to reduce gun death and injury through grassroots organizing and policy advocacy. Through these partnerships, several lessons related to community participation in the policy process are being identified. Key findings included: strategies for building and sustaining momentum in support of policy goals; roles for partners in community-based policy advocacy efforts; and techniques for accessing decision-makers.


Clarence Gravlee, Ph.D, MA

Current Position:
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Florida Gainesville

Training Site:
University of Michigan

Education:
Ph.D, Anthropology, University of Florida
MA, Anthropology, University of Florida
BA, Anthropology, University of Florida

Research Interests:
Biocultural approaches to health and human development; cultural dimensions of psychosocial stress; cardiovascular disease; race and human biological variation; ethnicity and racism; culture theory; social network analysis; research methods; medical anthropology; Caribbean (Puerto Rico) and United States.

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Lance Gravlee worked with the Healthy Environments Partnership (HEP), a community-based participatory research project affiliated with the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center. HEP is focused on the role of air pollution, dietary factors, and stress in shaping racial and socioeconomic disparities in cardiovascular disease in Detroit, with the goal of informing community-based interventions and policy efforts to reduce such disparities. A central aim of HEP is to document how neighborhood and social structural conditions influence social inequalities in heart disease. To that end, Dr. Gravlee joined a team of community and academic partners in developing and implementing a standardized tool for assessing neighborhood conditions in the three HEP study areas. He also developed a parallel project to map the distribution of fundamental social determinants of health, using a combination of ethnographic methods and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In addition, he was involved with HEP's community outreach and education program (COEP), which aimed to communicate the study's findings both to policy makers and to community members at large. Finally, Dr. Gravlee participated in a writing team from the Eastside Village Health Workers Partnership (ESVHWP) to examine the relationship between perceived discrimination and health in the most recent wave of the ESVHWP survey. One aim of this project was to identify local arenas for developing community-based interventions to reduce racial inequalities in health.

Cuurent Activities:
In addition to his appointment in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida, Dr. Gravlee has affiliate appointments in the College of Public Health and Health Professions, the African American Studies Program, and the Center for Latin American Studies at UF. Dr. Gravlee’s research focuses on social inequalities in health. His current work examines the health effects of racism among African Americans in Tallahassee, FL. He has also done research on the social and cultural influences on high blood pressure and heart disease among people of African descent in Puerto Rico and in Detroit. As part of the Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study, Dr. Gravlee has also examined the health consequences of globalization and culture change among indigenous peoples in the Bolivian Amazon. Dr. Gravlee has expertise in community-based participatory research and is working with community members and university researchers to develop the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT), a community-academic partnership for action-oriented research on social inequities in health.


Derek Griffith, Ph.D, MA

Current Position:
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Behavior & Health Education
Associate Evaluation Director
Prevention Research Center
University of Michigan - School of Public Health

Training Site:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Education:
Ph.D, Clinical Community Psychology, DePaul University
MA, Clinical-Community Psychology, DePaul University
BA, Psychology/Afro-American Studies, University of Maryland

Research Interests:
Social determinants of health disparities, Institutionalized Racism, Evaluation, Health of men of color

Community Health Scholars Program Project:
Dr. Derek Griffith worked on two projects: one on rural, African American men's health and another on institutional racism in a county health department. The first project, entitled Efland Men Acting Together on Cancer and Health (MATCH), had three goals: (1) explore the social and historical context in Efland, NC that have an impact on African American men's gender socialization and access to health care, screening, and information through interviews, focus groups, and secondary data collection, and (2) develop and pilot a multi-level intervention that focuses on issues of male gender socialization related to seeking prostate cancer information and screening. This intervention included training MATCH Advisors or natural helpers; organizing MATCH Learning Circles, men's social and discussion groups to normalize discussion of prostate cancer and other men's health issues; and development of a MATCH health communications campaign, organized to raise awareness about men's health and prostate cancer. Also, MATCH will (3) evaluate and refine the confidant interview method for collecting data from MATCH Advisors and participants about the impact of the intervention on men's informed decision-making, social group norms, and community awareness around seeking prostate cancer information and screening. This research was collaboration between African-American men in Efland, United Voices of Efland-Cheeks, local churches, and representatives from the Orange County Health Department. The second project was an effort to measure institutional racism in Chatham County Public Health Department, and conduct a participatory evaluation of their Dismantling Racism process. This process was designed to develop a common language and a common analysis for understanding racism and the ways in which it manifests itself in the health care delivery system, and examine the policies, procedures and structures that allow racism to continue to exist within the Chatham County Public Health Department. The evaluation framework is based on Camara Jones' (2000) ecological framework for understanding racism at the institutional, personally-mediated and internalized levels, and explores how to measure the impact of the Dismantling Racism process at each of these levels.

Current Activities:
Dr. Griffith is the Director of the Center on Men's Health Disparities and the Assistant Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health. Dr. Griffith's research explores men's health disparities: why men of different races, ethnicities, sexual identities and economic statuses have disparate patterns of health and illness. He also uses qualitative and quantitative approaches to develop and test theories and interventions that will help improve Black American men's longevity and quality of life. In this work he examines how racism, social support, stress, and life priorities influence men's health behavior, men's health outcomes, and men's health disparities. Dr. Griffith is currently the Principal Investigator of grants funded by the American Cancer Society, the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research to improve healthy eating, increase physical activity and reduce African American men's cancer risk in three cities in Michigan: Flint, Detroit and Ypsilanti. He also is the evaluator for a faith-based HIV prevention project in Flint, Michigan - YOUR Blessed Health.