Scholars
- 2013-2015 Scholar Cohort
- 2012-2014 Scholar Cohort
- 2011-2013 Scholar Cohort
- 2010-2012 Scholar Cohort
- 2009-2011 Scholar Cohort
- 2008-2010 Scholar Cohort
- 2007-2009 Scholar Cohort
- 2006-2008 Scholar Cohort
- 2005-2007 Scholar Cohort
- 2004-2006 Scholar Cohort
- 2003-2005 Scholar Cohort
2013-2015 Scholar Cohort
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Merlin Chowkwanyun’s work centers on three themes: the history of public health and health policy; racial inequality; and social movements. His dissertation examined the development of post-WWII medical care and environmental health hazards in four regions (Los Angeles, Cleveland, Central Appalachia, and New York). He is working on another book about political unrest at medical schools and neighborhood health activism during the 1960s and 1970s. With Adolph Reed, he is writing a series of articles that question the dominant theoretical assumptions and frames in ‘racial’ disparities research. He has also been a member of research teams examining the startling rise of immigrant suburbanization and geographic dispersal that departs from historic norms – and what this means for social service provision (in health and otherwise). Merlin has a long-standing interest in using digital media to disseminate findings and data sources. He serves on a committee that digitized a 30+ year run of the Health/PAC Bulletin, an influential health policy publication that sought to fuse health activism with rigorous policy analysis. He is working to construct a database featuring thousands of previously unseen corporate documents that have emerged in recent environmental health lawsuits. Merlin was a Ph.D.-M.P.H. student in History and Public Health at the University of Pennsylvania and received his B.A. in History and Sociology from Columbia University.
Tova Neugut
Tova Neugut will receive her Ph.D. in Social Work and Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2013. Her research focuses on the role that expectant and new fathers play in the health and wellbeing of their partners and children, and the influence of parenthood on men’s health. Her dissertation research examined the experiences of expectant and new fathers during pregnancy and the first year post-partum. As an RWJF Health & Society Scholar, she will investigate the opportunity to improve individual and family health through appropriately timed and tailored intervention with fathers during the transition to parenthood. Tova aims to use research to develop interventions and public policy to improve the health and well-being of infants, young children, and their families. She has a specific interest in efforts to support and strengthen parent-child relationships in military families. Prior to entering graduate school, Tova worked in Jamaica and the United States with home visiting services for low-income families with children ages 0-3. Tova received her B.A. with honors in Sociology and Politics from Brandeis University.
Jayanti Owens
Jayanti Owens joins the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program having completed a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography at Princeton University. Broadly, her research focuses on the causes of gender, racial/ethnic, and immigrant educational and labor market inequality. Her dissertation addresses three puzzles: The growing, female-favoring gender gap in educational attainment in the United States; the evolution of the female-favoring gender gap in childhood behavioral skills across cohorts, and; the uneven career penalties that males and females receive for early behavior problems. Amidst the marked rise in the diagnosed prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among children in the United States, Jayanti’s future work will investigate social and medical explanations for this rise in diagnosed prevalence across cohorts. She will also use a counterfactual framework to examine cohort and gender differences in the effects of ADHD diagnosis and treatment on later well-being and educational and labor market outcomes. Jayanti’s work has appeared in journals including Sociology of Education, Social Science Research, and Racial and Ethnic Studies. Jayanti will begin as an assistant professor of sociology and public policy at Brown University upon completion of the RWJF Health & Society Scholars program.
2012-2014 Scholar Cohort
Fenaba Addo
Fenaba Addo received her Ph.D. from the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University with a specialization in family and social welfare policy and a minor in health policy and demography. Her main research areas include family and economic demography, household finance, quantitative methods, and wealth inequality. Her dissertation research focused on the role of household economic resources in family formation, relationship quality, health behaviors and outcomes. Fenaba is particularly interested in examining how financial resources impact family decision-making across the life course. Her research has appeared in Family Relations, The American Sociological Review, and Social Science Research. Fenaba received a B.S. in Economics from Duke University in 2002.
