*Plenary Sessions and Invited Symposia

Plenary Sessions

Plenary Session I: Understanding Neighborhood Effects through Geography, Architecture, and Addiction Science (learn more)

Plenary Session II: Place-Based Prevention (learn more)

Plenary Session III: Increasing Health Equity and Strengthening Resilience (learn more)

Invited Symposia

Invited Symposium I: Addressing the Needs of Neighborhoods and Communities of Concentrated Disadvantage: A Research and Policy Agenda (learn more)

Invited Symposium II: Interventions to Decrease Health Disparities (learn more)

Plenary Session I

Tuesday, July 21, 2020, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Understanding Neighborhood Effects through Geography, Architecture, and Addiction Science

Chair: Michael Mason, PhD, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Speakers:

Mei-Po Kwan, Ph.D., Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois
Joanna Lombard, AIA, LEED AP, Professor of Architecture and Public Health, University of Miami
David Epstein, Ph.D., Tenure-Track Investigator, NIDA Intramural Research Program, Director, Real-world Assessment Prediction, and Treatment Unit

This plenary provides an interdisciplinary perspective on understanding neighborhood effects on health through geography, architecture, and addiction science as part of the conference theme, “Why Context Matters: Towards a Place-based Prevention Science.” This panel will begin with Dr. Mei-Po Kwan’ talk entitled, “The Neighborhood Effect Averaging Problem (NEAP): An Elusive Confounder of the Neighborhood Effect. Dr. Kwan is the Choh-Ming Li Professor of Geography and Resource Management and Director of the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Fellow of the U.K. Academy of Social Sciences. Dr. Kwan will discuss the challenges of capturing neighborhood effects and utility of mobility-based exposure assessment using an urban air-pollution study as a case example. The next speaker is professor Joanna Lombard, AIA, LEED AP, who will present “Greening Miami-Dade: An intervention study.” Professor Lombard is an architect and professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Miami, with a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine where she focuses her research and practice on the intersection of architecture, landscape, culture, and health, especially in relation to climate change. Professor Lombard will discuss the impact of tree planting over time in low-income neighborhoods to improve community health and well-being. The final speaker is David Epstein, Ph.D. who will present, “Recalculating route”: Lessons learned about using place-based prevention in addiction.” Dr. Epstein is a tenure-track investigator at NIDA’s Intramural Research Program in Baltimore, where, since 1998, he has done human research on addiction to opioids, cocaine, and other drugs. Dr. Epstein will discuss his group’s work with geographical momentary assessment (GMA), in which GPS tracking and environmental mapping are combined with smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA).

Michael Mason, PhD

Michael Mason, PhD, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Michael Mason, Ph.D., is the Betsey R. Bush Endowed Professor in Children and Families at Risk at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Prior to coming to the University of Tennessee, Dr. Mason was an associate professor of Psychiatry, and director of the Commonwealth Institute on Child and Family Studies, in the School of Medicine, at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Mason completed his undergraduate degree at Pepperdine University, and his masters San Diego State University, and his doctorate from Oregon State University. He completed a National Institute on Mental Health postdoctoral research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, school of Public Health, department of Mental Hygiene. Dr. Mason’s work seeks to understand and test the idea that substance use is a developmentally contingent social practice that is constituted within the routine social-environment of individuals’ lives. His work is funded by the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, and foundations.

Mei-Po Kwan, PhD

Mei-Po Kwan, Ph.D., Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois

I am a Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science. My research interests include environmental health, human mobility, access to healthcare, neighborhood effects, sustainable travel and cities, and application of GIS methods in geographic research. I am interested in understanding how social differences (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, and religion) shape urban residents’ everyday experiences and perceptions/use of the built environment. I have received over $24 million grants as PI or Co-PI from sources including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. I has served as Editor of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers for 12 years.

