The Faculty

Yale's award-winning faculty — leaders in the domestic and international public health fields and education — teach in the Executive MPH alongside a few outstanding visiting faculty. Each track in the program has a Faculty Track Director who supports and engages students in the track.

Track Directors

Hamada Hamid Altalib, DO, MPH, FAES
Associate Professor of Neurology and of Psychiatry; Track Director, Health Informatics, Online Executive MPH Program
Research Interests
Brain Injuries
Epilepsy
Medical Informatics
Health Care Quality, Access, and Evaluation
Psychiatry and Psychology
Dr. Altalib is the Director of the Veteran Administration (VA) Epilepsy Center of Excellence in West Haven, CT, where he oversees and provides direct care for Veterans with epilepsy throughout the greater New England region. He helped established a VA Neurobehavioral clinic, which provides clinical care for Veterans who suffer from emotional distress and/or behavioral problems associated with neurological conditions (such as traumatic brain injury, stroke, and epilepsy). At Yale University he also provides care for people with neurological injury that impact emotional processing. For instance, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, movement disorders (and their treatments) can affect brain circuits and chemistry and lead to mood, anxiety, and even psychotic disorders. Furthermore, neuropsychiatric conditions such functional movement disorder and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures are managed in his clinic.Dr. Altalib is also the Director of the Yale Epilepsy Outcomes Research Program, in which he oversees clinical trials and cohort studies related to epilepsy interventions. In addition to seizure control outcomes, his research explores psychiatric co-morbidity of neurologic disease. He is currently the primary investigator of a studies examining the neurologic substrates of depression in people with epilepsy; the burden of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures in the Veteran population; and measuring coordination of health care using social network analysis methods.
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Mayur M. Desai, PhD, MPH, FACE
Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases) and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging; Director, Advanced Professional MPH Program; Track Director, Applied Analytic Methods and Epidemiology, Online Executive MPH Program; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Core Faculty, National Clinician Scholars Program
Research Interests
Aging
Mental Disorders
Cardiovascular Diseases
Chronic Disease
Epidemiologic Methods
Health Workforce
Health Services Research
Public Health
Quality of Health Care
Veterans
Global Health
Health Care Quality, Access, and Evaluation
Quality Indicators, Health Care
Vulnerable Populations
Emigrants and Immigrants
Noncommunicable Diseases
Mayur M. Desai (he/him/his), PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and the inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the Yale School of Public Health. Professor Desai received both his MPH in health policy and his PhD in epidemiology from Yale. He then served for two years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, before returning to New Haven to join the Yale faculty. Professor Desai’s expertise is in the application of epidemiologic methods to clinical and health services research. Most of his research effort is devoted to mentored, team-science projects in which he is leading or substantially contributing to the analytic and methodological aspects of the work. The overarching goal of his work – across various content areas – is to improve health equity in access, quality, and outcomes of care in a broad range of populations and settings. Professor Desai has extensive experience (1) conducting studies at the interface of mental health and primary care; (2) developing risk-adjusted quality-of-care measures for the Medicare program; (3) determining the incidence, trends, and outcomes of surgical procedures; (4) examining the health, health beliefs, and healthcare utilization of marginalized and stigmatized populations, including immigrants, refugees, and incarcerated individuals; (5) contributing to numerous projects in low- and middle-income settings on a range of topics, including child health, prisoner health, diagnosis and treatment of both non-communicable and infectious diseases, and health systems strengthening; and (6) examining DEI-related issues in the biomedical workforce.Professor Desai directs the accelerated, 11-month Advanced Professional MPH Program and is a core faculty member in Yale’s National Clinician Scholars Program and Global Health Leadership Initiative. He has a long and sustained history of global public health capacity-strengthening, having developed and taught innovative short courses and workshops on a range of topics – including epidemiology, biostatistics, monitoring and evaluation, strategic problem solving, and research mentorship and leadership – in over a dozen countries. He received the 2022 Drs. Anvar and Pari Velji Global Health Award for Teaching Excellence from the international Consortium of Universities for Global Health and is a 4-time recipient of YSPH’s Distinguished Teaching Award.