Julie Maslowsky
Julie Maslowsky received her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan. Her research to date has focused on identifying specific developmental mechanisms underlying adolescent health risk behavior, particularly substance use. For example, her dissertation examined the role of early adolescent mental health problems in the development of substance use, integrating national surveys with in-depth longitudinal data to estimate the risk for substance use associated with early adolescent mental health problems at the population level and among a subsample of adolescents at high risk for substance use due to prenatal alcohol and drug exposure. A second line of research, conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Ecuador, has focused on the development of disease prevention and health promotion programs to mitigate health disparities in the Ecuadorian public health system. For her work in Ecuador, Julie received the Compassion in Action Award from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. As a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar, Julie plans to examine individual and contextual determinants of adolescent health through integration of epidemiological and etiological theory and methods. She is particularly interested in how in-depth etiologic studies and broad epidemiologic studies can be combined in order to draw generalizable conclusions regarding the biological and social mechanisms that underlie health disparities evident in epidemiologic data.
2011-2013 Scholar Cohort
Thomas Fuller-Rowell
Thomas Fuller-Rowell received his PhD in developmental psychology from the Department of Human Development at Cornell University in 2010, and his B.A. in biochemistry and psychology from the University of Colorado in 2003. His research focuses on two main areas: (1) understanding identity development among stigmatized groups, and (2) examining the influence of social stresses relating to stigma and discrimination on health and health disparities. As a Health & Society Scholar, he aims to expand his knowledge of physiological systems relating to stress, gain exposure to interdisciplinary perspectives on population health, and contribute to addressing current limitations in the literature on discrimination and health. Please visit Thomas's website for more information about his academic research and ongoing projects.
Jason Houle is a sociologist interested in mental health disparities, processes of social stratification and
mobility, and life course sociology. His research to date has examined a broad array of issues related to
population mental health, including the effects of social mobility on psychological-well being, the link between
adolescent obesity and mental health, and mixed-methods research that investigates the consequences of sexual
harassment for mental health. His dissertation research is motivated by his interests in sociological
understandings of social stratification and mobility and the rise in credit availability to American consumers,
and young adults in particular. His dissertation examines how indebtedness in young adulthood has changed over
the latter half of the 20th century, and how debt in young adulthood is implicated in the process of status
attainment and social mobility. Jason's research has appeared in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior,
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Social Science Research, and Social Science Quarterly. As a
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, Jason plans to pursue research that examines the
relationship between debt and mental health over the life course. He is also interested in projects that explore
the effects of the Great Recession on population mental health. Jason received a B.A. in Sociology from the
University of Maine in 2005, an M.A. in Sociology and Demography from The Pennsylvania State University in 2007,
and received his PhD in Sociology and Demography from The Pennsylvania State University in 2011. After completing
his tenure as a Health & Society Scholar, Jason will begin a new position at Dartmouth College as Assistant
Professor of Sociology.
James Broesch is an anthropologist whose work focuses on the transmission and acquisition of culture, and the
intersection between culture and health. He comes to the program from Emory University, where he completed a PhD
in bio-cultural anthropology in 2010. His previous work has focused on three interrelated areas of research: 1)
empirical examinations of how social beliefs and knowledge (culture) are transmitted between individuals, 2) the
role of social networks in the transmission of culture, and 3) cross-cultural examinations of core concepts in
folk psychology and morality. James employs a mixed-methods approach to studying these issues, using qualitative,
quantitative, and experimental methods to systematically and rigorously evaluate the transmission and
distribution of cultural beliefs and knowledge. As an RWJF fellow, he plans to incorporate methods and theory
from anthropology into population health studies, and examine the role of culture and social networks in the
production and alleviation of health disparities. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University
of British Columbia, School of Population and Public Health.
