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Kevin Haninger, PhD
Kevin Haninger is a health economist who studies theoretical and empirical questions on the value of risks to health and life, the economic evaluation of health and medicine, and the development of quantitative methods to address ethical issues in resource allocation decisions. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Department of Agriculture. His current projects include the development of stated preference methods to value morbidity risks and an examination of the technical and moral problems that arise when incorporating concerns for equity into cost-effectiveness analysis. As a Health and Society Scholar, Kevin seeks to strengthen the intersection between the social sciences and bioethics by exploring how empirical data on public values can inform ethical problems in health policy. He received his Ph.D. in Health Policy from Harvard University and A.B. in Psychology from Stanford University. |
Mehret Mandefro, MD, MSc
Mehret Mandefro is a physician/anthropologist that uses film as a medium of ethnography. As a public health trained physician her primary research interests are the connections between human rights and health, HIV prevention program development, and translation efforts targeting marginalized communities. She has worked as a public health practitioner in Kenya, Botswana, and South Africa on issues of access to care, HIV treatment adherence, and health workers training. Her prior anthropologic fieldwork was conducted in Ethiopia analyzing HIV-positive women’s experiences with stigma, and the South Bronx. Her internal medicine residency research project is the subject of a feature-length documentary entitled All of Us that attempts to show how gender equity relates to the HIV epidemic in the South Bronx and Ethiopia. As a Health and Society Scholar, Mehret will be advancing film as a method to teach and communicate about societal determinants of health. The focus of her first film project is the connection between violence prevention, cities and HIV as told through African American men. She completed her internal medicine residency at Montefiore in the Primary Care Program. She received her M.D. from Harvard University, MSc in the Public Health of Developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and A.B. in Anthropology from Harvard University. |
Sabrina B. McCormick, PhD
Sabrina McCormick’s areas of expertise are in environmental and medical sociology, science and technology studies, social movements and development. She is primarily interested in the social contestation, politics and science that inform understandings of environmentally-induced illness. Dr. McCormick is currently completing her first book, No Family History: Finding the Environmental Links to Breast Cancer (Rowman & Littlefield), which explores the conflicts and controversies over shifting paradigms of breast cancer causation. She is directing a documentary film by the same title (www.nofamilyhistory.org) that will be released with the book. As a Health and Society Scholar, she will be studying one of the most pressing public health issues of the twenty-first century – illnesses induced by climate change. She will study the social, economic and scientific aspects, including current policies and interventions, programs funded by private corporations, and dynamics of scientific change engendered by the need to address illness outcomes. She completed her PhD in Sociology at Brown University in 2005 and has since been jointly appointed in the Department of Sociology and the Environmental Science and Policy Program at Michigan State University. |
Dawn
Alley, PhD
Dawn Alley completed her Ph.D. in Gerontology at
the University of Southern California Davis School
of Gerontology. Her education in gerontology prepared
her to use a multidisciplinary approach and lifecourse
perspective to study the complex issues surrounding
aging and health. Her research focuses on ways to
integrate biological and social perspectives on late-life
social and ethnic health disparities in disability,
frailty, and cognition. She is particularly interested
in using biomarkers to understand variation in health
trajectories among older people. In her dissertation,
she examined socioeconomic differences in biomarkers
of inflammation and the relationships between inflammation
and cognitive decline. As a Health and Society Scholar,
she plans to continue and expand this research by
exploring the ways in which inflammation mediates
the relationships between infectious and chronic disease.
She is also interested in working to integrate psychological
and biologic al perspectives on stress in aging and
in studying the relationship between early life experiences
and health trajectories later in life.
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James
Macinko, PhD
James Macinko is a health services researcher focusing
on primary health care. Since 2003 he has worked as
assistant professor of public health at New York University.
His research focuses on measuring the impact of health
reforms and policy changes, developing tools to evaluate
primary care performance, and exploring the broader
role of health systems and services in the production
and potential reduction of global health disparities.