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Kaveh Khoshnood, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Track Director, Critical Topics, Executive MPH; Faculty Director, InnovateHealth Yale; Program Co-Director, Global Health Ethics Program, Yale Institute for Global Health; Track Director, Critical Topics in Public Health, Online Executive MPH Program
Research Interests
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
Epidemiology
Ethics
HIV
Human Rights
Public Health
Violence
Global Health
Infectious Disease Medicine
Dr. Khoshnood is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Yale School of Public Health and executive committee member at Yale Council on Middle East Studies. He is co-founder of Yale Violence and Health Study Group and a faculty member of the Program on Conflict, Resiliency and Health at the Yale MacMillan Center. Dr. Khoshnood is trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has more than three decades of domestic and international experience in HIV prevention research among people who use drugs and other at-risk populations. Dr. Khoshnood's research interests include: 1) epidemiology and prevention of HIV/AIDS, 2) research ethics and 3) humanitarian health. His projects are primarily in China, Lebanon and Bhutan. Dr. Khoshnood teaches a new course on health in humanitarian crises.
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Yong Zhu, PhD
Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences); Track Director, Environmental Health Sciences, Online Executive MPH Program; Assistant Director, Global Epidemiology
Research Interests
Breast Neoplasms
Environmental Health
Genetics, Medical
Public Health
Testicular Neoplasms
Molecular Epidemiology
Dr. Yong Zhu is an Associate Professor at Yale University School of Public Health and Assistant Director of Yale Cancer Center for Global Cancer Epidemiology. Dr. Zhu's research interests are oriented towards the use of the molecular epidemiological approach in the study of genetic susceptibility biomarkers and their interactions with environmental exposures in human disease development. Dr. Zhu has been developing and validating novel phenotypic and genotypic assays and biomarkers for several cancer types, including non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, breast, bladder, lung and prostate cancer. By utilizing various techniques in genetics, epigenetics, cytogenetics, cell biology, and computational biology, his studies have identified biomarkers that can characterize inherited predisposition and cellular response to environmental factors. Current research focuses on studying the role of two transcriptional factors, circadian genes and small noncoding RNAs, in tumorigenesis.
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Course Faculty

Paul Anastas
Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences) and Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment
Paul T. Anastas is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment. He has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering. In addition, Prof. Anastas serves as the Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale. Anastas took public service leave from Yale to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Agency Science Advisor from 2009-2012. From 2004 -2006, Paul Anastas served as Director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. He was previously the Assistant Director for the Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he worked from 1999-2004. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and worked as an industrial consultant. He is credited with establishing the field of green chemistry during his time working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as the Chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch and as the Director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program. Dr. Anastas has published widely on topics of science through sustainability including eleven books, such as Benign by Design, Designing Safer Polymers, Green Engineering, and his seminal work with co-author John Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice.
