People

Directors
Administrative Staff
Project 1 Investigators
Project 2 Investigators
Project 3 Investigators
Pilot Investigators
Postdoctoral Fellows
Graduate Students

Directors

Ana V. Diez Roux MD, PhD
Director, Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities
Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Dr. Diez Roux’s web page

James Jackson PhD
Co-Director, Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities
Principal Investigator Project 3
Director Institute for Social Research, Professor of Psychology
University of Michigan
Dr. Jackson’s web page

Administrative Staff

Amanda Dudley
Phone: 734-763-5974
Fax: 734-764-3192
Project and Data Coordinator
Email: aidudley@umich.edu

Monique Willis
Administrative Assistant
Phone: 734-615-9220
Fax: 734-764-3192
Email: moniwill@umich.edu

Project 1 Investigators

Ana Diez Roux, MD, PhD, Principal Investigator
Director, Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities
Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Email: adiezrou@umich.edu
Dr. Diez Roux’s web page

Herman Taylor, MD, MPH, Co-Principal Investigator
Principal Investigator Jackson Heart Study
Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology, and Preventive Medicine, University of Mississippi Medical Center
Email: herman.a.taylor@jsums.edu
Dr. Taylor’s web page

Daniel Sarpong, PhD, Co-Principal Investigator
Coordinating Center Principal Investigator of the Jackson Heart Study
Professor of Biostatistics, Jackson State University
Email: dsarpong@jsums.edu
Dr. Sarpong’s web page

Mario Sims, PhD, JHS Investigator
Assistant Professor of Medicine
University of Mississippi Medical Center
Email: msims2@medicine.umsmed.edu

Sharon Wyatt, PhD, FAAN, JHS Investigator
Harriet Williamson Professor of Nursing
University of Mississippi Medical Center
Email: swyatt@son.umsmed.edu
Dr. Wyatt's web page

Marinelle Payton, MD, PhD, MS, MPH, Assistant Dean for Research and Program Development
Principal Investigator and Director
Institute of Epidemiology and Health Services Research and Center of Excellence in Minority Health
Jackson State University, College of Public Service, School Health Sciences
Jackson State University
Email: marinelle.payton@jsums.edu
Dr. Payton's web page

Donna Antoine-Lavigne, PhD, MPH, MSEd, Coordinator for the Jackson Heart Study Community Partnership Office
Jackson State University
Email: donna.a.antoinelavigne@jsums.edu
Dr. Antoine-Lavigne’s web page

George Kaplan, PhD, Professor of Epidemiology
Director, Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: gkaplan@umich.edu
Dr. Kaplan’s web page

Shawn Boykin, PhD, Research Fellow, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: sdhb@umich.edu

Aydin Nazmi, DSc, Research Fellow, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: nazmi@umich.edu

Kiarri Kershaw, Graduate Student, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: kkershaw@umich.edu

Project 2 Investigators

Sharon Kardia, PhD, Principal Investigator
Associate Professor of Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: skardia@umich.edu
Dr. Kardia’s web page

Jeffrey Morenoff, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: morenoff@umich.edu
Dr. Morenoff’s web page

Yan Sun, Research Area Specialist Senior, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: yansun@umich.edu

Koji Yanagisawa, Systems Administrator Intermediate, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: kyan@umich.edu

Jody Platt, Research Area Specialist Senior, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: jeplatt@umich.edu

Todd Greene, Graduate Student, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: mtgreene@umich.edu

Iman Martin, Graduate Student, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: ikm@umich.edu

Linda Feldkamp, Administrative Assistant, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: lfeld@umich.edu

Project 3 Investigators

James Jackson, PhD, Principal Investigator
Director, Institute for Social Research
Professor of Psychology
University of Michigan
Email: jamessj@umich.edu
Dr. Jackson’s web page

Jamie Abelson, MSW, Sr. Research Associate
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan
Email: jabel@umich.edu

Melvyn Rubenfire, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine-Cardiology
Professor, Medical School
University of Michigan
Email: mrubenfi@umich.edu
Dr. Rubenfire’s web page

Elizabeth Young MD, Professor of Psychiatry
Research Professor, Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute
Medical School and Research Professor, Reproductive Sciences Program
University of Michigan
Email: eayoung@umich.edu
Dr. Young’s web page

Hector Gonzalez, PhD, Consultant
Assistant Professor Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences
Wayne State University
Email: hmgonzalez@wayne.edu
Dr. Gonzalez’s web page

Jane Rafferty, MA, Research Associate II
School of Social Work and Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan
Email: jraffrty@umich.edu

Karen Kirchner, Administrative Specialist
Institute for Social Research
Program for Research on Black Americans, ISR
University of Michigan
Email: kkirchne@umich.edu

Raymond Baser, MS, Research Associate
Social/Behavioral Sciences
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan
Email: raybaser@umich.edu

Katherine Knight, Graduate Student Instructor
College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Graduate Student Research Assistant, Director’s Office
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan
Email: kmknight@umich.edu

Briana Mezuk Ratliff, Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar
Epidemiology
School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Email: bmezuk@umich.edu

Sha Juan Colbert, PhD. student and Research Associate
Health Behavior and Health Education
School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Email: scolbert@umich.edu

Pilot Investigators

Allison Aiello, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology
School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Email: aielloa@umich.edu
Prof. Aiello’s web page

Mary Haan, Professor of Epidemiology
School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Email: mnhaan@umich.edu
Prof. Haan’s web page

Amy Schulz, Research Associate Professor
Health Behavior & Health Education
Associate Director, CRECH, School of Public Health
Research Associate Professor, Institute for Research on Women and Gender
University of Michigan
Email: ajschulz@umich.edu
Prof. Schulz’ web page

Laurie Lachance, Assistant Research Scientist
Health Behavior and Health Education
Evaluation Director, Allies Against Asthma School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Email: lauriel@umich.edu
Dr. Lachance’s web page

Toby Citrin, Adjunct Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Email: tcitrin@umich.edu
Dr. Citrin’s web page

Postdoctoral Fellows

Shawn Boykin PhD
Email: sdhb@umich.edu

Shawn Boykin earned her PhD in 2005 from the University of Michigan School of Public Health in the department of Health Services Organization and Policy. She earned her BA in Public Policy from Brown University. While completing her studies Shawn served as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Policy and as a Horace Rackham Merit Fellow and Kellogg Foundation Fellow in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan.