I have received many prestigious honors and awards, including the Distinguished Scholarship Honors (2011), the Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography (2018), and the E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Award (2016) from the American Association of Geographers (AAG), the Alan Hay Award in Transport Geography (2017) from the Transport Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society (U.K.), the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) Research Award (2005), the Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences (CPGIS) (2017), the Edward L. Ullman Award from the AAG Transportation Geography Specialty Group (2005), and the Melinda S. Meade Distinguished Scholarship Award (2016) from the AAG Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group. I was recognized in 2009 as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2016 I was named a Guggenheim fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

I have published 37 edited or co-edited volumes (including two encyclopedias, five books and 30 journal special issues) and over 185 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. I have delivered over 200 keynote addresses and invited lectures in 18 countries. I have served as an advisory panelist or reviewer of grant proposals for 14 U.S. National Science Foundation programs, U.S. National Institutes of Health, European Research Council, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Australian Research Council, Austrian Science Fund, Research Foundation of Flanders, Royal Geographical Society (U.K.), Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, and Swiss National Science Foundation.

Joanna Lombard, AIA, LEED AP

Joanna Lombard, AIA, LEED AP, Professor of Architecture and Public Health, University of Miami

Joanna Lombard, AIA, LEED AP, is a registered architect (Florida) and Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture with a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine and is a 2019-2020 Abess Faculty Scholar in the Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Tulane University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. At UM, she is a founding member of the Built-Environment Behavior & Health Research Group with funded projects in the area of neighborhood design and health, currently studying the impacts of streetscape-greening on Miami-Dade Medicare beneficiaries. She is author and co-author of articles, book chapters, and books (most recent book chapter: “The Landscape Design Principles of William Lyman Phillips in the First Heritage Parks,” in Building Eden, The Beginning of Miami-Dade County’s Visionary Park System, ed. by Rocco Ceo, Pineapple Press, 2018). She is co-leader of one of the eleven university-based teams selected as charter members of the American Institute of Architects Design & Health Research Consortium, and a member of the University of Miami U-LINK team exploring “Hyper-localism: Transforming the Paradigm for Climate Adaptation.”

She has worked with colleagues at UM’s Abess Center, Georgetown and Harvard universities to organize a colloquium on climate migration (graphic report). During the summer of 2018 she was a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Evidence for Action: Culture of Health delegation to the One Water Summit 2018, and with colleagues from the University of Minnesota and Portland State, she convened a discussion group on climate migration at the AIA 2018 Collaborative Research Summit. In March of 2019 she participated in Georgetown Climate Center’s Roundtable on Managed Retreat. In addition to teaching in UM’s School of Architecture’s Architecture and Urban Design Programs, she collaborated with colleagues at CLEO and Van Alen to develop and teach a 3-day workshop for the CLEO/Van Alen Institute Climate Design Lab and continues to work with The Nature Conservancy to advance the Miami Cities Program’s Allapattah: Resilient Health District + Wagner Creek Greenspace Project.

David H. Epstein, PhD

David Epstein, Ph.D., Tenure-Track Investigator, NIDA Intramural Research Program, Director, Real-world Assessment Prediction, and Treatment Unit

Dr. David H. Epstein is the Chief, Real-World Assessment, Prediction, and Treatment Unit and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The RAPT Unit was established by Dr. Epstein in 2017 to bring the IRP’s treatment research into the age of predictive analytics and personalized medicine. Implicit in the name—“Real-world Assessment, Prediction, and Treatment”—is our intent to show that when addiction research moves forward, so do prevention and treatment.

The RAPT Unit’s watchword, even if it sounds like a buzzword, is actionable: (1) We derive actionable information from our use of smartphones, GPS, and biosensors in everyday assessment of people’s moods, exposure to built and social environments, and drug use. That information can help us deliver mobile treatments, electronically, when and where they’re needed. (2) We formulate actionable ideas from neuroscience and laboratory-based behavioral sciences, collaborating closely with colleagues at the IRP and worldwide to translate their discoveries into treatments.

Our aim is to maintain a portfolio of studies that, taken together, address the whole continuum of causes of addiction, from the psychosocial to the neurobiological, and to use our wide in-house expertise to match the tool to the task for different kinds of patients.