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Kali Bechtold
Lecturer
Kali Bechtold is the Director of Programs at GHLI and Lecturer of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health. Ms. Bechtold teaches Design Thinking and Strategic Problem Solving as well as provides intensive management mentorship for healthcare professionals across GHLI’s certificate programs. She has over 10 years of experience in project management, implementation and global health delivery. In her role, Ms. Bechtold has provided management coaching to individuals and teams on a diverse array of public health challenges including vaccine introduction and financing in Tanzania and Myanmar, development of referral networks for children with autism in Ghana and Japan, wellness programs for pediatricians in the United Kingdom, and an understanding of how urban pollution affects children with asthma in India. Ms. Bechtold is the lead management coach for EPI LAMP and leads GHLI’s Gates Grand Challenge award focusing on the utilization of design thinking to drive demand for immunization services within women’s rotating credit unions in Cameroon and Ethiopia. Additionally, Ms. Bechtold anchors GHLI’s educational portfolio including the design, implementation and evaluation of the Expanded Program on Immunization Leadership and Management Programme (EPI LAMP) for national immunization programs, Gavi’s STEP for immunization supply chain managers, and the Sustainable Health Initiative for health start-ups in the Global South. In addition to her work at GHLI, Ms. Bechtold has designed and managed diverse projects focusing increased human resources for health in Bangladesh, Myanmar and India, prevention of mother to child HIV transmission and prevention and care of tuberculosis in South Africa, integration of community health workers into primary care services in Eastern Cape, South Africa and HIV prevention and care for key populations in Cameroon, Senegal, Lesotho and South Africa. Ms. Bechtold received her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, her MBA from Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business and is certified in Design Thinking through MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
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Laura Bothwell, PhD, MPhil, MA
Assistant Professor of Clinical Public Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Research Interests
Bioethics
Environment and Public Health
Epidemiology
Ethics
History
History of Medicine
Human Rights
Political Systems
Public Health
Social Justice
Social Medicine
Global Health
Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
Pharmacoepidemiology
Government Regulation
Vulnerable Populations
Policy
Social Determinants of Health
Public Health Systems Research
Adaptive Clinical Trials as Topic
Dr. Bothwell is an ethicist and historian of public health. Her research examines social, historical, and ethical dimensions of epidemiology with a particular focus on randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Her current book project examines how international and national policies have influenced trial rigor and ethics, protections of vulnerable trial subjects, and participant diversity in RCTs. She also does work at the intersection of climate change, epidemiology, and ethics.She completed a PhD in the History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine from the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Health Policy, Law, and Ethics in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She has also had visiting appointments at Oxford University, Foundation Brocher, the Karolinska Institutet, and National Taiwan University. She teaches public health ethics and the history of public health, and provides pre-departure ethics training in global health practice.
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Maureen Canavan, PhD, MPH
Associate Research Scientist (General Medicine); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Maureen E. Canavan, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist at Yale Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research Center (COPPER) since 2017. In addition to working the MCBS data, she works as part of the Yale Cancer Center’s Cancer Care Innovations Lab (CaCIL) team evaluating quality metrics for cancer care. Her research interests include health management, employment, and end of life care. Prior to her work at COPPER, she was a member of the Global Health Leadership Institute (GHLI) team, she conducts qualitative and quantitative data analysis of GHLI studies in countries including Ghana, Ethiopia and China. She received an M.P.H. from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, School of Public Health and a B.S. from Pennsylvania State University.
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Kei-Hoi Cheung, PhD
Professor of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science
Research Interests
Anesthesiology
Emergency Medicine
Medical Informatics
Technology
Databases, Genetic
Kei-Hoi Cheung, PhD has distinguished himself as a researcher and educator in the field of Biomedical Informatics with a growing national and international reputation. A particular strength is Dr. Cheung’s ability to forge strong, productive collaborations with a range of different bioscience researchers at Yale, in which his contributions include the development of complex databases and informatics tools that are critical for the research projects being performed. In the context of these collaborations, Dr. Cheung is simultaneously able to carry out his own informatics research on issues involved in robust interoperation and integration of databases and tools in the biosciences. In addition to giving talks and presentations at national and international meetings, he has published his own informatics research in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, as well as contributing to publications focused on his collaborators’ research. He has established a broad base of collaborations with faculty in different departments at Yale, including Genetics, Pathology, Computer Science, Biostatistics, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and Biology. He was Director of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core of the NIDA Proteomics Center, focused on collaborative informatics support of neuroproteomics research at Yale. In addition to being a collaborator on numerous grants, Dr. Cheung has been PI on several federal grants (NIH and NSF). Dr. Cheung is also a core faculty member of Yale's Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.Dr. Cheung’ s research interests include the semantic web using the next generation of web technologies to integrate life science data and tools, and is co-editor of two books for Springer-Verlag titled: “Semantic Web: Revolutionizing Knowledge Discovery in the Life Sciences” and “Semantic e-Science”, respectively. Dr. Cheung also led the BioRDF task force (2008-2010) of the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group that is an international community engaging in the creative use of Semantic Web in biomedicine. In addition, Dr. Cheung has recently embarked on natural language processing (NLP) projects in annotating, extracting and retrieving information from clinical text as part of the Veteran Administration (VA) electronic medical records. In summary, Dr. Cheung’s biomedical informatics expertise in database/semantic web research and NLP tool development, his national and international recognition as a researcher/educator, and his research contributions in these areas exemplify the attributes of a prominent researcher in biomedical informatics.
