November 15, 2016

This fall, Scarlett Bellamy, ScD, MS, joined the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Pennsylvania, where she developed and implemented statistical methods for cluster- and group-randomized trials that have been used in longitudinal trials of behavioral modification interventions and multicenter trials addressing health disparities, among other areas.

Kim M. Blankenship, PhD, will be joining the faculty in the Department of Community Health and Prevention in Winter 2017. Blankenship’s work focuses on the social determinants of health and structural interventions to address them. She is currently Professor and Chair in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Center on Health, Risk and Society at American University. She serves the District of Columbia Center for AIDS Research as Director of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Core.

Jerry Fagliano, MPH, PhD, new chair and associate clinical professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. He spent 30 years in public health practice at the New Jersey Department of Health, as the senior environmental/occupational epidemiologist managing the Environmental and Occupational Health Surveillance Program. Fagliano testified on the public health impact of lead in drinking water before the Philadelphia City Council and spoke at a National Public Health Week teach-in on campus. In his first year teaching since joining the faculty last fall, Fagliano was awarded the Drexel Graduate Student Association’s Outstanding Faculty award in June.

Ali Groves, PhD, assistant research professor, comes to Dornsife’s Community Health and Prevention department to continue her research at the intersection between HIV infection and intimate partner violence among women. She works to implement and evaluate interventions to mitigate women’s risk of HIV and intimate partner violence, and joined Drexel this summer from American University.

Tran Huynh, PhD, assistant professor in Environmental and Occupational Health, is currently developing research projects aimed at identifying effective interventions to assist small businesses in protecting the health of their employees, specifically Vietnamese employees of nail salons. In addition, she has worked to develop occupational exposure assessment strategies for workers who participated in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill clean-up. Huynh was previously at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Shiriki Kumanyika, PhD, MPH, is founder and chair of the African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network (AACORN), and a past president of APHA. She came to Dornsife as a research professor in Community Health and Prevention in September 2015. Drexel is now the administrative home for AACORN, a leading voice of scientific evidence for optimizing nutrition and physical activity lifestyles in the U.S. black population. Sheldon Watts, PhD, MPH, joined as AACORN’s National Office Director in June.

Gina S. Lovasi, PhD, MPH, joined as Dornsife Associate Professor of Urban Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics this September. Previously she co-directed Mailman School of Public Health’s Urban+Health Initiative at Columbia University. Her research examines how local policies and initiatives influence cardiovascular and respiratory health.

Ana Martinez-Donate, PhD, began her appointment as an associate professor of Community Health and Prevention in September 2015. Her research interests include HIV prevention, tobacco control, obesity prevention, and access to health services, focusing primarily on Latino immigrants and other disadvantaged populations. Martinez-Donate was previously a faculty member in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Leslie McClure, PhD, MS, was named chair and professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in September 2015, bringing biostatistics expertise on both clinical trial design and the analysis of observational studies from her previous role at the University of Alabama Birmingham where she was recognized for her outstanding teaching and mentoring skills. McClure has diverse research interests, ranging from statistical to environmental epidemiology, as well as racial and geographic disparities in diseases and the role that the environment plays in those disparities.

New Health Management and Policy Assistant Professor Ryan McKenna, PhD, uses his economics expertise to analyze the impact health information technology in hospital settings has on patient outcomes, physician behaviors, and costs of care. He is also interested in public policy analysis in the health care sector. McKenna received hisdoctorate in economics from SUNY Stony Brook in May.

Alex Ortega, PhD, joined as professor and chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in November 2015. He is internationally recognized as a public health scholar who specializes in the health of Latino children and families in the U.S. Ortega has conducted studies in the areas of pediatric asthma treatment and management disparities, access to primary care, mental health care access, psychiatric epidemiology, and community-engaged health interventions to reduce chronic disease risk in a variety of sites and contexts.

Brent Langellier, PhD, MA, came to Dornsife as assistant professor of Health Management and Policy in September 2015. He conducts research to understand and address the mechanisms that produce health disparities, particularly among racial/ethnic minorities and the poor. Langellier received his PhD in Community Health Sciences from UCLA.

Harrison Quick, PhD, MS, comes to Dornsife’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics this fall, after working on characterizing spatial inequalities in health across small areas while at the University of Missouri and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He brings expertise in Bayesian methods for spatial and spatiotemporal data analysis, and has conducted research in the fields of data confidentiality and spatial epidemiology. Quick received his PhD in Biostatistics form the University of Minnesota in 2013.

Leah Hope Schinasi, PhD, transitioned from her role as a post-doctoral fellow to become an assistant research professor in the Environmental and Occupational Health department. As an environmental and occupational epidemiologist, Schinasi conducts population-based research and uses quantitative methods to characterize associations between exposures experienced in the environment and the workplace with human health effects.