Carolyn (Carey) McAndrews’ research centers on the questions: What are the characteristics of social and
institutional environments that support environmentally sustainable and socially just development, and how do we
know what is sustainable and just? Her current research focuses on how health-related values and policies become
part of land development decision making, and whether these ideas challenge communities’ established
economic, social, and physical relationships to the automobile, streets, and neighborhoods. Her dissertation was
a comparative study of how professionals from different disciplines in Sweden and California frame the issue of
safety in their work on road transportation. The study found minor differences in safety thinking, but
significant differences in how safety policies link to larger development agendas. In other research, she has
investigated pedestrian safety in middle-size Mexican cities; the role of tacit knowledge in safety oversight;
how international organizations incorporate climate change considerations into their development projects; and
how neighbors of urban arterial streets use and perceive these roads. Carey completed her Ph.D. in City and
Regional Planning with a Designated Emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies from UC Berkeley in 2010. She has a
multi-disciplinary background in economics (BA Brown University, 2000), urban planning (MCP UC Berkeley, 2006),
and transportation engineering (MS UC Berkeley, 2006), and worked for an economics consulting firm between her
undergraduate and graduate programs. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the department of Architecture
and Planning at the University of Colorado, Denver.
Emily Walton received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Washington in 2009. Her research challenges
common conceptualizations of contextual effects on individual health by investigating residential experiences
among diverse racial and ethnic groups. Central to her work is the idea that tests of residential segregation as
a fundamental cause of health and disease need to account for growing diversity in the United States. Using both
conventional and spatially derived measures of segregation she examines the health effects of living primarily
among others of one’s own racial or ethnic group, with particular attention to understanding how the
relationship differs among residentially segregated Asian and Latino Americans. An overarching goal is to add
complexity to the way researchers theorize about race and place as our population continues to be shaped by
immigration trends in the 21st century. As a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar, Emily is developing her geographic and
spatial analysis skills in order to refine both theoretical conceptualization and empirical testing of the ways
in which spatial assimilation among racial and ethnic groups with large proportions of immigrants determines the
characteristics and effects of segregated neighborhoods on individual health status. She is currently an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~socy/faculty/walton.html
Christopher McKelvey is an economist whose work focuses on health and economic development. Much of his research
examines the role of prices in influencing individuals' health related behaviors. For example, he has
investigated the impact of the Indonesian financial crisis of the late nineties on individual's contraceptive
decisions, and how prices impact the quality of food consumed by Indonesian households. Christopher is also
interested in the impact of poor health on labor market outcomes. In one project, he assesses the impact
of the HIV epidemic on employment, and he is a member of the Work and Iron Status Evaluation (WISE) research
team, which conducted a longitudinal survey to evaluate the impact of a double-blind, randomly assigned iron
supplement on health and productivity in Indonesia. While in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program, he continued to
study the role of the timing of adolescent growth in determining adult health outcomes, such as obesity and
diabetes. Christopher completed his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is
currently a lecturer in the Economics Department at UW-Madison.
Beth McManus received her ScD in Developmental Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health in 2009. Her
dissertation explores the role of social determinants of neurodevelopmental vulnerability in children with
developmental delays and disabilities. Beth is interested in the roles of social policy and population-based
programming to promote the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. Beth received her Master's of
Science in Physical Therapy and Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health from Boston University.
Her clinical experience with families of children with disabilities includes Early Intervention, hospital, and
newborn intensive care unit settings. As a Health & Society scholar, Beth investigated family and
neighborhood effects on the health and well-being of children born very low birth weight. She examined
population-based programming for children with disabilities from an economic perspective. She also
investigated the role of family and community attributes on child well-being and caregiver burden among
families of children with disabilities. Beth is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health
Systems, Management and Policy in the Colorado School of Public Health, which is associated with the University
of Colorado, Colorado State University, and the University of Northern Colorado.