Plenary Session II

Wednesday, July 22, 2020, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm

Place-Based Prevention

Chair: Elizabeth M. Ginexi, PhD, Health Scientist Administrator, National Institutes of Health, Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research

Speakers:

Bridget Freishler, PhD, Professor and Associate Dean of Research, The Ohio State University, College of Social Work
Megan Sandel, MD, Associate Professor, Pediatrics, Boston University, Schools of Medicine and Public Health
Charles Branas, PhD, Gelman Endowed Professor of Epidemiology, and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University

This invited plenary features three prominent experts who will bring unique perspectives on this year’s conference theme, Why Context Matters: Towards a Place-Based Prevention Science. The plenary begins with Dr. Bridget Freishler who is Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the Ohio State University, College of Social Work. She currently directs studies examining how the regulatory environment for medical marijuana is related to problems such as crime, marijuana use, and abuse/dependence, how drinking locations and contexts, particularly related to the substance use environment, affects substance use and parenting behaviors, such as child maltreatment. The next speaker is Dr. Megan Sandel, Associate Professor, Pediatrics, Boston University, Schools of Medicine and Public Health. She is a nationally recognized expert on housing and child health and she has served as a Principal Investigator for numerous NIH, HUD and foundation grants, working with the Boston Public Health Commission and Massachusetts Department of Public Health to improve the health of vulnerable children. The final speaker Dr. Charles Branas is the Gelman Endowed Professor of Epidemiology, and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University. Dr. Branas has conducted research incorporating place-based interventions and human geography including some of the first citywide randomized controlled trials of urban blight remediation and have shown these interventions to be cost-effective solutions to persistent urban health problems like gun violence.

Elizabeth Ginexi, PhD

Elizabeth M. Ginexi, PhD, Health Scientist Administrator, National Institutes of Health, Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research

Dr. Elizabeth Ginexi joined the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in November 2016 to focus on the application of innovative research methodologies, measurement, and analytic approaches to advance behavioral and social sciences research. Dr. Ginexi is an Applied Social Psychologist with expertise in family- and community-based etiology, prevention, and treatment research; policy interventions to target population-level health behavior; and quantitative analysis methods including: statistical methods for analyzing longitudinal, multi-level, and randomized intervention trial data, and computational modeling. Prior to joining OBSSR she served as a Program Director in the Tobacco Control Research Branch (TCRB) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) from 2010-2016 and as a Health Scientist Administrator in the Prevention Research Branch (PRB) at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 2003-2010. At NCI Dr. Ginexi was the Project Coordinator for the State and Community Tobacco Control (SCTC) Research initiative which was designed to address understudied aspects of tobacco control policy and media interventions. At NIDA, she directed the Transdisciplinary Prevention Research program portfolio along with prevention grant portfolios involving health communications research and methodology and measurement innovations. Prior to NIH Dr. Ginexi was a Senior Study Director at Westat, where she participated in the development and implementation of community-based drug abuse treatment and prevention evaluations funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). She began her career as a Research Scientist and Lecturer at the George Washington University, where she played a key role in data collection, data management, and analysis for longitudinal field studies involving family based mental health etiology studies and preventive interventions. She received her masters and doctoral degrees in Applied Social Psychology from the George Washington University and she completed postdoctoral training under two Public Health Service Grant National Research Service Awards, one through Children’s National Medical Center, and the other at the Center for Mental Health Policy at Vanderbilt University.

Bridget Freisthler, PhD

Bridget Freishler, PhD, Professor and Associate Dean of Research, The Ohio State University, College of Social Work

Dr. Bridget Freisthler is the Professor and Associate Dean Research at The Ohio State University, College of Social Work. Dr. Freisthler’s work focuses on 1) understanding how health and social problems vary across geographic areas, such as neighborhoods, 2) identifying those areas in a community which are at risk for developing or already experiencing high levels of harms based on a growing understanding of neighborhood ecologies, and 3) examining how the location of services may further help or hinder the development of problems in neighborhood areas. She is particularly interested in how the substance use environment (e.g., alcohol outlet and medical marijuana dispensaries) is related to a variety of harms, including crime and child maltreatment.