As a Health and Society Scholar he hopes to explore
the impact of access to appropriate care over the
life course on the emergence and widening of racial/ethnic
and SES-related health differentials, document perceptions
of health providers and payers of the causes of health
inequalities, and explore how global comparisons can
enhance our knowledge of the determinants of health
inequalities in the United States. Over the course
of his career, Dr. Macinko hopes to bring a more global
and population health-oriented perspective to health
services research.
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Vida
Maralani, PhD
Vida Maralani studies educational inequality and
social stratification. She studies both the mechanisms
that create educational inequality and the effect
of educational inequality on other aspects of social
inequality such as the intergenerational transmission
of socioeconomic status. For example, her dissertation
estimates the effects of increases in women’s
education on the education of the next generation.
She shows how intergenerational effects work both
through individual level processes, and also through
changes in family size and family structure that have
compositional effects at the population level. As
a Health and Society Scholar, Vida will investigate
the mechanisms that relate educational inequality
and health disparities. She is interested in how race/ethnic
differences in the effects of education on health
may widen or shrink health disparities between groups.
She’s also interested in understanding the relationship
between educational trajectories and health trajectories
in adolescence and early adulthood. Vida holds a MA
in history and in sociology, and will complete a Ph.D.
in sociology in July 2006 at UCLA. She has also worked
as a public policy analyst in the fields of education,
youth and poverty.
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Carolyn C. Cannuscio, ScD
Carolyn Cannuscio is a social epidemiologist by training,
a chronic disease epidemiologist in practice, and
a teacher/learner at heart. During her undergraduate
education in a Health and Society program at Brown
University, Dr. Cannuscio caught the epidemiology
bug through exposure to classes that examined environment,
behavior, and disease. These classes ignited her interest
in the determinants of health and illness, especially
in an aging population. To follow that interest, she
pursued formal social epidemiology training at the
Harvard School of Public Health, where she worked
with the Nurses’ Health and Health Professionals
Studies investigators to examine the health effects
of women’s employment status, social ties, and
caregiving responsibilities. After completing her
doctoral training at Harvard, Dr. Cannuscio shifted
gears and conducted health outcomes and epidemiology
research at Merck, where she first developed health
promotion programs for elderly managed care enrollees.
Her later research examined determinants of cardiovascular
risk, with a focus on the widely used COX-2 inhibitors.
Her collaborative research on Vioxx contributed evidence
of increased heart attack risk in users of that drug,
which was removed from the market in the fall of 2004.During
her tenure as an RWJ Health and Society Scholar, Dr.
Cannuscio plans to examine social factors that promote
lifelong health and vital involvement in an aging
population. She is particularly interested in community
development strategies, housing options, and policy
initiatives that foster health, sustain high functional
status, and enrich quality of life for families--and
especially for elders. She has a particular interest
in intergenerational exchange and social/civic engagement
throughout the life course. Over the course of her
career, Dr. Cannuscio hopes to build the field of
population health by engaging undergraduates and cultivating
their interest in the profound influence of social
forces on health outcomes.
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David
T. Grande, MD, MPA
David Grande is a general internist and recently
completed a Masters in Public Affairs (MPA) at the
Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He
completed his residency at the Hospital of the University
of Pennsylvania in 2003 and graduated from the Ohio
State University College of Medicine in 1999. Prior
to residency, he served a full-time, one-year term
as president of the American Medical Student Association
working in their Washington-area office on issues
related to access to health care and health disparities.
He recently worked on behalf of the City of Philadelphia
Department of Public Health to develop a plan to improve
access to services and overall public health in response
to a voter-initiated city charter change. As a Health
and Society Scholar, he is studying the relationship
between health systems and local communities and the
determinants and consequences of variations in trust.
He is also exploring issues pertaining to medical
professionalism
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Annice
E. Kim, PhD, MPH
Annice Kim received her Ph.D. in Health Behavior
& Health Education from the University of North
Carolina School of Public Health. Her primary research
interest is to understand the impact of media and
technology on health and society, and to develop innovative
applications and policies that utilize new media to
improve population health. Her dissertation examined
the sales and marketing practices of Internet cigarette
vendors, factors motivating smokers to purchase cigarettes
online, and legislative attempts to regulate online
cigarette sales. Her dissertation work was funded
with competitive grants from the Association of Schools
of Public Health and the RWJ Substance Abuse Policy
Research Program. As a Health & Society Scholar,
she is examining the role of media and communication
in improving population health. One of her projects
examines the coverage of racial health disparities
in newspaper media, how attributions of responsibility
for causes and solutions for racial health disparities
have been framed, and whether framing varies by diversity
of newspaper staff and their media markets. She earned
her M.P.H. in epidemiology from Boston University
School of Public Health, and her B.A. in molecular
and cell biology, with a minor in philosophy from
University of California, Berkeley.
