Doctoral Student Profiles
Marcus Andrews, MPH, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior & Health Education.
He is interested in the concordance and discordance between objective and perceptive
measures of neighborhood environment and their relationship to cardiovascular disease
risk factors among urban racial/ethnic populations.
Kiana Bess, MPH, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education
and a Rackham Merit Fellow. Broadly, her research focuses on social and structural
influences on child and adolescent health outcomes. Using CBPR and community-engaged
approaches, she is interested examining the relationships between systemic discriminatory
policies, urban design, neighborhood exposures, and health disparities in minority
communities.
Ja
nae Best, MPH (she/her/hers) is a doctoral student 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 student 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 early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and communication of risk information among
physicians, patients, and family members.
Monika Doshi, MPH, Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Monika consulted on infectious disease
and chronic disease research projects in Asia and Africa. As the Principal of Saath,
a public health consulting firm which she founded in 2011, she has partnered with
domestic and international academic institutions and non-academic organizations to
conduct public health related research and program development. While she has largely
been focused on HIV prevention among gender and sexual minorities including those
who practice sex work, as a doctoral student and a Population Studies Center trainee,
Monika plans to expand her research to examine immigration and health, with a specific
focus on women's health.
Sara J. Feldman, MPH, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education
(HBHE) at the School of Public Health and is a Rackham Merit Fellow. Sara has domestic
and global experience in the development, implementation and promotion of disability
and health education programs and policies. She has broad interests in dementia caregiver
wellness, advance care planning, early diagnosis and risk disclosure of Alzheimer's
Disease, and mental health promotion. Specifically, she is interested in reducing
the burden experienced by caregivers of persons with dementia by enhancing effective
social and behavioral interventions, and also addressing how to promote the accessibility
and utilization of services and resources for dementia caregivers.
Cecelia French, MPH, is a doctoral student in Health Behavior and Health Education at the School of Public Health and a Population Studies Center trainee at the Institute for Social Research. Her research interests surround drug use and addiction, particularly opioid use in rural parts of America. Utilizing a structural focus, she hopes to focus on the inequities around first drug use, rehab utilization and relapse.
Molly Green, MPH, is a PhD candidate in Health Behavior and Health Education. Her research is focused on the
effects of the social environment on mental health. She uses both quantitative and
qualitative methods to explore issues of discrimination and acculturation and their
relationship to mental health among migrant populations from the Middle East and North
Africa in the US and in Germany.
Landon Hughes (he/him/his) is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Health Behavior & Health
Education and a Population Studies Center trainee. His research focuses on structural
determinants of health with a particular focus on how institutional and social discrimination
shape the health of transgender people. Before attending the University of Michigan,
he worked at RTI International implementing and evaluating programs for the Center
for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Gabriel Johnson, MPH, MPH (he/him/his), is a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, department of Health Behavior Health Education. Prior to re-entering academia, he was a 7th grade educator of Mathematics in Sacramento, CA and worked to support harm reduction efforts at Glide Memorial Church in the tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco. Gabriel is interested in how masculinity and other structural factors impact the biopsychosocial health of Black men and masculine of center LGBT+ communities. In addition, he is currently in partnership with community-based organizations in Zambia and Kenya, developing mental health programs for the LGBT+ community. Broadly, Gabriel is interested in how structural factors impact Black communities and the development, implementation, and translation of interventions intended to dismantle those factors.
Wesley King, MPH is a doctoral candidate in Health Behavior and Health Education, Population Studies
Center trainee, and Rackham Merit Fellow. His research is concerned with understanding
and addressing structural and social determinants of health for transgender populations
with a particular focus on how racism and cisgenderism limit life chances for transgender
people of color. Broadly, he is interested in community-driven and policy-based approaches
to preventing and alleviating structural vulnerability and promoting health among
transgender people of color.
Kyle Nisbeth, MPH is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education and
a Population Studies Center trainee. Her research examines the structural and social
impacts of discrimination on cardiovascular disease risk and mental health outcomes.
Broadly, she is interested in how place, space and personhood influence disparities
in chronic illness.
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.
Geila Rajaee, MPH is a PhD Candidate at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. Her research interests include spirituality/religion, chaplaincy, management of chronic disease, and behavioral interventions to improve health outcomes. Geila is particularly interested in preventable chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes) and the role of chaplains in mitigating and managing adverse health outcomes.
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.
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 student 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.