SERvisits Creating Connections to Foster Collaboration

SER is committed to increasing the diversity of its membership and supporting an inclusive environment for everyone. We strive to promote the inclusion of faculty and students from diverse backgrounds, geographic areas, beliefs and orientations. Our large-scale initiative, SERvisits, was developed with this mission in mind. SERvisits mutually engages epidemiologists and epidemiologists-in-training in the Society by having highly regarded SER researchers visit a diverse range of institutions, and having these institutions then choose individuals from under-represented backgrounds to attend the annual SER meeting. SER is grateful for the funding provided through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which allows numerous individuals to participate in the SERvisits program. Researchers from the Health Equity Scholars for Action participate in each SERvisit and are invited to attend the SER meeting to continue engaging relationships with researchers from a diverse range of institutions.

2025 SERvisit Participants Northeastern University

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Founded in 1898, we’re renowned for our experiential learning model, high-impact research, deep partnerships, and worldwide reach. From day one, we’ve pursued innovative ways of teaching and research that place a premium on experience and engagement with the world. Today, our signature approach erases traditional boundaries, empowering not only students, but faculty, alumni, partners, and innovators to solve problems and pursue impact.

SERexpert Speaker

Jaimie L. Gradus
Jaimie L. Gradus is a Professor of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine. In addition, Dr. Gradus is also the Director of the BUSPH Center for Trauma and Mental Health and the BUSPH Epidemiology Doctoral Program. She received her BA in psychology from Stony Brook University, her MPH with a concentration in epidemiology and biostatistics and DSc in epidemiology at BUSPH, and her DMSc at Aarhus University in Denmark. Dr. Gradus has been the recipient of multiple National Institute of Health, Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, and foundation grant awards to conduct psychiatric epidemiologic research in both veterans and the general population, with a particular focus on trauma and suicide. Dr. Gradus is a Board Member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Epidemiology and the Journal of Traumatic Stress, a Scientific Advisor to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and a standing study section member for the Health Services Research and Development Scientific Merit Review Board – Mental and Behavioral Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs. In 2024, Dr. Gradus was awarded the Carol J. Rowland Hogue Outstanding Midcareer Achievement Award from the Society for Epidemiologic Research.

HES4A Scholar

Kaleea Lewis
Kaleea Lewis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health and Women’s and Gender Studies. Dr. Lewis received her Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health, with a concentration in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior from the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. As a scholar trained in the social and health sciences, Dr. Lewis draws extensively from critical race theory (CRT), sociological theories of race and racism, and social determinants of health framework. Her research broadly explores how systems of power and oppression emerge in the lived experiences of Black emerging adults and impact their mental health and mental health help-seeking behaviors. The overarching goal of her interdisciplinary and racial health equity-focused research is to create interventions that reduce racial mental health disparities and increase mental health service utilization.

Student Participants

Natalia Coriano-Diaz
Lauren Ellis
Salome Goglichidze
Megan Souza
Shuai Yuan
Julia Logan
Supritha Nimmala
Alexandra Hinton
Chloe Bennett

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, stands among America’s highest-ranked, most diverse public research universities. The oldest, largest, and top-ranked public university in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, you’ll find us at our main locations in three New Jersey cities, and our footprint can be seen around the region. We’re an academic, health, and research powerhouse and a university of opportunity.

SERexpert Speaker

Jamie Slaughter-Acey

HES4A Scholar

Yanica Faustin

Award Winners

Megan Hansel
Orges Alabaku
Tina Dharamdasani
Onumara Opara
Ogie Umarabor-Bubu
Kate Lubina
Samuel Tundealao

Florida International University

For more than 50 years, FIU has positioned itself as one of South Florida’s anchor institutions by solving some of the greatest challenges of our time. We are dedicated to enriching the lives of the local and global community. With a student body of more than 54,000, we are among the largest universities in the nation and have collectively graduated more than 330,000 alumni, 165,000 of whom live and work in South Florida.