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Nicole Deziel, PhD, MHS
Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences)
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.
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Samah Fodeh, PhD
Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and of Biostatics; Associate Director of Health Data Sciences and Education, Yale Center for Medical Informatics; Yale Institute of Global Health
Research Interests
Medical Informatics
Natural Language Processing
Social Behavior Disorders
Data Mining
Machine Learning
Samah Fodeh-Jarad, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, with a secondary appointment in the Yale School of Public Health. She is Associate Director of Health Data Sciences and Education at Yale center for Medical Informatics. She is also affiliated with the Yale Institute for Global Health (YIHG). Dr. Fodeh has distinguished herself as researcher in the field of Biomedical Informatics and Big Data Science with a growing national and international reputation. Her contributions include the development of complex computational methods and tools that are critical for advancing biomedical informatics research and data science. Through her work, Dr. Fodeh demonstrates the utility of exploiting and combining multiple data modalities by employing methods from data mining and machine learning. One example is her research on mining social media and health care data to learn more about suicide risk and opioid addiction. Dr. Fodeh is also interested in assessing the impact of digital communications between patients and healthcare providers on several health-related outcomes.
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Gary Ginsberg, PhD
Clinical Professor, Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Ginsberg is the director of the Center for Environmental Health for the New York State Dept of Health and has a Clinical Professor appointment at the Yale School of Public Health. He serves on a number of national committees including US EPA’s Science Advisory Board (2008-present) and the National Academy of Sciences (Biomonitoring committee 2004-2006; USEPA Risk Methods committee which produced Science and Decisions, 2006-2008; Inorganic Arsenic Risk Assessment committee, 2012-2015, Emerging Science committee 2016-present). He also served on USEPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (2004-2009) and has been an external reviewer on a number of USEPA IRIS documents. Dr. Ginsberg has been called on by other federal agencies to provide reviews including OSHA (silica workplace standard), CPSC (cadmium in children’s jewelry) and FDA (dental amalgam). His risk assessments on fish contaminants, synthetic turf fields, acrylamide, cadmium, and assessments pertaining to risks in children and those with genetic polymorphisms have been published in peer review journals. Dr. Ginsberg co-authored a book for the lay public called “What’s Toxic What’s Not” (Berkeley Books, 2006).
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Laurie Graham, MPH
Lecturer
Laurie Graham works at the intersection of healthcare business and technology. She has more than a decade of experience in strategy consulting for national health plans and state governments. Her experience ranges from on-the-ground implementation of value-based payment to setting a vision for market transformation through strategic partnerships. Laurie gained experience working in health IT at Athenahealth Inc. in (2008-2009) and (2012-2015). Between formative chapters at "athena" Laurie attended Yale University and served as Senior Policy Analyst to the Lt. Governor’s Office of Health Reform and Innovation where she managed policy issues related to the Affordable Care Act, health IT and data liquidity. In various consulting roles, Laurie provided advisory services to HHS State agencies and Fortune 100 companies. In 2018, Laurie joined Optum as Senior Director of Corporate Strategy where she facilitated the development of enterprise growth initiatives for UHG. At Optum, Laurie gained exposure to the nation's foremost leaders in healthcare driving transformative change in the U.S. healthcare system. She most recently joined Cotiviti as Vice President of Growth and is launching her academic career. She holds a B.A. in Geography from George Washington University, and M.P.H. in health policy management from Yale University. In addition to consulting work, Graham is a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and an adjunct professor at Boston University School of Public Health, where she also sits on the Advisory Board for the Health Policy and Management Department.