Vivian Santiago received a doctoral degree in Epidemiology in 2009 from the Mailman School of Public Health,
Columbia University, where she trained as a Psychiatric Epidemiology Predoctoral Fellow. Her dissertation
research examines the construct of disorder in mental health research, using Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD) as a case study. The aims of her dissertation are to apply the harmful-dysfunction framework of
disorder to ADHD conceptually and empirically via a lifecourse approach that contextualizes symptom expression
over time. When transitioning to her current work, she collaborated on research projects evaluating systems of
care for youth with serious emotional disturbance in public schools and foster care in NY State. Her previous
work toward the MPH degree at Columbia focused on examining the concept of adaptive behavior as developed in the
field of intellectual disabilities. She examined the relationship between SES and adaptive behavior in a sample
of young urban children without significant intellectual impairments. During her time as a Health & Society
Scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, she developed new research on the measurement of pain
over time, and ethical issues related to pain measurement and treatment. The overall goal of her research was to
identify ways to improve upon the outcomes studied in population health research in order to optimize efforts to
advance population health. Vivian is currently a Project Evaluator for Bronx Teens Connections, New York City
Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.
Katherine Dickinson received her Ph.D. in Environmental Economics and Policy from Duke University's Nicholas
School of the Environment in 2008. Katie's dissertation developed a model of households' environmental health
decisions that emphasized households' private costs and benefits as well as the public good aspects of these
behaviors. Since some of the "payoffs" to an individual household will depend on the choices of
neighbors or peers, Katie's empirical studies focused on the role of social interactions in influencing
households' behaviors in the case of a sanitation intervention in Orissa, India, and malaria control choices in
Tanzania. As a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, she engaged in a multidisciplinary project
mapping vulnerability to emerging infectious diseases in developing countries, with a focus on the socioeconomic
determinants of vulnerability. She also explored similar linkages and behavioral issues among vulnerable
populations in the United States, including a study on childhood obesity and the built environment among
Wisconsin Native American communities. Katie received Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Earth Systems
from Stanford University. She is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Advanced Studies Program,
National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO.
Lindsey Leininger is a health policy researcher whose work focuses on public policy regarding the uninsured. Her
dissertation examined the impact of recent public insurance expansions on the insurance coverage of older
adolescents. She has also written on the effects of partial-year insurance coverage on children's access to
health care as well as the association between family structure, insurance coverage, and access to care.
As a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, she collaborated with UW-Madison researchers and state
government officials to evaluate the impacts of recent reforms to Wisconsin's Medicaid program. Lindsey received
a Ph.D. in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in Economics from Northeastern
University, and an A.B. in Economics from Princeton University. She is currently a researcher at Chapin Hall at
the University of Chicago.
Carmen Gómez Mandic received her Sc.D. from the Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Society,
Human Development and Health in 2008. Her doctoral research focused on socioeconomic disparities in social
participation and functioning among children and youth with disabilities, as well as literacy-related barriers
to parental involvement in the special education setting. Some of her prior work also focused on friendship
development among children with developmental disabilities, and participation in supported employment among
young adults with developmental disabilities. Prior to her doctoral studies, Carmen received her M.P.H. in
Health Promotion from San Diego State University, and her B.A. in Integrative Biology from the University of
California at Berkeley. During her time as a Health & Society Scholar, Carmen focused on understanding
pathways to resilience and vulnerability among parents of adults with developmental disability or mental
illness. She collaborated with researchers at UW-Madison's Waisman Center, Lifespan Family Research Program.
Carmen is currently a research fellow at the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality in San Francisco, CA.
Tiffany Green is a health economist who completed her Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill in 2007. Her dissertation research focused on whether ethnic disparities in asthma diagnosis and
morbidity can be attributed to differences in medical care utilization and/or to other maternal health behaviors
such as smoking and breastfeeding. She is currently studying the temporal relationships between pediatric asthma
and obesity, with a particular focus on the implications of pediatric asthma on weight gain in children.