SERexpert Speaker

Laura Rosella

HES4A Scholar

Jenny Guadamuz
Jenny S. Guadamuz is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Health Equity Research Program, Center for Health Management and Policy Research at the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Guadamuz is a health services researcher and pharmacoepidemiologist who uses an interdisciplinary approach to identify how structural determinants impact healthcare access, especially medications among minoritized racial/ethnic populations. Her current research focuses on health inequities across immigration status in the Latinx population.

Student Participants

Giselle Barreto Michaela Larson Saurya Dhungel
Tendai Gwanzura Simanta Roy
Micaela Lembo
Sreshtha Chowdhury

University of California, Irvine

Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UC Irvine has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide.

SERexpert Speaker

Jill Norris
Dr. Norris’ research focuses on the influence of the environment in the development of autoimmune diseases, including type 1 diabetes (T1D), celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and multiple sclerosis in genetically susceptible individuals. Specifically, Dr. Norris examines the role of maternal, infant, childhood and adult dietary factors in the etiology of these autoimmune diseases, using dietary assessment, metabolomic and epigenomic approaches in large, at-risk populations.

HES4A Scholar

Tiffany Ford
Tiffany N. Ford (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health. There, she teaches graduate-level qualitative research methods courses and a course that is free and open to the public on the historical and contemporary understanding of structural determinants of health in the United States. Dr. Ford is also a nonresident fellow with the Center on Economic Security and Opportunity at the Brookings Institution.

Award Winners

Anais Elena Fernandez Calzavara Wajeeha Umer Brenda Bustos Kent Vo Jessie Ko Saba Sohail Wendy Lazouras

University of Massachusetts

The University of Massachusetts is a world-class public research university committed to advancing knowledge and transforming lives. Through its world-class educational programs, groundbreaking research enterprise, and its impactful community service and industry engagement activities, UMass harnesses the revolutionary spirit of Massachusetts to deliver an unparalleled student experience.

SERexpert Speaker

Brandon Marshall
I received a PhD in epidemiology from the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. During my doctoral training, I worked at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. In 2011, I completed postdoctoral training at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Broadly, my work focuses on substance use epidemiology, harm reduction research, and the social, environmental, and structural determinants of health of drug-using populations. Our team conducts research that aims to improve the health and well-being of people who use drugs. The PPHC currently includes four faculty, three postdoctoral research associates, three graduate students, three undergraduate students, a research director, a senior biostatistician, a research programmer, three project managers, two research associates, and seven research assistants. We post insights and summaries of our work to our team’s Medium page and our Twitter account.
I am the Principal Investigator of multiple NIH-funded projects, including the Rhode Island Prescription and Injection Drug Use Study (RAPIDS) and PROVIDENT, a randomized trial to prevent overdose deaths in Rhode Island. As the Scientific Director of PreventOverdoseRI, Rhode Island’s drug overdose surveillance and information dashboard, I work closely with the Rhode Island Department of Health to track, measure, and evaluate efforts to address the state’s opioid overdose epidemic. I also serve as an expert advisor to the Rhode Island Governor’s Overdose Prevention and Intervention Task Force. I am the inaugural recipient of the National Institute on Drug Abuse “Avenir” award, which supports TITAN, a research program using agent-based modeling to investigate HIV transmission dynamics among people who use drugs. I serve as an Associate Editor (Public Health & Epidemiology) of the International Journal of Drug Policy. To date, I have authored or co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications and two book chapters

HES4A Scholar

Laura Stamm
My research explores how issues of public health are negotiated in social and political spheres. I am currently working on two transgender health research projects, which explore issues of transgender care in academic hospitals and clinical spaces.
The first explores the ethics of using transgender patient registries, examining the ethics of using secondary patient data for academic research. This project asks whether current IRB and consent (or lack thereof) models are appropriate for research on vulnerable populations and puts forth a novel informed-consent model for data collection. The second project uses natural language processing to demonstrate the possible relationship between clinicians using affirmed names and pronouns and patient suicide and depression rankings. The research seeks to provide evidence for the belief that affirming trans patients’ identities improves mental health outcomes

Award Winners

Chantel Pheiffer Lien Quach Gabriela Gonzales

2023 SERvisit Participants Georgia State University

Located in the heart of Atlanta at one of the America’s most innovative and diverse research universities, the Georgia State University School of Public Health educates practitioners and thought leaders while engaging in research and outreach that addresses urgent health challenges and promotes health equity. The Georgia State SPH offers a range of CEPH-accredited degree programs, from a bachelor’s degree in public health to an MPH in six concentrations, a PhD in four concentrations and a DrPH program for professionals in the field. Our research and community engagement have been funded with $21 million in external funding over the past year alone, with areas of emphasis that include applied biostatistics and epidemiologic methodology; cancer, chronic disease epidemiology, and social determinants; infectious diseases; and tobacco, alcohol and other substance use, among others. To learn more visit publichealth.gsu.edu.