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Jason Hockenberry, PhD
Department Chair and Professor of Public Health (Health Policy)
Research Interests
Health Care Economics and Organizations
Jason Hockenberry is a health economist and health services researcher with expertise in using econometric techniques to analyze administrative, registry and electronic health record data to investigate the impacts of public health policies and to assess factors affecting the quality, efficiency, and cost of healthcare. HIs work is published in leading health policy and health economics outlets including JAMA (and affiliated journals), Health Affairs, Journal of Health Economics, and Journal of Public Economics. His research has been funded by the NIH, AHRQ, VA HSR&D, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund.
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Debbie Humphries, PhD, MPH, MA
Assistant Professor of Clinical Public Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Research Interests
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
Developing Countries
Ghana
HIV
Hookworm Infections
Malaria
Parasitology
Public Health
Vietnam
Global Health
Nutrition Policy
Dr. Humphries has a broad background in public health research and practice. She has been a consultant in the areas of diet and physical activity behavior change, sustainability of community health programs, program monitoring and evaluation, and training in participatory monitoring and evaluation for organizations in Vietnam, Africa and in the United States. She has extended that reach through her Practice-based Community Health Research course which places student groups with agencies in the State of Connecticut to plan and evaluate programs. Sample projects include: Determining the Best Time to Implement Routine HIV Testing in Jails; Barriers to Accessing Health Care and Health Needs of Undocumented Immigrants; Evaluation of HIV/AIDS prevention, testing and care in Connecticut Correctional Facilities; and Strategies to Reduce Low Birth Weight in New Haven: An Evaluation of the Outreach Strategy of the New Haven Maternal and Child Health Department. Humphries is also a member of the Community Research Engagement steering committee at Yale.Dr. Humphries’ research addresses interactions between nutrition and infectious disease, as well as programmatic approaches to improving public health. This work has taken her to Asia and Africa where she has studied environmental factors and intestinal helminth infections and their relationship to anemia as well as effectiveness of intervention programs. She is currently collaborating on a longitudinal study to characterize parasite and host factors affecting response to deworming in Ghana.
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LaDrea Ingram
Associate Research Scientist in Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences)
Dr. LaDrea Ingram is a Senior Health Services Researcher at Atrium Health. She is a behavioral scientist and certified health education specialist (CHES). She earned her doctoral degree in Health Education & Behavioral Studies from Columbia University, Teachers College. She received a Master of Arts in Government from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Science in Health and Medical Policy from George Mason University.Dr. Ingram's primary research focuses on the biological, behavioral, and psychological factors that help to define health outcomes across the course of a person's life. She is interested in racial/ethnic disparities in HIV-related health and mental health outcomes and understanding the biopsychosocial factors that contribute to HIV risk, as well as the social, racial (racism/oppression), historical and cultural factors that impact HIV risk behaviors. She is also interested in implementation science and developing evidenced based interventions that improve psychological wellness and health enhancing behaviors in young women of color.Dr. Ingram is currently exploring the complex intersections of adverse childhood experiences and interpersonal relationships in African American women while integrating intergenerational constructs into a behavioral, and psychosocial framework that helps to define health outcomes across generations.
