Nadine Bahour is the Research Program Coordinator for the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights. Prior to joining FXB, Nadine worked in molecular metabolism research and completed her senior thesis on the impact of Type 2 diabetes on the brain and aging. Nadine is interested in studying the impact of settler colonialism and apartheid in Palestine on access and quality of healthcare. Her focus lies in the effects of…
Soroush is a Population Health Sciences PhD student at Harvard studying social and spatial epidemiology in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Broadly, Soroush’s research aims to advance equity-oriented public health scholarship and practice to support human rights through examinations of the impact of social and structural systems on health. For example, his recent research has examined the impact of COVID-19 on the risk of nonfatal overdose, during the…
Silvana Paternostro is an award-winning journalist who has written extensively on Cuba and Central and South America. She specializes in women’s issues, and has also written comprehensively about AIDS, revolutionary movements, underground economies and the intersection of literature, music and other cultural forms with politics and economics. She is the author of In the Land of God and Man: Confronting Our Sexual Culture, which explores gender roles and the effect of government and religion…
Dr. Jake Ryann Sumibcay (he/him/his) is a public health scholar whose research focuses on driving effective health engagement through ethnographic strategies in communities of color, primarily among the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) populations. He is interested in understanding the nuances in racialized and cultural representations of these groups and how they are reflected in public health policy, practice, and research. As a fellow, he focuses on exploring the…
Tess Wiskel is a Climate Change and Human Health Fellow at the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights and the Center for Climate Health and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) at Harvard University as well as an emergency medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Her focus is on understanding and addressing the health impacts of climate change, particularly extreme weather events, in at-risk patient populations and to evaluate…
Kathleen Hamill, JD, MALD, is a human rights lawyer. She has taught courses on human rights and international law at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, since 2002. During this time she also worked as an independent researcher, advocate, and consultant in the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Her recent scholarship and related policy work has focused on promoting and protecting the rights and wellbeing of children as…
Nile Nair is a final year International PhD candidate from Fiji in the Nutrition Department with a focus in Nutritional and Genetic Epidemiology. Trained as a clinical geneticist and surgical researcher, his clinical research has primarily focused on clinical trials of Maternal-Fetal Health and diet, genetics of Inflammatory Bowel disease, microbiome interactions with disease and novel biomarkers of chronic diseases. His initial work at Harvard involved studying the effects of…
Emily Newton-Hoe (she/her) is a Population Health Sciences doctoral student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research explores the social and structural determinants of reproductive and perinatal health inequities using a social epidemiologic and feminist science studies lens. She is particularly interested in the ways in which public policies engender inequities in the context of gender and health…
Prior to joining the FXB Center, Dennis worked as a statistician at NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health and has taught statistics courses for NYU’s School of Global Public Health and NYU’s Prison Education Program. Dennis is interested in using data to make sense of critical inequities in the country and to clarify the effects, as well as helping empower people by teaching the statistical tools and…
Born and raised in Southern California, LaShyra “Lash” Nolen is a writer, activist, and dual-degree MD/MPP student at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she is serving as student council president of her medical school class—the first documented Black woman to hold this leadership position. A fervent advocate for marginalized populations, her voice has been featured in The New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, and…
Chinyere Nwamuo is a first-year Ph.D. student in Social and Behavioral Sciences. She received her B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience and Biological Anthropology at Emory University and her M.P.H. in Health Management and Policy at Georgia State University. After receiving her M.P.H., Chinyere worked at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Fatality Review Unit and convened an interdisciplinary state-level child protection team for the prevention of child fatalities. She later led…
Tracy MacDonald is the Executive Assistant and Administrative Coordinator at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. In her role she provides ongoing support to the center Director, Dr. Mary Bassett. Tracy also manages key day-to-day office operational and administrative functions to ensure and enhance organizational efficiency. Tracy is a seasoned Administrative Assistant in the health sector with her over 15 years of experience as an Administrative Assistant and…
Vinícius Prado is a PhD student in Population Health Sciences within the Global Health and Population Department. His research interests revolve around the interrelationships between health inequalities and sociodemographic factors with a specific focus on sexual and reproductive health, population dynamics, and social disparities. Vinicius is from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He received his BA in Social Sciences and his MA degree in Demography from the University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).…
Nikhil Rao (he/they) is a Health Policy PhD student at the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He is a health services researcher whose research agenda centers the intersection of behavioral health care and structural racism. They are particularly passionate about investigating how area-level measures of racialized economic segregation are associated with mental health and substance use treatment access and quality. His other research interests include harm…
Taylor J. Robinson is a PhD student in Population Health Sciences in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She studies spatial and social epidemiology, with the broad goal of spatially analyzing the causal and historical relationship between location-based factors and racial health disparities. Her work centers housing safety issues, chronic neighborhood disinvestment, and other forms of systemic racism as factors that exacerbate…
Artair Rogers is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health pursuing a PhD in Population Health Sciences. Prior to pursuing his PhD, Artair was the California Program Director for Health Leads, a national nonprofit focused on addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) in partnership with health systems, community-based organizations, and community members. Artair’s work focused on equitable SDOH…
Danai is the Public Affairs and Strategic Communications Manager at the FXB Center. Having most recently held the position of Science, Culture, Communications, and Public Diplomacy Officer at the Consulate General of Greece in Boston, she was responsible for public diplomacy outreach as well as Greek-US academic synergies and has experience in operational management and administration. Danai grew up in Greece and received a B.A. in International Relations and French…
Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until 2004 the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is also Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Earlier on he was Professor of Economics at Jadavpur University Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, and the London School of Economics, and Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University. Amartya Sen…