SERexpert Speaker

Matthew Fox
Matthew Fox is a Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Global Health at Boston University. His research interests include treatment outcomes in HIV-treatment programs, infectious disease epidemiology (with specific interests in HIV and pneumonia), and epidemiologic methods. Dr. Fox works on ways to improve retention in HIV-care programs in South Africa from the time of testing HIV-positive through long-term treatment.
As part of this work, he is involved in analyses to assess the impact of changes in South Africa’s National Treatment Guidelines for HIV. Dr. Fox also does research on quantitative bias analysis and co-authored a book on these methods, Applying Quantitative Bias Analysis to Epidemiologic Data.

HES4A Scholar

Shantrel Canidate

Award Winners

Aleksandr Shishkin Amanda Dleichrodt Arshya Gurbani Gerius Patterson Herschel Smith Kevin Maloney Nikita Kute Radhika Prakash-Asrani Sena Dzakuma Shacara Dahal Vuong Do

SUNY Downstate School of Public Heath

The School of Public Health (SPH) is the first public School of Public Health in New York City and the State of New York State to focus on Immigrant Health.

Located in the vibrant borough of Brooklyn in NYC, the School of Public Health trains the next generation of leaders in public health through excellence in research, service, and teaching. Through rigorous and interdisciplinary research on population health and well-being, development of innovative community-engaged models to empower healthy communities, and by advancing the theory and practice of public health in urban and immigrant groups, the School of Public Health creates innovative pathways to improving health and health equity. These pathways are achieved in part through strong strategic partnerships both within the University’s Colleges of Medicine and Nursing and Schools of Health Related Professions and Graduate Studies and through long-term collaborations with community organizations, national and local policy institutions, and health care organizations.

SERexpert Speaker

Katherine Keyes
Katherine M. Keyes, PhD, is Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Katherine’s research focuses on psychiatric and substance use epidemiology across the lifecourse, including early and cross-generational origins of child and adult health and cohort effects on substance use, mental health, and injury outcomes including suicide and overdose. She is particularly focused on methodological challenges in estimating age, period, and cohort effects, as well as using mathematical agent-based and other simulation models to inform public health and policy interventions. She is the author of more than 350 peer-reviewed publications, and two textbooks published by Oxford University Press: “Epidemiology Matters: A New Introduction to Methodological Foundation”, published in 2014 and “Population Health Science” published in 2016. Her work is funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, National Institution of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute of Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Columbia University.

HES4A Scholar

Zoe R. Smith
Dr. Zoe Smith is an assistant professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago. She earned her PhD in clinical psychology, with a concentration in child and adolescent psychology, at Virginia Commonwealth University and completed her clinical internship at University of Chicago Medicine.
Her work focuses on creating culturally responsive mental health services for Black and/or Latina/e/o adolescents, particularly servicing youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Dr. Smith is part of the inaugural class of Health Equity Scholars for Action, which funds her project “Culturally Responsive Assessments for Teens” (CRAFT). This project provides free psychodiagnostic assessments for Black and/or Latine adolescents (ages 12-17) with ADHD, which includes a clinical interview, academic achievement testing, an integrated report, feedback session, and case management follow-ups, all free to the family. Her work uses community based participatory action research methods, including youth and parent advisory boards to better understand the lived experiences of the communities she serves.