She currently directs studies examining how the regulatory environment for medical marijuana is related to problems such as crime, marijuana use, and abuse/dependence, how drinking locations and contexts, particularly related to the substance use environment, affects substance use and parenting behaviors, such as child maltreatment, and how web-based technology to create a more streamlined process for determining which agencies have openings available to serve clients and matching client referrals with service providers in order to reduce length of stay for children in foster care and increase reunification rates.

She leads the Child Abuse and Neglect (CAN) Social Ecological Models Consortium. She also studies how service availability and accessibility may reduce these harms in local areas.

Her work is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, and private donors.

Megan Sandel, MD

Megan Sandel, MD, Associate Professor, Pediatrics, Boston University, Schools of Medicine and Public Health

Megan Sandel, MD, is an associate professor of pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine as well as an associate professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health. She has held both of these positions for the last eight years, but has been working with the university since 2002, first as an assistant professor. She is the former pediatric medical director of Boston Healthcare for the Homeless program and the first medical director of the founding site for medical-legal partnerships, Medical-Legal Partnership-Boston. In addition to publishing articles and serving on committees, she is considered an expert in her field on the topic of housing and child health.

Charles Branas, PhD

Charles Branas, PhD, Gelman Endowed Professor of Epidemiology, and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University

Dr. Charles Branas is the Gelman Endowed Professor, Epidemiology, and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Branas has conducted research that extends from urban and rural areas in the US to communities across the globe, incorporating place-based interventions and human geography. He has led win-win science that generates new knowledge while simultaneously creating positive, real-world changes and providing health-enhancing resources for local communities. His pioneering work on geographic access to medical care has changed the healthcare landscape, leading to the designation of new hospitals and a series of national scientific replications in the US and other countries for many conditions: trauma, cancer, stroke, etc. His research on the geography and factors underpinning gun violence has been cited by landmark Supreme Court decisions, Congress, and the NIH Director. With community partners, Dr. Branas led the first citywide randomized controlled trials to transform vacant lots and abandoned buildings as sustainable solutions to improving health and safety, including reductions in gun violence. He has worked internationally on four continents and led multi-national efforts, producing extensive cohorts of developing nation scientists, national health metrics, and worldwide press coverage.

Plenary Session III

Thursday, July 23, 2020, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm

Increasing Health Equity and Strengthening Resilience

Chair: Aleta Meyer, PhD, Senior Social Science Research Analyst, Team Leader for Community-Engaged and American Indian and Alaskan Native Research, Division of Family Strengthening, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Speakers:

Melissa Walls, PhD, Associate Professor, International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg, School of Public Health
Robert M. Kaplan, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine
Joanna Lee Williams, PhD, Department of Leadership, Foundations, Policy, University of Virginia

Our special theme focused on increasing health equity and strengthening resiliency provides a platform for stepping up the Society’s efforts to understand context as we move towards a place-based prevention science. A strengths-orientation for designing prevention and measuring change can provide connections between place and contextual factors such as culture and history in ways that reshape deficit-based habits of science. Our three speakers will share their expertise to help build our understanding of the role of context in creating a more place-based prevention science that increases health equity and strengthens resilience. Dr. Robert Kaplan will begin by reflecting on the evolution of public health sciences over the past 70-80 years and how the different areas are manifesting today. He will encourage us to think about what levers to push or pull in resource scare contexts. Dr. Joanna Lee Williams will share her research regarding race and ethnicity as a context for development in schools. She will encourage us to think about how bringing developmental science into systems can inform issues of equity in outcomes during adolescence. Dr. Melissa Walls will share her research expertise in neighborhoods, health, and resilience among American Indian and Alaska Native communities. She will encourage us to think carefully about specificity and generalizability of measurement in prevention in service of scientific rigor and social justice.

