People

Project 1 Investigators
Project 2 Investigators
Project 3 Investigators

2007 Funded Pilot Investigators
2008 Funded Pilot Investigators
2009 Funded Pilot Investigators

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

Center Statistician
Trivellore Raghunathan PhD
Professor, Department of Biostatistics Research Professor Survey Research Center, ISR
University of Michigan
Dr. Raghunathan’s web page

Administrative Staff

Amanda Dudley
Phone: 734-763-5974
Fax: 734-764-3192
Project Manager 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

DeMarc Hickson, PhD, Co-Principal Investigator
Coordinating Center Principal Investigator of the Jackson Heart Study
Professor of Biostatistics, Jackson State University
Email: demarc.a.hickson@jsums.edu
Dr. Hickson’s Contact Information

Amy Schulz, Investigator
Associate Professor, Health Behavior & Health Education, University of Michigan, School of Public Health
Email: ajschulz@umich.edu
Dr. Schulz ’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

Daniel Sarpong, PhD, Investigator
Professor of Biostatistics, Jackson State University
Email: dsarpong@jsums.edu

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

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

Malavika Subramanyam, Research Fellow, Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: malsub@umich.edu

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

Samson Gebreab, MS, Senior Analyst/Programmer
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Email: samsong@umich.ed u

Project 2 Investigators

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

Amy Schulz, Investigator
Associate Professor, Health Behavior & Health Education, University of Michigan, School of Public Health
Email: ajschulz@umich.edu
Dr. Schulz ’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

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

2007 Funded 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

2008 Funded Pilot Investigators

DeMarc Hickson PhD
Email: demarc.a.hickson@jsums.edu
Project: Measuring characteristics of the neighborhood context in the Jackson MSA

Briana Mezuk Ratliff, PhD
Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar
Department of Epidemiology and Community Health
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine
Email: bmezuk@vcu.edu
Project: The influence of work-related and financial stressors, workplace discrimination, and retirement on blood pressure in older adults: a focus on the effects of race and age-cohort

Emily Nicklett MSW PhD-C
Sociology & Health Services Organization and Policy
Email: enicklet@umich.edu
Project: Examining the role of sociodemographic characteristics in diabetic experience and outcomes

Yan Sun, PhD
Department of Epidemiology
School of Public Health
University of Michigan
Email: yansun@umich.edu
Dr. Sun’s web page
Project: A comparative study of the prevalence and predictors of hypertension in Chinese living in China vs. living in the US

Marc Turenne, PhD
Assistant Research Scientist<
Department of Health Management and Policy
School of Public Health
Email: turenne@umich.edu
Project: Disparities in access to higher quality health care: access to and choice of an initial renal dialysis provider

2009 Funded Pilot Investigators

Amit K. Mathur, MD, MS
House Officer V
Section of General Surgery
Department of Surgery
University of Michigan
Email: amitmath@med.umich.edu
Project: Understanding Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Access to and Outcome from Liver Transplantation

Flojaune Christina Griffin, PhD-C
School of Public Health
Department Epidemiology
Email: flojaune@umich.edu
Project: Relationships between Skin Pigmentation, Vitamin D and Blood Pressure

Lawrence Bielak, DDS, MPH
Assistant Research Scientist
School of Public Health
Department Epidemiology
Email: lfbielak@umich.edu;
Dr. Bielak's WebPage
Project: Neighborhood Change, Inflammation, and Coronary Artery Calcification in an African-American Cohort

Cleopatra Abdou, PhD
Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar
School of Public Health
Department Epidemiology
Email: abdougrants@umich.edu;
Project: Stereotype Threat and Health Care Decisions in African Americans

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.

Malavika Subramanyam, MD, MPH
Email: malsub@umich.edu

Malavika A Subramanyam is a social epidemiologist with an interest in examining the role of socioeconomic context on health. She has a background in preventive & social medicine, having completed her M.D from Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, India. She graduated with a DSc (major: social epidemiology, minors: epidemiology and research methods) from the Harvard School of Public Health in June 2009.

As part of her dissertation, Malavika used data from the United States and India. Her first paper examined the association between relative deprivation and self-rated health among adults in the United States using data from the Current Population Surveys. Her other two papers used data on children under age three from India, looking at trends in social disparities in undernutrition, and the relationship between the level of economic development of a state and the risk of undernutrition.

Currently Malavika is studying the association of subjective social status and cardiovascular risk factors in the Jackson Heart Study. Her other areas of interest are neighborhood effects on health and outcomes relevant to developing countries such as insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes, infectious diseases, tobacco use, and sexual behaviors.

Malavika works with Dr. Ana Diez Roux in the Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities (CIAHD).

Publications:

Subramanyam MA, Kawachi I, Berkman LF, Subramanian S V. Relative deprivation in income and self-rated health in the United States. Social Science and Medicine 2009, 69, 3: 327-334.

Subramanyam MA< Kawachi I, Berkman LF, Subramanian SV. Socioeconomic inequalities in childhood undernutrition in India: Analyzing trends between 1992 and 2005. PLoS ONE (under review)

Amy DeSantis, PhD
Email: amydes@umich.edu

Amy DeSantis earned her PhD in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University in 2009. Her research interests include racial/ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities, the developmental origins of health and disease, and social influences on health. Specifically, Amy is interested in how social environmental factors, and psychosocial stress in particular, influence health disparities, and the extent to which activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (one of the body’s stress systems) may mediate associations between increased psychosocial stress among minorities and low-income individuals and health disparities.

As a doctoral student, Amy's research focused on racial/ethnic and socioeconomic differences in cortisol (stress-related hormone) patterns. In her dissertation, Amy examined the stability of racial/ethnic differences in basal cortisol activity over a 5-year period and assessed the extent to which yearly changes in psychosocial stress predicted changes in cortisol rhythms, both within and across racial/ethnic groups. Amy also analyzed the developmental origins of flatter diurnal cortisol rhythms in a Filipino birth cohort using data on socio-economic status collected between the prenatal period and early adulthood.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities, Amy plans to extend upon her prior research and examine associations between cortisol patterns and health outcomes, focusing on inflammatory markers and metabolic function. Amy is working with Dr. Ana Diez Roux on an ancillary study of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, the MESA Stress Study and the Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities (CIAHD).

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.