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Elizabeth
M. Wildsmith, PhD
Elizabeth Wildsmith received her Ph.D. in Sociology
from the University of Texas at Austin in December
of 2004. While there she developed a strong interest
in several areas of social demography, including the
complex relationships that exist between social context,
the family, individual level disadvantage, and individual
well-being. Her dissertation, titled "Non-Marital
among Mexican American Women: Exploring the Role of
Social Context", looked at race/ethnic differences
in the transition to adulthood. Building on this work,
she plans to focus more closely on how social and
family contexts are defined and measured, which contexts
are relevant for whom, and which mechanisms link these
contexts to individual well-being. She is interested
in how social and family contexts may increase exposure
to, or offer protection from, risk factors associated
with negative health outcomes. She has also returned
to her earlier interest in teenage fertility and is
working on projects which look both at the causes
and consequences of teenage and nonmarital fertility.
With collaborators at Penn she is 1) exploring the
role pre-teen literacy and reading skill has on teenage
childbearing and 2) examining how recent changes in
teenage and nonmarital fertility have impacted the
wellbeing of women and children. She continues to
be particularly interested in whether Mexican American
women are affected in similar ways as Black women
by their minority status within the United States,
or whether a distinct ethnic heritage and/or ethnic
experience independently affects their well-being.
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Patrick
M. Krueger, PhD
Patrick M. Krueger is a sociologist who studies the social
stratification of health, with a particular focus on understanding
the mechanisms that lead to race/ethnic, sex, and class
disparities in health over the life-course. Specifically,
he examines how individuals convert social, cultural, and
economic resources into health through health promoting
behaviors; how family and neighborhood dynamics shape health
and mortality outcomes; and how intra-individual factors
shape orientations toward health and health trajectories
over time. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University
of Colorado and his B.A. in sociology and psychology from
Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI.
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Chyvette
T. Williams, PhD
Chyvette
T. Williams holds an MPH degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago,
and PhD in Social and Behavioral Sciences in the Department
of Health Policy and Management from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health. For the past nine years, Dr. Williams has been
involved in HIV and drug abuse research, both domestically and internationally.
She was awarded funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to complete
her dissertation -a multilevel study examining the effects of neighborhood
disadvantage and personal networks on patterns of drug use among inner-city
drug users. Her primary research interests are in urban and minority health,
social problems (e.g. substance use, poverty, and crime), and in the effects
of social networks and supports on health risks. As an RWJ Health and Society
Scholar, Dr. Williams conducted research that examined health behaviors
in context and explored innovative approaches to addressing urban social
problems. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Health Policy and Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Additionally, she is the Associate Director for the Community Outreach Intervention Project, an HIV/AIDS prevention project targeting drug using members of Chicago's neighborhoods and suburbs.
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Dominick L. Frosch, PhD
Dominick L. Frosch received a B.A. in psychology and sociology
from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. in
clinical psychology from the University of California, San
Diego. He completed his clinical residency in the Department
of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington.
As a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at
the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Frosch focused on health
communication and patient participation in clinical decision-making,
collaborating with faculty from the Annenberg School for
Communication and the School of Medicine. He completed several
projects including a qualitative study of Direct-to-Consumer
pharmaceutical advertising and an experiment evaluating
behavioral responses to genetic screening for obesity risk.
He also collaborated on projects characterizing people's
general cancer information seeking and in relation to cancer
news coverage.