Prior to completing her doctorate, Shawn held several management positions in the health care industry working for providers, payers, pharmaceuticals, and management consulting firms. Shawn’s research interests include racial and gender disparities in burden of disease, emerging demographic trends in chronic disease prevalence, and current and future disease management requirements. As part of her dissertation research, Shawn developed a dynamic model of stress and health outcomes and investigated gender differences in predictors of life course changes in health outcomes among African Americans.

As a fellow in the Center for Integrative Studies in Health Disparities, Shawn’s current research examines the socioeconomic patterning of major and subclinical cardiovascular disease risk factors in white, black, Hispanic, and Chinese men and women. She is also interested in investigating racial/ethnic and gender differences in onset and severity of CVD events to elucidate biologic and social mechanisms important for disease detection and prevention.

Phoenix Do, PhD
Email: phoenixd@umich.edu

D. Phuong (Phoenix) Do is currently a Kellogg Health Scholar. She earned a PhD in Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School and holds a BS in engineering from UCLA. Before completing her doctorate, she was a Water and Sanitation Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, Africa and a structural engineer at Hughes Space and Communications.

Her broad research interests include the social determinants of health, community context, and quantitative methodologies, with special interest in using longitudinal data to study life-course and cumulative effects of socioeconomic status and neighborhood context on health outcomes and disparities. Methodologically, she is exploring whether the usage of multiple-level information combined with alternative statistical adjustment strategies such as propensity score adjustment and marginal structural modeling can provide a better understanding to the social determinants of racial health inequalities, particularly between Blacks and Whites.

Aydin Nazmi, DSc
Email: nazmi@umich.edu

Following undergraduate studies at the University of California at Davis, Aydin served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the islands of Micronesia, gaining a first-hand appreciation for the complexity and humanity of public health work.

Postgraduate studies at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine sparked an interest in the social determinants of health status and culminated in a thesis focusing on the developmental origins of chronic disease. This work led to a doctoral fellowship in epidemiology at the Federal University of Pelotas/WHO Collaborating Center for Maternal and Infant Nutrition in Brazil. His dissertation examined the effects of life-course biological and social factors on an inflammatory protein within a population-based prospective birth cohort.

Aydin is interested in investigating disparities in chronic disease-related outcomes, the myriad factors that lead to them, and how factors interact over time and vary by place. He believes that social context is a critical factor in epidemiology, as are well-designed hierarchical conceptual frameworks and elegant yet practical statistical models.

Graduate Students

Kiarri Kershaw
Email: kkershaw@umich.edu

Kiarri earned a BS in Biological Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University in 2001 and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan in 2006. For her Masters, Kiarri examined the association between child obesity and perceived neighborhood safety in Santiago, Chile. She began the doctoral program in the fall of 2007 under the supervision of Dr. Diez Roux.

Kiarri is interested in the relationship between inequalities in the social environment and cardiovascular disease. She is particularly interested in how this relationship leads to geographic variability in CVD risk and mortality among Blacks living in different parts of the US as well as different countries in Latin America.

Sandra Albrecht
Email: ssalb@umich.edu

Sandra earned her BA from the University of Pennsylvania in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and her MPH in epidemiology from Columbia University in 2004. During her master’s program, she had the opportunity to work on a number of community-level health projects in El Salvador and Brazil, and later conducted her practicum in Zambia, where she examined the effects of social predictors on HIV medication adherence.

After her academic training, she worked as a research fellow at the CDC managing field-level logistics for a number of internationally based maternal health studies, while also working as an analyst as part of the division’s working group that reported on U.S.-based trends in reproductive health. Currently, she is a doctoral student in epidemiology working under the supervision of Ana Diez Roux.

Her research interests include studying the links between neighborhood-level social and environmental measures and chronic disease outcomes, particularly among immigrant populations.

Todd Greene
Email: mtgreene@umich.edu

Todd Greene is a doctoral candidate in Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. He received of Bachelor of Science in Biology from Northern Michigan University in 1995, and earned a Master of Public Health in General Epidemiology from the University of Michigan in 2005, where he studied the associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in candidate genes and peripheral arterial disease.

Currently, he is working with Dr. Sharon Kardia studying the role of genes and gene-environment interactions on the risk of hypertension and blood pressure control. His research interests also include genetic epidemiology of cardiovascular disease, pharmacogenomics, social determinants of health, and epidemiologic methods.

Iman Martin
Email: ikm@umich.edu

Iman Martin graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in African Studies, Health, and Societies in 2003. She subsequently earned an MPH in Epidemiology at the University of Ghana School of Health Sciences as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in 2004.

Currently Iman is a PhD student in Epidemiology at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. Iman is generally interested in the role of genetic interactions with social determinants of health in explaining racial and ethnic health disparities. As a part of the Kardia Research Group, Iman works on the Genetic Epidemiology Network of Arteriopathy (GENOA) study. The areas she is currently working on include neighborhood effects on risk factors for hypertension, and genome wide association (GWA) studies of renal outcomes associated with hypertension.