Doctoral Student Profiles
Mackenzie Adams, MPH, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a Rackham Merit Fellow. Her research interests include understanding and mitigating the factors that influence substance use and adverse mental health outcomes in adolescents.
Janae Best, MPH (she/her/hers) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. She is interested, broadly, in the impact of racism on Black communities. Specifically, she aims to highlight the impact of race-based stress on the sexual health and mental health of Black Americans while noting factors that have contributed to resiliency. This includes considering religiosity, social support, and racial identity as coping mechanisms. Her methodological interests lie with program design and community-based participatory research. Ultimately, she aims to implement interventions to address structural racism and move Black communities toward health equity.
Laura Brotzman, MPH is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior & Health Education at the School of Public Health and a Rackham Merit Fellow. Broadly, she is interested in medical decision making, risk communication, information visualization, and implementation of clinical practice guidelines.
Gregory Bushman, MPH, MSW, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior & Health Education at the School of Public Health. His work explores the relationship between the urban built environment and health, and examines the efficacy of community-engaged environmental design as a public health intervention for the reduction and prevention of crime, violence, and injury. Methodologically, he is interested in the visualization and analysis of spatiotemporal data, and in the application of data science and machine learning techniques to public health research.
Chelsea G. Cox, MPH, MSW, is a doctoral candidate and Rackham Merit Fellow in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public. She previously directed community outreach and education initiatives for the NIH/NIA Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. Her research is focused on improving early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and risk communication among healthcare providers, patients, and family members.
Victoria H. Davis (she/her/hers), MSc, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Her research focuses on opportunities to intervene on unmet social needs (e.g., social isolation, housing, and food security) in healthcare and social settings. She is passionate about working alongside patients and communities toward health and social equity, and policy and program evaluation.
Sara J. Feldman, MPH, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE) at the School of Public Health and a Rackham Merit Fellow. Sara has domestic and global experience in the development, implementation and promotion of disability and health education curriculum, programs and policies. Her current research is focused on the ethical, social, behavioral and psychological implications of disclosing genetic and biomarker risk information for the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases (i.e., Alzheimer’s disease) among patients and their family members and/or care partners.
Koya Ferrell, Koya Ferrell is a Doctoral student in the School of Public Health in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. Her research interest includes the impact of racial stress and trauma on healthcare engagement and ways to improve patient-provider relationships and quality of care delivery through physician training centered around anti-racism and dismantling structural and institutional inequity. She holds a masters degree in Physiology and Biophysics and previously served as a research trainee at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health. During her doctoral studies, she hopes to bring together her past clinical care experience with her current studies in community health and community-based participatory research to better understand and improve preventive medicine services, specifically for Black communities.
Noelle E. Kellogg, MPH is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education and a Rackham Merit Fellow. Her research interests include using community-engaged approaches to better understand and address the health effects of intersectional stigma, particularly among youth and LGBTQ+ people.
Faith Okaalo, MPH, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. Her research interests lie at the intersection of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and HIV/AIDS, with a focus on adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in Kenya. Her research seeks to contribute to reducing HIV-related health disparities and promoting equitable access to SRH services for AGYW in sub-Saharan Africa.
Akilah Patterson, MPH is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. Her research focuses on the effects of racial discrimination on mental health among adolescents and emerging adults. Previously, she was a project manager for the Healthy Minds Study, the largest and most comprehensive national research study on college student mental health.
Clara Lucia Reyes, MPH, is a doctoral candidate and Rackham Merit Fellow at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity. Clara is also a Population Studies Center trainee at the Institute for Social Research. She collaborates on projects using community-engaged approaches to understanding and disrupting structural racism to advance health and social justice. She researches how intersecting systems (e.g., social policy, criminal justice, immigration) shape health and human rights among Latine and immigrant communities as well as the implications of potential interventions implemented at local, state, and federal levels.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Clara collaborated with communities in the U.S.-Mexico border region and in El Salvador on health equity initiatives related to cancer, maternal-child health, and rural health and sanitation.
Amy Rusch, MPH, is a doctoral student and Rackham Merit Fellow in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Her research interests revolve around mental health in school- and community-based settings. Utilizing Implementation Science frameworks, theories, and strategies, she aims to focus her work on improving the availability and accessibility of evidence-based mental health resources and programming. She plans to deploy rigorous qualitative and quantitative methods to identify effective ways to bridge gaps and improve mental health access for underserved populations through an equity lens.
Sundas Saboor, MBBS, MPH, is a doctoral student in the Deparment of Health Behavior and Health Education at the School of Public Health. Broadly, she is interested in women's health, public health practices among Muslim women, artificial intelligence, and digital health.
Maren Spolum, MPH, MPP (she/her/hers) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education and a Population Studies Center demography trainee within the Institute for Social Research. Broadly her research interests include the political economy of health, structural racism, public policy, and health inequities. Maren is specifically interested in tracing the historical and political conditions giving rise to neoliberal policy decisions, and the role and impact those policies have had in the social patterning of racial health inequities in the U.S.
Dominique Sylvers, MPH, is a doctoral candidate in the department of Health Behavior & Health Education who is committed to working for more equitable aging. Dominique is a trainee with the Population Studies Center (PSC) and Social Environment and Health (SEH) Department, both at the Institute for Social Research (ISR). Her research largely focuses on the older African American adults, specifically around explicating the influence of segregation and the neighborhood context on disparities in cognitive aging.
Gabrielle Young, MPH, CHES, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the School of Public Health and a Rackham Merit Fellow. Broadly, she is interested in policy and built environment interventions to address hunger and diet quality. She has a special interest in the structural drivers of inequalities and their impact on households meeting food needs.