Rienna Russo is a third-year PhD student in Epidemiology in the Cardiovascular Disease track. Her research focuses on examining and mitigating the drivers of cardiovascular health disparities. Prior to coming to Harvard, Rienna was the project coordinator of an agent-based modeling study examining food policies and CVD outcomes at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she led a longitudinal evaluation of the food retail environment in New…
Sudipta Saha (he/him) is a first-year Population Health Sciences PhD student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. His current research interests are at the intersection of social epidemiologic theories and infectious disease models. He is particularly interested in treating racial capitalism as a fundamental cause of health inequities, and using novel quantitative methods to understand/illustrate how broader political-economic forces shape such inequities. Sudipta was raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh.…
Assistant Dean for Alumni and Development at the Harvard Graduate School of Design Michael Voligny is currently assistant dean for alumni and development and oversees an international portfolio with an emphasis on Asia, Southeast Asia, India, Middle East and the Mediterranean. Before assuming this position, he served for over 23 years as vice dean for special projects and development strategy and vice dean for the Office of External Relations, associate…
Michelle Sodipo is a third-year Population Health Sciences Ph.D student in the Department of Epidemiology with a focus in cancer epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She received her B.S in Biology and Community Health from Tufts University, and her MPH in Chronic Diseases from Yale School of Public Health. Previously, Michelle’s work has centered on conducting research to explore ways to improve health-related quality of…
Kieran P. Todd (they/them) is a first-year Population Health Sciences doctoral student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Their work and research focus on addressing structural factors, primarily racism and sexism, that influence masculine identity development and subsequent health outcomes. Kieran’s prior work examined how transmasculine individuals developed and reimagined their masculinity across the life course related to smoking…
Adjunct Professor of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Research: The determinants of the distribution of infectious diseases historically and geographically continue to be a source of fascination and study. This meshes with work on emerging infectious diseases, which requires a broad understanding of the factors that influence the appearance, recognition, dissemination, frequency and disappearance of infectious diseases in an area or population.…
Elizabeth is the Senior Program Coordinator for the FXB Racial Justice Health and Human Rights Fellows and program. She comes with administrative experience in firms, non-profits, religious organization, startup, and higher education. In addition, she has experience as a college chaplain and as a counseling intern. She received her B.A. in Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, M.A. in Counseling, and a M.A. in Religion at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. …
Mai-Han is a second-year doctoral student in neuropsychiatric epidemiology. Mai-Han’s research interests focus on LGBTQ mental health and particularly health equity for transgender populations.
Claire Street is the Senior Events and Program Coordinator for the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights where she leads numerous ongoing activities for the Center and provides logistical and managerial support to key FXB initiatives and pedagogical programs. Claire has nearly a decade of experience as a non-profit and administrative professional, most recently having worked at Harvard Business School in the General Management Unit supporting MBA, Doctoral and…
Joseph Wilson, Jr. is a first-year Ph.D. student in Environmental Health. His research interests center around children’s health, housing inequality, community-based public health, and environmental justice. He received his B.A in Psychology and Public Health from Williams College and Master’s of Health Science (M.H.S.) in Environmental Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to coming to Harvard, Joseph worked as a program coordinator for the Region…
Jessica is a Population Health Sciences doctoral student in the department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to joining the department, she obtained an MPH in Behavioral, Social and Health Education Sciences from Emory University, and a BA in Public Health and Sociology from UC Berkeley. Her research interests include cancer disparities, health equity, social determinants of health and the intersection of…
Emy Takinami (she/her) is the Racial Justice Policy and Community Engagement Manager at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard. As a macro social worker and community organizer, she is committed to building and fostering grassroots power toward community-led social change. She is currently a steering committee member of Boston Liberation Health, a group of social workers dedicated to understanding and practicing social work using the Liberation…
Isaac Chan is a physician and research associate at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. He currently leads a research team developing contextualised clinical pathways for primary care delivery in rural and resource-poor communities in India with Dr. Satchit Balsari, MD, MPH. His previous work has been published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, and NPR. Isaac studied medicine at UNSW Sydney and completed his Master…
Dougie Zubizarreta (he/they) is a PhD student in Population Health Sciences in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They are a social epidemiologist whose research examines structural and social determinants of health inequities in relation to intersecting social positions and systems of power and oppression. Dougie received their MS in Epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and…
Brigette is a social epidemiologist, working as a postdoctoral scholar at the California Preterm Birth Initiative at the University of California San Francisco. Brigette’s research focuses on the impact of structural racism on health across the life course, with a particular interest in how structural racism is conceptualized and measured in epidemiologic research. She is also interested in studying racism as a type of trauma, social justice and community-level resilience,…
Vladimir Vepryev is a Finance and Grants Associate. He has experience in finance, consulting, strategy, international development, and engineering. He is a native of Rivne, Ukraine. Vladimir completed two bachelor degrees and a master degree in engineering at the Ukrainian State University of Water Management. Then he earned an MBA at Georgetown University, a Master of Science in International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and a Master of…
Caleb Dresser is an Emergency Medicine physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where his academic work focuses on the health and healthcare implications of Climate Change. He is Assistant Director of the Fellowship in Climate and Human Health and is affiliated with the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, the Harvard Chan Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, the Harvard University Center for…
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a physician, epidemiologist, educator, author, speaker, and podcast host. He is a commentator at CNN and his newsletter, The Incision, cuts into the trends shaping our moment. His three books include Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic (Abrams Press, 2020), which diagnoses our country’s epidemic of insecurity and the empathy politics we will need to treat it; and Medicare for…
Justin Feldman is a social epidemiologist who researches racism and health, with emphases on economic inequality and police violence. He completed a ScD in social and behavioral sciences from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2018, and worked as an assistant professor of epidemiology at the NYU School of Medicine. He is currently a Principal Research Scientist at the Center for Policing Equity at Yale University Lab.