Tiffany's newest research focuses on the differences in premature death among blacks, mixed-race blacks and
whites during the post-Reconstruction Era. Tiffany received her B.A. in economics from Florida A&M
University. Tiffany is currently an Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of
Healthcare Policy and Research.
Sheryl Magzamen received her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007. Her
dissertation explored factors related to the disproportionate burden of childhood asthma in urban communities.
She combined a geographic information systems approach with causal inference models to investigate the
independent contributions of environmental exposures and sociodemographic factors to asthma-related morbidity
among adolescents. Her goals are to further refine understanding of community-level factors related to asthma,
and to provide relevant epidemiologic research for the development of effective health policy. As a Health &
Society Scholar, Sheryl focused on incorporating economic constructs of time preference and risk preference into
community-based epidemiologic studies to develop interdisciplinary models of household-level asthma management
practices. In addition, she utilized GIS to investigate the relation between spatial-temporal patterns in viral
infections and childhood asthma incidence and asthma-related exacerbations. Previous to her doctoral work, Sheryl
was a postgraduate researcher at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San
Francisco. Her research focused on state-level tobacco control policy, specifically, the development of
clean-indoor air legislation and the health impact of tobacco excise taxes. Sheryl completed her M.P.H. in
health policy at Emory University, and a holds a B.S. in biology from Cornell. Sheryl is currently an Assistant
Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center.
Why certain research practices are embraced over others in a given historical moment is the central question
that guides Sejal Patel's work in the history of medicine and science. She is currently preparing for publication
a book titled The Fat and Happy Town that explores the popularity of the risk factor or individual-level
explanations of disease causation and the marginalization of population-level and community-level approaches. Her
new project considers the administrative and managerial infrastructure of the National Institutes of Health and
how its culture of public administration and public accountability influenced the rise of a research style
characterized by rule-bounded procedures, a reliance on statistics and probability theory, and an orientation
toward experimentation. For the longer term, Sejal plans to explore the emergence of the decision sciences,
policy analysis, and econometrics and their role in shaping health knowledge over the course of the past four
decades. Sejal received her Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania in
2007. Sejal now works as Senior Research Historian at the National Institutes of Health.
Haslyn E. R. Hunte's main area of research is social determinants of health, focusing on the causes and
solutions of racial/ethnic disparities in health. Using three unique large socioepidemiological surveys,
Haslyn's current research activities include (a) studying the impact of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination
as a psychosocial stressor on the observed racial/ethnic disparities in high blood pressure/hypertension and on
maladaptive coping health behaviors such as smoking, drinking and substance use/abuse and (b) the impact that
Black Caribbeans in the U.S. may have on the observed Black-White disparities in various health outcomes. His
dissertation examines the impact of perceived interpersonal racial/ethnic discrimination on smoking, drinking,
body mass and blood pressure/hypertension status. As a Health & Society scholar, Haslyn’s research
focused on the physiological process of perceived interpersonal experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination in
relation to other perceived stressors. He also investigated viable interdisciplinary solutions to racial/ethnic
disparities in high blood pressure/hypertension and other health outcomes. Haslyn received his Ph.D. in Health
Services Organization and Policy from the University of Michigan in 2006, and he holds Masters degrees in
Community and Behavioral Health Sciences and Economic and Social Development from the University of Pittsburgh.
Haslyn is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at Purdue University.
