SPH Faculty Promotions to Associate Professor Announced
The following School of Public Health faculty have been promoted to the rank of associate professor:
Patricia (Trish) Elliott, Community Health Sciences, focuses on maternal and child health teaching and pedagogy, and researches youth and family access to health services. Managing Public Health Programs and Projects, one of the five courses she developed, has become a national model as a practice-based course winning a National Innovation in Public Health Curriculum Award and a BUSPH School-wide Educational Innovation Award. Dr. Elliott’s scholarship in youth mental health and risk behaviors has resulted in peer-reviewed papers and influential technical reports which played a significant role in the state-wide expansion of a court-diversion program to connect youth with needed mental health services. She serves as director of the Doctor of Public Health program in leadership, management, and policy and as director of Education for the Department of Community Health Sciences.
Birgit Claus Henn, Environmental Health, focuses on estimating effects of environmental exposures on the health of children and reproductive-age women, implementing novel statistical methods to evaluate effects of environmental mixtures, and improving exposure assessment methods for epidemiology. Dr. Claus Henn serves as the director of the PhD program in Environmental Health. Her current external funding includes six national Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) awards on which she is PI or co-investigator. She recently completed a NIEHS K99/R00 Career Development award and was previously supported by a prestigious EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) fellowship. She regularly conducts journal peer reviews and serves on NIH study sections.
Jacqueline Milton Hicks, Biostatistics, is recognized as a leader in the education of next generation biostatistics and public health professionals. She is the Co-Director of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics certificate program at the School of Public Health. She has a dual focus as an expert on statistical genetics methods and application with more than 30 publications, five as first author, in many high impact journals, and pedagogy. She is known for her work on flipped classrooms, student engagement, how to train biostatisticians to be effective instructors and other topics related to biostatistics and public health education. A six-time awardee of a SPH Excellence in Teaching Award, she was the recipient of the Teaching Award from the American Statistical Association Section on Teaching Statistics in the Health Sciences and was recently elected as Chair-elect 2021 for the ASA Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences of the American Statistical Association.
Helen Jenkins, Biostatistics, is known for her research on childhood tuberculosis (TB). Her work is at the interface of statistics and infectious disease epidemiology, using statistical models to further understanding of epidemics, focusing on three areas: quantifying and understanding gaps in pediatric TB, spatial epidemiology of and methods for infectious diseases, and epidemiology of drug-resistant TB. Dr. Jenkins has authored 52 publications, of which 18 are first author including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet and Lancet Infectious Diseases, and eight are senior author including Lancet Global Health. She is the PI of two NIH grants, a R03 grant and a multiple-PI R01 grant.
Terri Krangel Pogoda, Health Law, Policy & Management, studies post-deployment health and community readjustment, especially employment, among post-9/11 veterans with polytrauma/traumatic brain injury (TBI) history. She is an experimental psychologist and health services researcher whose mixed methods work has revealed that many veterans with polytrauma/TBI report long-term challenges with PTSD, depression, chronic pain, sleep, and memory. Dr. Pogoda seeks to understand how physical, psychological, and psychosocial conditions impact these veterans, and how vocational rehabilitation may contribute to their recovery. She has served as primary PI, local PI, and co-investigator on research studies funded by the VA, DoD, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Jennifer Sullivan, Health Law, Policy & Management, focuses on understanding how organizations implement evidence-based and novel clinical practices, primarily within the VA healthcare system. She develops and tailors implemenation strategies, approaches and tools to improve program implementation. More recently she has pivoted to studying suicide and suicidal behavior in veterans as an extension of improving health and quality of life for older adults. Since 2018 until mid-2020, she was part of the Executive Leadership Team serving as the Acting Associate Director for CHOIR Boston, an enormous administrative undertaking for a junior faculty member. Through it all, Dr. Sullivan has been continuously funded via the VA peer review process for over a decade.
Kimberly Sullivan, Environmental Health, is the former associate scientific director for the Congressionally-directed Research Advisory Committee (RAC) on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses (GWI), and is known for her work on GWI, which includes prevalence and risk factors, etiology, pathobiology and treatment development. A behavioral neuroscientist, she focuses on reducing the burden of GWI among veterans and providing insight about other related multi-factorial exposure-based central nervous system disorders. Dr. Sullivan has developed and maintained a large externally funded research portfolio of 33 grants and led 16 grants as PI, Co-PI or site PI, and directed multiple large consortia studies with national and international linkages. She has served on executive oversight and advisory committees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, served as a working group member and co-chair for the National Institutes of neurological Disorders (NINDS) common data elements for the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) neurological working group, and currently serves as the co-chair for the NINDS common data elements (CDEs) for ME/CFS Oversight Committee.
Monica L. Wang, SPH, Community Health Sciences, is known for her work on the prevention of obesity and chronic diseases among children and families, with a focus on developing, evaluating, and disseminating community-based interventions that promote healthy eating and physical activity among low-income and racial/ethnic minority populations. She is thought leader in antiracism and an expert in digital learning and online education, having taught online and hybrid courses for a decade. Dr. Wang has received numerous awards for her research, teaching and service, including the Society of Behavioral Medicine Early Investigator Award, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Ten Outstanding Young Leaders Award, and the BUSPH Excellence in Public Health Practice Award and Excellence in Teaching Award.