Elizabeth D. Gibbons, Instructor, is a key advisor on FXB Child Protection initiatives including its cross-graduate school Child Protection Certificate program and G. Barrie Landry Child Protection Professional Training program. One of FXB’s child protection experts, she advises students on case studies, presents her work and engagement across child protection systems, including at FXB’s monthly Work-In-Progress seminar series, and engages with HU graduate students and executive education students on issues…
Professor Hammonds is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. She was the first Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University (2005-2008). From 2008-2013 she served as Dean of…
Dr. Weeam Hammoudeh is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Community and Public Health, where she teaches in the MPH program and serves as coordinator for the mental health unit. She holds a Ph.D. and MA in Sociology from Brown University and an MPH in Community and Public Health from Birzeit University. Her academic focus is on understanding how political and social transformations impact health, psychosocial wellbeing, health and social…
Dr. Helaire currently serves as the Assistant Dean for Population Health Management and Health Equity Education at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. He provides leadership for the creation of Population Health Management and Health Equity certificate and degree programs. Dr. Helaire also works with the Harvard HealthLab Accelerators, for social impact ventures that offers comprehensive support to Harvard University students who are entering the innovation space, with a…
Dr. Rita Issa is a visiting fellow at FXB where she explores how ill-health and loss due to climate change can be recognised and managed through structural responses such as the UN Loss and Damage mechanism. Rita‘s experience is in the intersections of health, climate change, justice, and building community agency and capacity. She is a family medicine doctor practicing in East London (UK), and a humanitarian medic, having worked…
Jaquelyn (Jackie) Jahn, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and The Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements, and Population Health Equity. She is a social epidemiologist whose research investigates how structural racism shapes maternal and child health and population health equity. Much of her work focuses on the health of individuals, families, and communities that are affected by the U.S. criminal legal system.…
Monik C. Jiménez is an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She received both her master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Certificate in Oral Epidemiology from Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Her work is centrally focused on the role of carceral control in creating and perpetuating racial/ethnic inequities in health. Her work aims to center the voices…
Dr. Lara Jirmanus is primary care physician in the Family Medicine Department at the Cambridge Health Alliance. She has been involved in grassroots organizing, advocacy and research for many years, addressing worker and immigrant rights in the US, social movements and infectious diseases in Brazil and the impacts of conflict and displacement in the Middle East. Her current research focuses on the health of Syrian refugees and host populations in…
Dr. Lynne Jones is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, writer, researcher, and relief worker. Jones has been engaged in assessing mental health needs and establishing and running mental health services in disaster, conflict, and post-conflict settings around the world since 1990. Her latest book is The Migrant Diaries, published by the Refuge Press in 2021. This draws on reflections, which the FXB Center has been publishing on its website, about…
Ichiro Kawachi, MB.ChB., Ph.D., is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Kawachi received both his medical degree and Ph.D. (epidemiology) from the University of Otago, New Zealand. He has taught at Harvard since 1992. Kawachi is the co-editor (with Lisa Berkman) of the first textbook on Social Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press in 2000…
Rohan Khazanchi, M.D., M.P.H., is a health equity advocate, health services researcher, and future internist-pediatrician. He is a resident in the Harvard Internal Medicine & Pediatrics (“Med-Peds”) combined residency program at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Boston Medical Center. He has a wide array of research and advocacy focus areas including racial/spatial inequities in access to care; community-engaged research; intersections of incarceration, health, and health policy; cross-sector data linkage for public health…
Nancy Krieger is Professor of Social Epidemiology and American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor, in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health. She received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. Dr. Krieger is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist, with a background in…
Jourdyn A. Lawrence, PhD, MSPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health as part of the FIRST (Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation) program. Her research examines racism as a cause of racial health inequities and how social policies, such as reparations, can act as health-related interventions to mitigate Black-white health inequities. Her work also explores how…