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Erika Linnander, MPH, MBA
Director 3; Director, Global Health Leadership Initiative; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Research Interests
Institutional Management Teams
Health Care Quality, Access, and Evaluation
Health Care
Erika Linnander directs Yale's Global Health Leadership Initiative, where she develops and leads education and research in health management across country settings. A lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health, Ms. Linnander teaches management, quality improvement, and strategic problem solving across Yale’s certificate and master’s-level education programs. Over the past decade, she has designed, led, and evaluated health management programming in China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, Rwanda, and South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the US, her research and practice has focused on the creation of effective organizational culture in healthcare (she recently led the design and development the successful “Leadership Saves Lives” intervention to promote organizational culture change in US hospitals). Globally, she has focused on the development of national management and governance systems as leverage points for improving health system performance and population health outcomes. She has supported a number of novel, large-scale mentorship and education programs in health and hospital management, the development of hospital and district-level governing boards, the creation of national quality improvement collaboratives in resource limited settings, and the establishment of national tools and systems to measure and improve hospital and primary care system performance. She currently serves as the principal investigator for Primary Healthcare Transformation Initiative, a multi-year effort to create a culture of performance management and accountability in Ethiopia's district health offices, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She also serves as the principal investigator of the Expanded Program on Immunization Leadership and Management Programme (EPI LAMP), a Gavi-funded effort to build leadership and management capacity among teams of senior managers and Ministry officials with responsibility for immunization program performance from across Africa and Asia.Ms. Linnander also uses innovative implementation science research methods to evaluate prospective interventions to improve health and health equity in and across complex systems within and across country settings. She currently serves as the principal investigator for the USAID-funded mixed-methods evaluation of Project Last Mile (PLM), a multi-country effort to translate the supply chain and logistics expertise of the Coca-Cola system to public sector medical supply chain organizations across Africa. In addition to her academic expertise and practical experience in global health management, she possesses significant operational experience in hospital settings. Prior to joining the Yale team, she worked in hospital administration at the Johns Hopkins Health System. Ms. Linnander received her MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and her MBA from the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business.
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Josefa L. Martinez, PhD, MHS
Instructor; Director, ECHORN Coordinating Center
Research Interests
Breast Feeding
Community Health Workers
Obesity
Global Health
Social Determinants of Health
Child Health
Maternal Health
Health Equity
Implementation Science
Dr. Martinez is an Instructor in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, core faculty at the Equity Research and Innovation Center, and lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Martinez is a maternal-child public health nutrition investigator and implementation scientist with a focus on translating effective interventions into public health policy and practice in disparity populations. She has extensive experience using social and behavioral theory in research design, piloting, implementation and evaluation. Dr. Martinez’s research focuses on how community-based behavior change, health communication, and systems-level interventions can be used to encourage healthy lifestyle behaviors and the effects these interventions have on reducing the risk of overweight and obesity across the life cycle. Her current work aims to improve maternal-child nutrition in the WIC population through breastfeeding protection, promotion, and support. Her current research also examines the role of food security in nutrition-related cardiometabolic outcomes in disparity populations.
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Robert McDougal, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics; Co-Training Director, Health Informatics MS
Research Interests
Computer Simulation
Neurosciences
Computational Biology
Informatics
Biostatistics
Robert A. McDougal, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Health Informatics Division of the Department of Biostatistics. He is affiliated with the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics graduate program, the Yale Center for Medical Informatics, and the Center for Biomedical Data Science. His research focuses on developing methods for aggregating, computationally representing, analyzing, and modeling experimental data, with emphasis on understanding brain function and dysfunction.Dr. McDougal is currently a PI on an NIH grant seeking to build efficient methods for simulating the interaction of intracellular and network dynamics in the brain. Recent collaborations include a project to detect trends in the use of animal models and interventions in the Alzheimer's literature, and a project to use computational modeling to interpret magnetoencephalography (MEG) data. As member of the NeuroML Scientific Board, he supports the development of future standards for sharing computational neuroscience models.Dr. McDougal earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from The Ohio State University in 2011. He did postdoctoral training at Yale in computer science, neurobiology, and medical informatics; during the later, he earned an MS in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from Yale. From 2016 until joining the Department of Biostatistics in 2019, he was an Associate Research Scientist at Yale University in the Department of Neuroscience.
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Carol Oladele, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor; Director of Research, Equity Research and Innovation Center (ERIC); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Research Interests
Chronic Disease
Epidemiology
Quality of Health Care
Healthcare Disparities
Dr. Oladele is Assistant Professor in the Section of General Internal Medicine, core faculty at the Equity Research and Innovation Center, and Center for Neuroepidemiology and Clinical Neurological Research at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Oladele's research focuses on social determinants of cardiovascular health disparities, with specific focus on the role of nutrition, healthcare quality, food, and built environments. She has expertise in the development of dietary assessment methodologies for African descent populations. Her research aims to generate evidence to support health policies and interventions to improve cardiovascular outcomes among racial/ethnic and immigrant populations domestically and globally. Dr. Oladele’s current work examines the role of food insecurity and ultra-processed food on disparities in hypertension incidence and control.