Aleta Meyer, PhD

Aleta Meyer, PhD, Community-Engaged and American Indian and Alaskan Native Research, Division of Family Strengthening, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Aleta L. Meyer, Ph.D., is Team Lead for Community-Engaged Research and American Indian / Alaska Native Research in the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Throughout her career, Dr. Meyer’s work has focused on the translation of theory, empirical research, and local wisdom about health and well-being into effective and feasible community-based strategies. At ACF, this includes the translation of research on the health impacts of early adversity and chronic stress to ACF programs that serve individuals and families across the lifespan, community-engaged research to evaluate human services programs with American Indian and Alaska Native communities, and addressing knowledge gaps in understanding how human services programs can help improve family economic self-sufficiency and overall health and well-being in rural contexts.

Melissa Walls, PhD

Melissa Walls, PhD, Associate Professor, International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg, School of Public Health

Dr. Melissa Walls, PhD. (Bois Forte and Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe), is a Bloomberg Associate Professor of American Health in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Great Lakes Hub of the Center for American Indian Health. Walls has engaged in health research partnerships with Native communities for over 17 years. Her involvement in community-based participatory research projects includes mental health epidemiology; culturally relevant, family-based substance use prevention and mental health promotion programming and evaluation; and examining the impact of stress and mental health on diabetes and related health outcomes, including obesity. Dr. Walls has the honor of working with hundreds of tribal members across 11 Ojibwe Bands in the midwestern United States and Canada on numerous projects funded by the NIH, RWJF, and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Robert M. Kaplan, PhD

Robert M. Kaplan, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine

Dr. Robert M. Kaplan is Adjunct Professor, Medicine – Primary Care and Population Health, Stanford University. He has served as Chief Science Officer at the US Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Associate Director of the National Institutes of Health, where he led the behavioral and social sciences programs. He is also a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Health Services and Medicine at UCLA, where he led the UCLA/RAND AHRQ health services training program and the UCLA/RAND CDC Prevention Research Center. He was Chair of the Department of Health Services from 2004 to 2009. From 1997 to 2004 he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, at the University of California, San Diego. He is a past President of several organizations, including the American Psychological Association Division of Health Psychology, Section J of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Pacific), the International Society for Quality of Life Research, the Society for Behavioral Medicine, and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. Kaplan is a former Editor-in-Chief of Health Psychology and of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine. His 20 books and over 560 articles or chapters have been cited more than 55,000 times (H-index>100) and the ISI includes him in the listing of the most cited authors in his field (defined as above the 99.5th percentile). Kaplan was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) in 2005.

Joanna Lee Williams, PhD

Joanna Lee Williams, PhD, Department of Leadership, Foundations, Policy, University of Virginia

Joanna Lee Williams is an associate professor in the Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Policy. She is a faculty affiliate with Youth-Nex: The U.Va. Center to Promote Effective Youth Development, and with the Center for Race and Public Education in the South. She earned her M.S.Ed. in human development from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Temple University.

Williams studies race and ethnicity as social contexts for youth development. With support from the William T. Grant Foundation she is investigating issues of social network equity in racially diverse middle schools. She has also studied ethnic identity as a form of positive youth development and previously served as Associate Director of Research for the Young Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program for middle school girls. Williams is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Science of Adolescent Development and its Applications and is a contributor to the Youth-Nex “Re-making Middle School” Initiative.

Invited Symposium I

Wednesday, July 22, 2020, 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm

Addressing the Needs of Neighborhoods and Communities of Concentrated Disadvantage: A Research and Policy Agenda

Chair: Ron Prinz, PhD, Carolina Distinguished Professor, University of South Carolina, College of Arts and Sciences

Speakers:

Anthony Biglan, PhD, Senior Scientist, Oregon Research Institute
Tamar Mendelson, PhD, Bloomberg Professor of American Health, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

The 2019 report of the National Academy of Medicine, Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development in Children and Youth: A National Agenda, calls for a mobilization of the research and practice communities to address the problems of neighborhoods/communities of concentrated disadvantage. The report documents the fact that urban and rural neighborhoods/communities of concentrated poverty have multiple problems that contribute to high levels of intergenerational poverty. The report recognizes that efforts to promote healthy development of children and youth in the U.S. will be limited if we do not address the multitude of problems in these neighborhoods. This symposium is intended to advance efforts to study how conditions in these neighborhoods/communities can be addressed both through more interdisciplinary research and through the adoption of policies that foster more nurturing conditions in these locales.

