Faculty Research
Below is a partial list of faculty conducting research related to public health (PH).
Faculty Teaching PH Courses
Alio, Amina
Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences
Dr. Alio has extensive experience in community-based participatory research, qualitative and quantitative methods, and evaluation design. Her research areas include racial/ethnic health disparities and global health.
Specifically, Dr. Alio focuses on the impact of behavioral, psychosocial, and environmental factors on pregnancy outcomes, particularly among African Americans. Her international research is in women's reproductive health, HIV prevention, intimate partner violence, and pregnancy outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Brown, Theodore
Professor Emertius of History and Public Health Sciences
Dr. Brown’s research falls into several areas, including the:
- History of American psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine
- Influence of organized philanthropy on medical research, health policy, and medical education
- American health left, and its role in both domestic and international health policy
- History of American and global public health
Chin, Nancy
Associate Professor of Undergraduate Public Health-Related Programs
Member of the Public Health Steering Committee
Dr. Chin is interested in social class gradients in health, and women's position in society and its impact on their health and the health of their children.
Dees, Richard
Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics
Chair of the Public Health Steering Committee
Dr. Dees’s research focuses on the:
- Social and conceptual foundations of liberal institutions and practices
- Historical foundations of modern politics in the eighteenth century
- Health care ethics, including justifications for modifying our brains, and the intersection of health care and political philosophy in public health ethics
His current work includes projects on newborn screening and on the harms we can do to the dead.
Korfmacher, Katrina
Associate Professor of Environmental Medicine, Public Health Sciences, and the Center for Community Health & Prevention
Dr. Korfmacher focuses on the two-way links between environmental health research and the information needs of the community. Her primary focus is addressing environmental health information and policy needs of the communities in and around 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳.
Seplaki, Christopher
Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences
Dr. Seplaki's overarching goals are to understand how challenges in the social and physical environment interact with the biological processes of aging, and how to translate that understanding into effective interventions that reduce disability and mortality among older adults.
His research, spanning both the individual and population level, encompasses physical and social characteristics of the home environment that support or challenge elders, life stressors, and socioeconomic status. He examines how these factors are related to changes in biological indicators of several physiological systems and self-reports of physical and mental health. Key themes in his work include an emphasis on measurement and estimation issues and a focus on sub-clinical disease processes related to geriatric frailty and allostatic load, including development of measures of health risk related to multi-system dysregulation.
Taken together, Dr. Seplaki's research seeks to provide an integrated perspective on trajectories of health in late life and, ultimately, identify opportunities to reduce disability and mortality, and improve the ability of older adults to continue to live independently.
Van Wijngaarden, Edwin
Professor of Public Health Sciences, Environmental Medicine, Pediatrics, and Dentistry and the Center for Community Health & Prevention
Member of the Steering Committee for Public Health-Related Majors
Dr. Van Wijngaarden’s research focuses on the potential role of occupational and environmental exposures (primarily heavy metals and pesticides) in the development of cancer and neurological conditions in both children and adults.
White, Ann Marie
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Public Health Sciences, and the Center for Community Health & Prevention
Dr. White promotes mental health supporting behaviors, services utilization, and mental illness prevention strategies within community-based settings. Her research interests focus on successful transitions into adulthood. Her research experiences in developmental psychology emphasize the role of community settings such as childcare, arts centers, and after-school programs in the development of children and adolescents.
River Campus Faculty
FitzPatrick, William
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Dr. FitzPatrick has an interest in many questions in bioethics, especially related to stem cell research and the moral status of embryos. (Bioethics students only.)
Hudson, Larry
Associate Professor of History
Dr. Hudson is interested in the relationship between poverty and health in the African-American community.
Jamieson, Jeremy
Associate Professor of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology
Dr. Jamieson’s research is primarily concerned with understanding the effects of social stress on emotions, decision making, and health. He uses a multi-method approach, and autonomic and neuroendocrine physiological measures. His work looks at the effects of acute stress (and coping strategies) on health outcomes, and developmental differences in health behaviors and race-based health disparities.
Yildiz, Nese
Associate Professor of Economics
Dr. Yildiz’s research is on developing econometrics tools for evaluating effects of treatment.
Medical School Faculty
All of the faculty in the Department of Public Health Sciences conduct research related to public health. Please consult their for more information.