Jeff Niederdeppe received his doctorate from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of
Pennsylvania in 2006. He received a BA in communication from the University of Arizona in May 1999 and an MA in
communication from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2001. Jeff spent two years at RTI International, a
not-for-profit research firm, before returning to Penn to complete his Ph.D. His research explores the effects
of mass media campaigns and health news coverage on health behavior and policy. Much of his published work has
focused on the effectiveness of large-scale anti-tobacco campaigns and anti-drug media campaigns. Specifically,
he has tested how various combinations of audio-visual features can enhance anti-tobacco message effectiveness,
explored cognitive pathways between anti-tobacco campaign exposure and behavior change, and examined the role of
news coverage in shaping tobacco control policy. His dissertation examined how existing health knowledge, social
integration, and media use patterns moderate cancer-related news coverage effects on health behaviors. As a
Health & Society Scholar, Jeff combined insights from social epidemiology and health communication to study
how social capital and community structural characteristics enhance, impede, and/or interact with health media
messages to explain growing health disparities in the US. His research program included the use of this knowledge
to develop media campaign and media advocacy strategies aimed at changing structural and social determinants of
health through policy change. Jeff is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at
Cornell University.
David Van Sickle received his PhD in medical anthropology from the University of Arizona in 2004. His
dissertation research, funded by the National Science Foundation, examined the rising prevalence of asthma and
allergy in India, a topic he previously studied among Native Americans in Alaska, Arizona and New Mexico. Before
joining the Health & Society Scholars program, David was an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, where he was assigned to the Air Pollution and
Respiratory Health Branch. During this time, he provided epidemiological support to the National Asthma Control
Program, and investigated the health effects of exposure to mold in New Orleans, to chlorine gas in South
Carolina, to carbon monoxide in Florida, and to ambient ozone among student athletes in Georgia. In addition, he
helped establish emergency illness and injury surveillance in coastal Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. As a
Health & Society Scholar, David carried out research to better understand how pediatricians perceive common
asthma symptoms. He also became interested in the potential of medical devices to improve population health. He
was awarded a 3rd year in the Health & Society Scholars program (2008-2009) to evaluate a device he
developed to improve the recognition of uncontrolled asthma and the timeliness and geographic specificity of
public health surveillance. One of David’s major goals has been to move technology into the hands of
individuals and researchers to improve the tracking and treatment of diseases such as asthma. David is founder
and principal of Reciprocal Sciences LCC which
develops devices and services to provide real-time data and analytics for public health and clinical research groups.
He is also co-founder and principal of Left Hand Labs LLC, which designs and develops low-cost tools for
chronic respiratory disease. Please visit David's website for more information about his academic research and
ongoing projects (http://davidvansickle.com).
Rachel Tolbert Kimbro received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2005 from Princeton University, with a focus in
Demography. She received her B.A. in Sociology and Policy Studies from Rice University and her M.A. in Sociology
from Princeton. Rachel's research focuses on racial and ethnic health disparities and family influences on
health behaviors and outcomes. Her dissertation examined the determinants of intergenerational differences in
health behaviors for Mexican-Americans. Other projects examined the relationship between maternal employment and
breastfeeding initiation and duration, racial and ethnic differences in obesity prevalence among preschoolers,
racial and ethnic differences in socioeconomic gradients for health outcomes and behaviors, and the influence of
multiracial contact early in life on adult social networks. As a Health & Society Scholar, Rachel worked on
projects examining how risk propensity in adolescence predicts prenatal risk behaviors, and how family structure
and relationship quality influences prenatal health behaviors. She is currently Assistant Professor of
Sociology at Rice University.
Elizabeth Rigby received her Ph.D. in Politics and Education from Columbia University in 2005. Her dissertation
examined the politics of early care and education policymaking in the American states in order to better
understand how political contexts may shape other contextual factors influencing young children's healthy growth
and development. As a Health & Society Scholar, Elizabeth continued her work on the politics of social
policymaking in the United States expanding her current focus to include health policymaking as well as
education, welfare, and taxation policy. By bridging these policy areas, this research allowed for a fuller
conceptualization of the package of policies that affect disparities in outcomes among children and families.