Award Winners

Shabitri Dasqupta Ayanna Desson Claire Nurse Chanee Massiah Ogie Umasabor-Bubu Janille Williams Biance Rivera Navin Sanichar Alecia james Amber Garrick Crystal Green Christopher Chino-Marin

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Fay W. Boozman Collage of Public Health

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock is the only health sciences university in the state of Arkansas. With our combination of education, research and clinical programs, UAMS has a unique capacity to lead health care improvement in the state. The Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health includes the shared missions of:

Meeting the public health workforce needs for the future and
Demonstrating how public health approaches can address the health needs of Arkansans via model community programs.

Caroline Thompson
Caroline A. Thompson, Ph.D, M.P.H., (she/her) is Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and full member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Thompson’s substantive research aims to describe and understand population-level patterns of cancer screening, detection, treatment, and mortality, including a focus on identifying drivers of cancer-related inequities across populations defined by race, ethnicity, income, geography, and other social determinants of health. Methodologically, she is interested in improving the valid research-use of complex, longitudinal sources of routine healthcare data (e.g., medical claims and electronic health records) and the use of quantitative bias analysis to evaluate the impact of suspected sources of systematic error in observational epidemiologic research. A native North Carolinian, Dr. Thompson recently returned home after 20 years in California where she was a member of the faculty at San Diego State University and University of California San Diego.

HES4A Scholar

Natalie Ebony Cook
Dr. Natalie E. Cook (she/her), Assistant Professor of Public Health at Virginia Tech, is a critical educator, transformative evaluator and researcher, as well as a culturally-affirming full-spectrum doula.
She is Faculty Principal of the VT Honors Residential Commons (a living-learning community where she lives among over 300 students) and Principal Investigator of the Health Outreach & Program Evaluation (HOPE) Lab at Virginia Tech. Through her Culturally Responsive, Equitable, and Transformative Evaluation (CREaTE) training, she supports programs to develop a healthy culture of evaluation and to build capacity for thinking evaluatively and engaging in evaluation that makes a difference. Determined to help eliminate the Black maternal mortality crisis and dismantle whole health disparities in Black families, Dr. Cook is the founding director of the Birth Equity Action & Research to Transform Health (BEARTH) Village, a family-centered community-based perinatal equity initiative in Roanoke, VA. Using a collective impact approach, BEARTH Village marries scientific evidence and cultural wisdom to convene an accessible and affirming ecosystem of care for Black families, including free doula services and wrap-around family support. BEARTH Village seeks to provide Black families with the holistic care they deserve while also co-generating new evidence, lessons, and recommendations for advancing Black maternal health equity. Dr. Cook is a lifelong learner, bridge-builder, advocate for families, and mentor for students. In addition to her work, she is also fulfilled by cultural activities such as cooking, traveling, appreciating language, and enjoying the arts.

Award Winners

Anita Joshi Lydia Famuyide Danielle Boothe Rachel Lovell Masher Alsaadi Tianjiao Shen Benjamin Fredrick Mukera Olbla Olabowale Edgar Ellis Camille Richoux Ashley Williams Shun Ingram

University of Cincinnati College of Medicine MPH Program

The University of Cincinnati (UC) is a premier, public, urban research university dedicated to undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, experience-based learning, and research. The College of Medicine has a distinguished reputation for providing high quality training for our students and leading-edge research through creating impactful and sustainable biomedical research programs, developing passionate and innovative research teams, becoming a destination for clinical trials, and harnessing “big data” to be not just evidence-based, but also evidence-gathering. Specifically, the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences is equipped with the latest technologies in environmental chemistry, aerosol physics, omics, and molecular genetics. We offer graduate degrees in public health, environmental genetics and molecular toxicology, environmental and occupational hygiene, environmental and occupational medicine, epidemiology, biostatistics, and clinical and translational research. Our faculty engage in a robust portfolio of research activities and guide millions of dollars annually in collaborative projects, with funding sources ranging from NIH and NIOSH to the CDC. Many of our graduates are working for federal and state agencies, academia, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and health organizations and agencies.

