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Meet Some of Our Faculty

  • Assistant Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences) and Assistant Professor of Anthropology (Secondary)

    Chelsey R. Carter is an Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health with a secondary appointment in the Department of Anthropology. She is a Black feminist anthropologist of medicine, public health, and race from St. Louis, Missouri. Her scholarship examines the relationship(s) between social determinants of health (e.g., anti-Black racism, socioeconomic status, gender) and neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and motor neuron diseases (MND). Carter has a background in anthropology and public health, with specific training and expertise in ethnographic research, qualitative methodologies, and applied public health interventions. Her most recent research on race and ALS informs her first book project, tentatively titled, Finding the Forgotten: Race, Bias, and Care in the World of ALS. This book centers on the experiences of Black people living with ALS (and their families), scientific knowledge production, and how embodied inequality impacts diagnosis, treatment, and engagement in clinical trials. Her current research projects investigate precision medicine and genomic research in Black communities (The Black Genome Project) and caregiving among persons impacted by ALS. Her scholarship has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation, and more. Her public and scholarly work has been published in Anthropology News, Scientific American, Museum Anthropology, Medical Decision Making, British Journal of Health Psychology, American Ethnologist, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly. She is Founder and Director of The LEITH (Lived Experiences Igniting Transformations in Health) Lab, a hub to address Black invisibility and misdiagnosis for rare neurodegenerative and genetic diseases, in honor of anthropologist, Dr. Leith Mullings.
  • Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases)

    Dr. Cohen is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose primary research focus is tuberculosis. He is particularly interested in understanding how TB drug-resistance and medical comorbidities such as HIV frustrate current efforts to control epidemics, with an ultimate goal of developing more effective approaches to limit the morbidity caused by this pathogen. Dr. Cohen's training is in epidemiology and clinical medicine, and his work includes mathematical modeling, fieldwork, and analysis of programmatic data. His research program is currently funded by NIH and US CDCAwards.
  • Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences); Co-Director, Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology (CPPEE)

    Dr. Deziel obtained a Master’s of Industrial Hygiene and Doctorate in Environmental Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research is focused on applying statistical models, biomonitoring techniques, and environmental measurements to provide comprehensive and quantitative assessments of exposure to traditional and emerging environmental contaminants in population-based studies. Her research uses a combination of large, administrative datasets and detailed community-focused studies to advance understanding of environmental exposures to chemicals, particularly carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. This research also serves to illuminate exposure mechanisms underlying associations between environmental chemicals and disease, thereby informing more effective policies to reduce exposures and protect public health. Dr. Deziel's contributions have been directed at two main areas: (1) exposure and human health impacts of unconventional oil and gas development (“hydraulic fracturing”) and (2) residential exposure to chemicals in common consumer products (e.g., pesticides, flame retardants) and cancer risk (particularly thyroid cancer). In addition, she consider disproportionate burdens of exposures (“environmental justice”) and the combination of environmental and social stressors in the context of her work.