Elizabeth holds a B.A. in Political Science from Emory University and an M.A. in education from Washington
University in St. Louis. Prior to her doctoral study, she coordinated a state-wide lobbying campaign, worked for
a voter information service, and spent three years teaching in St. Louis Public Schools. In addition, she held a
research fellowship at the National Center for Children and Families where she worked on national research
projects (e.g., Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, Head Start Quality Research Centers) and consulted
with state governments regarding their early childhood policies. Together these experiences convinced her of the
importance of structural and institutional influences on both individual outcomes and the inequalities we see
among population sub-groups. This conviction motivates her research on the causes and consequences of public
policy in our society. Elizabeth is currently Assistant Professor in the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy
and Public Administration at George Washington University.
Marilyn Sinkewicz is studying gender-specific disparities in health conditions and health seeking behaviors as
they relate to men. Her particular focus is on understanding the social determinants and consequences of the
physical and mental health status of men, and within this category, race-ethnic and socioeconomic disparities.
Marilyn holds an MSW from Columbia University and received her Ph.D. in Social Policy from the Columbia
University School of Social Work in 2006. Marilyn's dissertation concerned the mental health of men. This study
constructed a profile of the mental health status of urban American fathers. It also investigated the predictive
value of social causation and social selection theories with respect to the inverse association between
socioeconomic status and psychopathology. Marilyn's broader research interests include comparative cross
national social welfare expenditures, including health expenditures and other dimensions of the social safety
net. She is also interested in research methodologies pertaining to missing data. Previously Marilyn was a
partner in an information technology consulting firm. She is currently working with several community-based
research initiatives in the U.S. and in sub Saharan Africa. Marilyn held a research fellow position at Columbia
University before her current position. She is now Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of
Michigan.
Richard Carpiano completed his Ph.D. in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University in 2004. He received his
B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from Baylor University and M.P.H. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention from
Case Western Reserve University. Richard's interests center on individual and community socioeconomic
determinants of physical and mental health. Among his Health & Society Scholar projects were a qualitative
study of social capital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin neighborhoods that investigated the ways in which neighborhood
resources foster, maintain, and even constrain residents' quality of life and health. Richard and several
University of Wisconsin faculty were awarded a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to evaluate the
population health impact of American Indian tribal casinos throughout the US. Additionally, he collaborated with
UW researchers and local community stakeholders in developing a study that involved youth in using geographic
information systems, photography, and written narratives for mapping health and safety issues in south Madison
neighborhoods. Richard's other projects focused on the importance of theory development in population health
research, the influences of neighborhood social ties and resources on individual health using multilevel
statistical modeling, the relationship between social prestige and mortality, measures of neighborhood social
and physical conditions for health research, and public conceptions of mental illness and their implications for
mental health treatment-seeking. He is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British
Columbia.
Elliot Friedman received his Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
completed postdoctoral work in Psychoneuroimmunology at the University of California, San Diego, and was a
member of the Psychology faculty at Williams College. Elliot is interested in the biological mechanisms
underlying the impact of psychological experience on vulnerability to illness. As a Health & Society Scholar,
Elliot focused his research on interactions between psychological and contextual variables and their collective
impact on biological markers of health and illness, particularly inflammatory proteins, in human populations. He
has presented his work at conferences for various scientific organizations, including the American
Psychosomatic Society, the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society, and the Gerontological Society of America. He
has also published the results of this work in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
Health Psychology, and Neurobiology of Aging. In August 2007, the National Institute on Aging granted Elliot a
K01 Mentored Scientist Award, providing 5 years of support for research on demographic, socioeconomic, and
psychological predictors of disease-related biomarkers in a national sample of middle-aged and older Americans.
Elliot is currently conducting this research as Associate Scientist at the Institute on Aging at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison.