SERexpert Speaker

Dayna Johnson
Dr. Dayna A. Johnson, PhD, MPH, MSW, MS is a sleep epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University in Atlanta GA. She received her doctorate degree in Epidemiologic Science from the University of Michigan and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Harvard Medical School.
Her research is aimed at understanding the root causes of sleep health disparities and their impact on health by 1) addressing the social and environmental determinants of sleep disorders and insufficient sleep; and 2) investigating the influence of modifiable factors such as sleep disorders and disturbances on health disparities. More specifically, Dr. Johnson’s research further explicates the social contributors to racial/ethnic disparities in sleep by quantifying the contribution of social, household-level and neighborhood-level factors with objective and well-validated subjective measures of insufficient sleep using data from different epidemiologic cohort studies.

HES4A Scholar

Kia Davis
Kia L. Davis, ScD, MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Public Health Sciences at the Washington University School of Medicine.
Dr. Davis is also an RWJF Health Equity Scholar for Action and an Interdisciplinary Research Leader. Trained as a social epidemiologist, Dr. Davis leads an action-oriented, policy-informing research program focused on 1) identifying and understanding how structural racism impacts chronic disease risk factors and 2) identifying opportunities for neighborhood or policy change that can undo the harmful health impact of structural racism on Black communities. She is particularly interested in racial wealth inequality and how the intersection of race, socioeconomic status, and associated stress drive disparities in chronic disease risk factors and incidence. For more than 15 years, Dr. Davis has been committed to health disparities research in government and academic settings. Her interests have evolved from health communication inequalities to her current focus on social and structural determinants of health. She also has extensive experience in community-engaged research and is cultivating a new area of research in health equity and implementation science. She received her BA from Washington University in St. Louis, her MPH from St. Louis College of Public Health and Social Justice, and her ScD from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Award Winners

Emily Adkins Sara Burcham Shannon C. Conrey Arjitha Barath Ram Abhishek Sreelatha Prabhu Sushmitha Patnana Pooja Gohil Shweta Mapara Sai Srivatsav Kotnani Susan Pinney Sai Likhita Mamillapalli

University of Hawai'i at Manoa Public Health Program

Established in 1907, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is the largest and oldest of the 10 UH campuses. One of its recognized strengths is Pacific and Asian regional public health. The Office of Public Health Studies in the Thompson School of Social Work & Public Health at UH Mānoa offers a unique experience to study public health in an Asian-Pacific context. They offer specializations in epidemiology, health policy and management, Native Hawaiian and Indigenous health, and social and behavioral health sciences. Degrees offered include the bachelor of arts (BA), master of public health (MPH), master of science (MS), and doctor of philosophy (PhD). All degrees are accredited as a public health program by the Council on Education for Public Health. Located at the crossroads between Asia and the continental US, the University of Hawai‘i offers a diverse cultural experience in a Hawaiian place of learning. Our faculty and students collaborate with local, national, and international research and professional institutions. To learn more, please visit https://manoa.hawaii.edu/publichealth/

SERexpert Speaker

Mahasin Mujahid
Mahasin S. Mujahid is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also the Chair of the Division of Epidemiology and the Lillian E. I. and Dudley J. Aldous Chair in Public Health.
Her primary area of research is in social epidemiology, with a particular interest in the neighborhood health effects and the structural drivers of cardiovascular and maternal health inequities. She received her BS in Mathematics from Xavier University, New Orleans, LA, MS in Biostatistics, and PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Michigan.

HES4A Scholar

Sasha Zhou
Dr. Zhou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health at Wayne State’s CLAS. Her research uses mixed methods to understand and address the mental health needs of emerging adults and college student populations with particular focus on underserved populations, including students of color, international students, and sexual and gender minorities.
Dr. Zhou’s broader research portfolio combines varied methodological approaches to identify the mechanisms that perpetuate mental health disparities, including in-depth qualitative work and large-scale epidemiological surveys.
Dr. Zhou is also a co-investigator of the Healthy Minds Network, a research-to-practice network dedicated to improving the mental and emotional wellbeing of young people through innovative, multidisciplinary scholarship. She received her Ph.D. in Health Services Organization and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where she was a Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health (CRECH) Scholar.

Award Winners

Kendra Bean John Clark Saikaew Dudla Breena Gaskov Kacey Ingalls Wilson Nguyen Allen Oamil Jane Maicalyn Pascual Heejung Sin (Chloe) Meldrick Ravida