Dr. Frosch is currently Assistant Professor of Medicine
in the Division of General Internal Medicine & Health
Services Research in the David Geffen School of Medicine
at UCLA, and Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis
Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles, appearing
in journals such as Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers &
Prevention, the Journal of General Internal Medicine and
the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Frosch
serves as Associate Editor for the journal Health Psychology,
published by the American Psychological Association, and
frequently reviews papers for a variety of peer-reviewed
journals including the American Journal of Public Health,
Medical Care, JAMA and Patient Education & Counseling.
His research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute,
the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Friends Research Institute.
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Sonya A. Grier, PhD
Sonya A. Grier is a consumer psychologist whose research
converges on topics related to the influence of social context
on consumers, target marketing, the social impact of commercial
marketing efforts and social marketing. She is the author
of numerous peer-reviewed articles, appearing in journals
such as The Journal of Marketing and Public Policy, The
Journal of Marketing, Health Affairs, Annual Reviews in
Public Health and The Journal of Advertising. She completed
her undergraduate degree in political science at Northwestern
University, spending a year as an Exchange Student at the
University of Sussex in England. She received her Ph.D.
in Marketing, with a minor in Social Psychology, from Northwestern
University and her Master's of Business Administration Degree
(MBA) from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management
at Northwestern University. Before becoming a Robert Wood
Johnson Health & Society Scholar, Dr. Grier was an Assistant
Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of
Business. She spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the
Federal Trade Commission, where she provided consumer research
expertise as part of a team examining the target marketing
of violent movies, music and video games to American youth.
She has also been a Visiting Scholar with the Connolly Program
in Business Ethics at Georgetown University, and at the
University Of Cape Town Graduate School Of Business in South
Africa.
As a Health & Society Scholar, Dr. Grier's research
addressed the relationship between marketing efforts, both
commercial and social, and consumer health-related attitudes
behaviors and outcomes. She collaborated with faculty in
Epidemiology, Medicine and the Annenberg School for Communication
on issues surrounding obesity, food marketing and public
policy interventions. She also has a particular interest
in the relationship of marketing to health disparities and
the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
Starting fall 2006, Dr. Grier will be Associate Professor
of Marketing at American University in Washington DC.
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José A. Pagán, PhD
José A. Pagán received B.S. and M.A. degrees
in mathematics and economics from The Ohio State University,
and a Ph.D. in economics from The University of New Mexico.
Before becoming a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society
Scholar at Penn, he was Associate Professor of Economics
at The University of Texas-Pan American, focusing on labor
economics.
As a Health & Society Scholar, Dr. Pagán worked
with faculty from the Wharton School and others to orient
his career toward health and health care. He completed major
projects on the impact of health uninsurance on community
health, and on the use of complementary and alternative
medicine among diverse populations. After completing the
Health & Society Scholars Program, he returned to The
University of Texas-Pan American as Professor of Economics
and Director of the Institute for Population Health Policy
in the College of Business Administration. Dr. Pagán
is also Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute
of Health Economics and Research Associate of the Population
Studies Center (and the Population Aging Research Center)
at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses
on the population health consequences and community effects
of uninsurance, the impact of health status on employment
and productivity, and the economics of immigration and immigrant
health. He has published more than 45 articles in academic
journals and his research articles on the economics of health
insurance coverage and access to health care have appeared
in journals such as Health Affairs, Health Services Research
and Health Policy. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico,
a consultant for the World Bank and the Inter American Conference
on Social Security, and Director of the Center for Border
Economic Studies at The University of Texas-Pan American.
He is currently a member of the National Advisory Committee
for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Interdisciplinary
Nursing Quality Research Initiative, a new program that
supports interdisciplinary teams of scholars to address
gaps in knowledge about the relationship between nursing
and the quality of care provided in hospitals.
Info on Jose's recent film project:
Cohort I Scholar José A. Pagán unveiled a
short film about uninsurance in the Rio Grande Valley of
South Texas at the National Uninsured Latinos Conference
May 21-22, 2006 at The University of Texas-Pan American.
More than a third of the population in the Rio Grande Valley
does not have health insurance coverage. The film presents
different perspectives of what it means to be uninsured
in the U.S.-Mexico border region as well as the unique challenges
faced by the Rio Grande Valley's uninsured population. View
Film
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