Maggie Weden completed her Ph.D. in Population Dynamics and Masters in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins
University Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2004. As a Health & Society Scholar she explored
methodological and theoretical issues related to social disparities in health. Her research considered how
contextual factors (such as work, family, and neighborhood environments) contribute to health disparities by
gender, race, and ethnicity. This research evaluated the role of environmental resources and stressors in
shaping behavioral determinants of poor health, such as tobacco use, overweight, and obesity. Maggie's prior
research addressed US racial and ethnic differences in adolescent risk behavior, trends in family formation
patterns in less developed countries, and multi-state life course modeling. Currently Maggie is Associate Social
Scientist at RAND Corporation's Santa Monica, California, office. She works as a demographer at the Center for
the Study of Aging, housed within RAND's Labor and Population Program.
Dorothy Daley was a Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2003 to 2005. She is
now Associate Professor at the University of Kansas with a joint appointment in Political Science and
Environmental Studies. In 2001, Dorothy received her Ph.D. in Ecology with an emphasis in Environmental Policy
Analysis from the University of California, Davis. Her research to date examines the ecological, political and
socio-economic determinants of hazardous waste policy and urban redevelopment in the United States. Dorothy's
work also evaluates the impact of environmental policy implementation with a specific focus on distributional or
equity considerations. As a Health & Society Scholar, her research focused on intergovernmental
collaboration, in particular examining the conditions under which local public health departments and state and
federal environmental agencies effectively collaborate to achieve common policy goals.
Michelle Frisco was a Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2003 to 2005. She
is now Associate Professor of Sociology and Demography at Pennsylvania State University. Michelle received her
Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. Her research focuses on relationships between
family life, education, and health and well-being during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. She is
currently working on two primary projects. The first investigates how family transitions experienced in
conjunction with residential and school mobility influence adolescent risk-taking, mental health and academic
achievement. She is working on this project with colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin. The second
project investigates the causes and consequences of overweight and obesity during adolescence and the transition
to adulthood. She is working on this project with Molly Martin, a Health & Society Scholar at Columbia
University and Gary Sandefur, Professor of Sociology and Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. They received a three year R01 grant from the National Institution of Child
Health and Human Development (NICHD), which began in September 2005, to pursue this research agenda.
Catlainn Kristina Sionéan was a Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
from 2003 to 2005. She came to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As a behavioral scientist in the National Center for HIV, STD, and
TB Prevention, she conducted applied research, specifically, the design, implementation and evaluation of
behavioral interventions. Kristina received her Ph.D. in medical sociology in 1999 from the University of
Kentucky. While finishing her degree, she completed interdisciplinary training and mentored research as an
NIMH pre-doctoral fellow in the Department of Behavioral Science, UK College of Medicine. Prior to joining CDC,
Kristina completed a postdoctoral fellowship in public health at Rollins School of Public Health of Emory
University. Her research as a Health & Society Scholar involved the interaction of neighborhood conditions
with individual characteristics associated with health-related behaviors and outcomes. Kristina is now
Behavioral Scientist in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
Jason Houle
2010-2012 Scholar Cohort
James Broesch
Carolyn McAndrews
Emily Walton
2009-2011 Scholar Cohort
Christopher McKelvey
Beth McManus
Vivian Santiago
2008-2010 Scholar Cohort
Katherine Dickinson
Lindsey Leininger
Carmen Gómez Mandic
2007-2009 Scholar Cohort
Tiffany Green
Sheryl Magzamen
Sejal Patel
2006-2008 Scholar Cohort
Haslyn Hunte, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.P.I.A.
Jeffrey Niederdeppe, Ph.D.
David Van Sickle, Ph.D.
2005-2007 Scholar Cohort
Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Ph.D.
Elizabeth Rigby, Ph.D.
Marilyn Sinkewicz, Ph.D.
2004-2006 Scholar Cohort
Richard M. Carpiano, Ph.D.
Elliot M. Friedman, Ph.D.
Margaret M. Weden, Ph.D.
2003-2005 Scholar Cohort
Dorothy Daley, Ph.D.
Michelle Frisco, Ph.D.
Catlainn Kristina Sionéan, Ph.D.