Ron Prinz, PhD

Ron Prinz, PhD, Carolina Distinguished Professor, University of South Carolina, College of Arts and Sciences

Ron Prinz, PhD is a Carolina Distinguished Professor in Psychology who directs the multidisciplinary NIGMS/NIH-funded Research Center for Child Well-Being at the University of South Carolina. Prinz attended UCLA and University of California at Berkeley as an undergraduate and received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is founding and co-editor-in-chief (with Tom Ollendick) of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review and is on the board of directors for the National Prevention Science Coalition. His research focuses on parenting and family issues, population-based prevention of child abuse, the prevention of behavioral/emotional problems and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors in childhood, and treatment of substance-abuse issues in child-welfare-system families. Prinz recently directed clinical trials funded by NIDA and NIMH pertaining to interventions with families, He coordinates the 115-faculty-member Research Consortium on Children and Families at the University of South Carolina and directs a long-standing NIH-funded T32 research training initiative called the Behavioral-Biomedical Interface Program.

Anthony Biglan, PhD

Anthony Biglan, PhD, Senior Scientist, Oregon Research Institute

Anthony Biglan Ph.D. is a Senior Scientist at Oregon Research Institute and a former president of the Society for Prevention Research. He has conducted numerous experimental evaluations of interventions to prevent tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use, high-risk sexual behavior, antisocial behavior, and reading failure through family, school, and community-wide interventions. His book, The Nurture Effect: How the science of human behavior can improve our lives and our world, describes how behavioral science research over the past fifty years has brought us to the point where it is possible to evolve a society in which virtually every person is living a productive life in caring relationships with others. His new book, Rebooting Capitalism: How we can forge a society that works for everyone, explains how we evolved a form of capitalism over the last 50 years that has impoverished millions of Americans, undermined the regulation of harmful business practices, and corrupted most of the major sectors of society. The book provides a roadmap for how we can evolve a more nurturing form of capitalism.

Tamar Mendelson, PhD

Tamar Mendelson, PhD, Bloomberg Professor of American Health, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Tamar Mendelson, Ph.D., is a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a Bloomberg Professor of American Health, Director of the Center for Adolescent Health, and co-leader of the Adolescent Health area of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. She served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Consensus Committee on Promoting Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Functioning in Children and Youth. A clinical psychologist by training, Dr. Mendelson studies the prevention of mental health issues and promotion of positive development in urban adolescents. For over twelve years, she has tested mindfulness-based prevention programs to enhance student mental health and school success in Baltimore City schools. Through the Center and the Bloomberg Initiative, she collaborates with multiple partners to help reduce the number of young people who become disconnected from school, the workforce, and other key supports.

Invited Symposium II

Thursday, July 23, 2020, 2:45 pm – 3:45 pm

Interventions to Decrease Health Disparities

Chair: Tanya Agurs-Collins, PhD, RD, Program Director, Health Behaviors Research Branch, Behavioral Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute

Speakers:

C. Debra Furr-Holden, PhD, C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health, Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine
Kelli Komro, MPH, PhD, Professor, Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health
Alison Gustafson, PhD, Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, University of Kentucky, School of Environmental Sciences

Tanya Agurs-Collins, PhD, RD

Tanya Agurs-Collins, PhD, RD, Program Director, Health Behaviors Research Branch, Behavioral Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute

Tanya Agurs-Collins, Ph.D., R.D., is a Program Director in the Health Behaviors Research Branch, Behavioral Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute (NCI). In this capacity, she is responsible for directing, coordinating, and managing a research grant portfolio in diet, physical activity, and weight-loss behavioral interventions for cancer prevention and survival. Dr. Agurs-Collins’ research focuses on race and ethnic disparities in dietary intake and obesity on cancer risk and survival. She is also interested in understanding individual genetic variation in diet and physical activity behaviors and response to weight loss interventions.
Dr. Agurs-Collins has a Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences with an emphasis in epidemiology and a master’s degree in Public Health Nutrition from the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from Howard University in Washington, DC. Prior to joining NCI, Dr. Agurs-Collins was an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Howard University College of Medicine and a nutritional epidemiologist at the Howard University Cancer Center. She is a registered dietitian with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Past BRP mentees include Sara Tamers, Doratha Byrd, and Shakira Nelson.