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Rafael Perez-Escamilla, PhD
Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences); Director, Office of Public Health Practice; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Director, YSPH Global Health Concentration
Research Interests
Breast Feeding
Child Care
Child Development
Community Health Workers
Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2
Food Deprivation
Maternal-Child Health Centers
Nutrition Surveys
Obesity
Global Health
Healthcare Disparities
Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, Ph.D., is Professor of Public Health, Director of the Office of Public Health Practice, and Director of the Global Health Concentration at the Yale School of Public Health. He is the PI of the Yale-Griffin CDC Prevention Research Center (PRC). His global public health nutrition and food security research program has contributed to improvements in breastfeeding and other maternal, infant and young child nutrition outcomes, iron deficiency anemia among infants, household food security, and early child development. His health disparities research involves assessing the impact of community health workers at improving behavioral and metabolic outcomes in vulnerable communities. He has published over 280 research articles, 3 books/monographs, and numerous journal supplements, book chapters, and technical reports. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (elected in 2019) and served in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Food and Nutrition Board from 2012-18. He has been a senior advisor to maternal-child community nutrition programs as well as household food security measurement projects funded by the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the U.S. Agency for International Development, The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH),The World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Governments in Latin America & Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Europe . He obtained his BS in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and his MS in Food Science and his PhD in Nutrition from the University of California at Davis. His postdoctoral training at UC Davis focused on the link between nutrition and early childhood development.
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Krystal Pollitt, PhD, P.Eng.
Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Research Interests
Environmental Exposure
Mass Spectrometry
Dr. Pollitt’s research explores the human exposome through characterisation of environmental and biological samples using analytical and mass spectrometry (MS) techniques. Her group has developed various mass spectrometry (ICP-MS, LC-MS and GC-MS) to measure exposure to complex mixtures of trace elements and organic compounds. She has applied these exposure assessment methods in numerous in epidemiological studies. Visit our lab website: pollittlab.weebly.com
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Richard Taylor, MD, MHS
Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and of Biostatistics (Health Informatics); Associate Director of Informatics and Data Science Research, Center for Medical Informatics; Director, ED Clinical Informatics and Analytics
Research Interests
Database Management Systems
Decision Making, Computer-Assisted
Decision Theory
Medical Informatics
Neural Networks, Computer
Data Mining
Data Science
Dr. Taylor's primary interest is in informatics and improving patient care through data science. His research focuses on applying database, data mining, and machine learning techniques to big data stored in a variety of health care-related sources. In his role as Director of Clinical Informatics and Analytics he oversees numerous IT aspects in the ED including: building dashboards with sophisticated models (risk adjustment etc.), developing ED clinical decision support tools, and serving as the liaison to hospital IT leadership.Dr. Taylor earned his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Mississippi. He completed medical school at Emory University School of Medicine and Emergency Medicine residency at the University of Connecticut. Most recently he completed fellowships in point-of-care ultrasound and Masters in Health Science with an informatics focus from Yale University. He lives in Durham with his wife and four kids.