C. Debra Furr-Holden, PhD

C. Debra Furr-Holden, PhD, C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health, Michigan State University, College of Human Medicine

Dr. Debra Furr-Holden is the Associate Dean for Public Health Integration, C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health, and Director of the Division of Public Health at the Michigan State University. She is also the Director of the Flint Center for Health Equity Solutions, funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (U54HD011227). She is an epidemiologist and classically-trained public health professional with expertise in health equity and health disparities research. Dr. Furr-Holden has worked extensively with a wide range of partners including community-based organizations, local municipal officials, and national policy makers and leaders. Her research has supported legislative efforts to impact state- and national-level legislation to promote health equity. Dr. Furr-Holden’s community-based, action-oriented research has been well received by community stakeholders and driven multiple policy interventions to address some of the nation’s greatest public health challenges, especially among racial and ethnic minorities and in racially- and economically-segregated communities. Dr. Furr-Holden’s research is grounded in the rubrics of epidemiology and consistent with principles and practices for understanding and intervening on the social determinants of health and health equity. Among her many awards, she was the recipient of the 2006 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (Office of the White House). Dr. Furr-Holden attended the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (BA Natural Sciences and Public Health, 1996) and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (PhD, 1999).

Kelli Komro, MPH, PhD

Kelli Komro, MPH, PhD, Professor, Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health

Dr. Kelli Komor is professor of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education and Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. Dr. Komro is a social and behavioral epidemiologist focused on child health promotion by intervening on social determinants of health through policy change. For more than two decades, she has led NIH-funded cluster-randomized trials to study family, school, community and policy strategies to promote health and reduce high-risk behaviors and health disparities. Currently, with funding from NIMHD, she studies the effects of state-level family economic security policies on infant and child health using natural experiment design methods. She also collaborates on multiple community-based intervention projects. NIH has continually funded her research since the 1990s and she has published in the leading public health, prevention science, preventive medicine, addiction and health behavior journals.

Her meaningful and humbling experiences partnering with many diverse families, schools and communities have fueled her passion for addressing fundamental determinants of health. She is excited to share her knowledge, skills and passion with those dedicated to finding solutions through innovation and strong science to inform health-promoting policy action.

Dr. Komro serves as BSHE’s Director of Graduate Studies and has been recognized for her teaching and mentoring as recipient of the University of Florida College of Medicine Exemplary Teacher award in 2011, the Society for Prevention Research mentoring award in 2010, and the American Public Health Association’s Student Caucus mentor of the year award in 1999. She is a member of Delta Omega Society, the honorary public health society. She has held academic positions at the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida, where she served as Associate Director of the Institute for Child Health Policy. She is a graduate of the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota.

Dr. Komro’s research has recently been highlighted at the National Institutes of Health and National Academies of Sciences.

Alison Gustafson, PhD

Alison Gustafson, PhD, Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, University of Kentucky, School of Environmental Sciences

Alison Gustafson, PhD, MPH, RD is an Associate Professor and Buster Endowed Professor at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition. Her research focuses on how various components of the food environment are on the pathway to poor dietary outcomes among rural and geographically isolated communities. Dr. Gustafson is the PI on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention High Obesity Program (HOP-1807) grant working to improve environmental infrastructure in Martin Co Kentucky, as well as several USDA and NIH grants. She will discuss the current community led efforts to improve connectivity to everyday destinations and the food store environment in this county. Dr. Gustafson will also share how this work is framing future research related to online grocery shopping and geo-targeted place based text messaging interventions.

Related Pages

*Plenary Sessions and Invited Symposia