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Vasilis Vasiliou, PhD
Department Chair and Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences) and of Ophthalmology and Visual Science and of Environment; Director, Yale Superfund Research Center; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Cancer Center; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health
Research Interests
Alcoholism
Aldehyde Dehydrogenase
Diabetes Mellitus
Environmental Health
Glutathione
Gout
Ophthalmology
Genomics
Vasilis Vasiliou, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He received his BSc in Chemistry (1983) and PhD in Biochemical Pharmacology (1988) from the University of Ioannina, Greece. He then trained in gene-environment interactions, molecular toxicology and pharmacogenetics at the Department of Environmental Health in the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (1991-1995). In 1996, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy where he rose through the ranks to become Professor and Director of the Toxicology Graduate Program. Since 2008, he was also Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. In July 2014, he joined the faculty of Yale University in his new position. Professor Vasiliou has established an internationally-recognized research program that has been continuously funded by NEI/NIH and NIAAA/NIH since 1997, and recently NIEHS. His research interests include the etiology and molecular mechanisms of environmentally-induced human disease, such as liver disease, obesity & diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases. His research focuses on the means by which the exposome (total exposures throughout life), metabolism (specifically aldehyde dehydrogenases and cytochrome P-450s) and antioxidants (glutathione and catalase) contribute to human health and disease. His laboratory utilizes state-of-the-art integrated system approaches that include metabolomics, lipidomics, exposomics, tissue imaging mass spectrometry, deep-learning, as well as human cohorts and genetically-engineered mouse models in order to elucidate mechanisms, and to discover biomarkers and novel interventions for human disease. Dr Vasiliou is the director of the NIEHS-funded P42 Yale Superfund Research Center and also the director of the NIAAA-funded R24-Resource Center for Mouse Models and Metabolomics Tools to Investigate Alcohol Metabolism and Tissue Injury. Dr. Vasiliou has published over 250 papers and edited three books on Alcohol and Cancer. Dr. Vasiliou is the editor of Human Genomics and serves on the editorial boards of several toxicology and visual sciences journals. Professor Vasiliou is committed to training the next generation of scientists. At the University of Colorado, he was the Director of the Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Graduate Program for 15 years. At Yale he leads an NIAAA-funded T32 Translational Alcohol Research Program (TARP) Training Program for post-doctoral fellows, and an NIHES -funded R25 Summer Research Experience in Environmental Health (SREEH) Training Program that introduce undergraduate students in Connecticut (CT) to Environmental Health Research. Dr. Vasiliou has trained mentored and advised more than 60 trainees ranging from MPH and PhD students to postdoctoral fellows and junior faculties.
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Sten H. Vermund, MD, PhD
Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health
Research Interests
Environment and Public Health
HIV
Public Health
Global Health
Women's Health
Child Health
Dr. Sten Vermund is a pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist focused on diseases of low and middle income countries. His work on HIV-HPV interactions among women in Bronx methadone programs motivated a change in the 1993 CDC AIDS case surveillance definition and inspired cervical cancer screening programs launched within HIV/AIDS programs around the world. The thrust of his research has focused on health care access, adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, and prevention of HIV transmission among general and key populations, including mother-to-child. Dr. Vermund has become increasingly engaged in health policy, particularly around sustainability of HIV/AIDS programs and their expansion to non-communicable diseases, coronavirus pandemic response and prevention, and public health workforce development. His recent grants include capacity-building for public health in Chad, molecular epidemiology for HIV in Kazakhstan, and COVID-19 vaccine studies in Dominican Republic and Connecticut. He has worked with schools and arts organizations for COVID-19 risk mitigation and institutional safety.
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Shi-Yi Wang, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases)
Research Interests
Breast Neoplasms
Terminal Care
Dr. Wang is an Associate Professor at the Yale School of Public Health, faculty member of Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center, and faculty member of Public Health Modeling Concentration, Yale School of Public Health. His primary interests focus on outcomes research and decision science. He is interested in combining systematic literature reviews, secondary data analyses, and simulation modeling to examine issues that are critical to clinicians and policy makers’ decision making. He has been working on several breast cancer projects, including an evaluation of preoperative breast MRI, development of an individualized decision aid to help radiotherapy decision-making, and assessment of sentinel lymph node biopsy for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ. He is also evaluating end-of-life care quality. He has served as the primary investigator or co-investigator in several projects (funded by Yale Cancer Center, AHRQ, NCI, ACS, and PCORI).
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Michael Wininger, PhD
Assistant Clinical Professor of Biostatistics
Michael Wininger is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale School of Public Health, Department of Biostatistics. He maintains a co-appointment at the Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program (Statistician of Medicine). Dr. Wininger's areas of focus are in device data stream analysis, applied algorithmics, clinical trial design and operation.
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