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.
Ja
nae 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.
Jessica Bishai, MS, is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity.
She is interested in how improvements in the built environment affect neighborhood
violence, and especially in how social infrastructure may moderate the relationship
between excess heat and violence. In her research, she leverages community-based participatory
research methods, spatio-temporal quantitative analyses, and causal inference. Prior
to her PhD program, she worked at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
on maternal, neonatal, and child health metrics for the Global Burden of Disease project.
Laura Brotzman, MPH is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Behavior Health Equity at
the School of Public Health and a Rackham Merit Fellow. Her research is focused on
medical decision making, risk communication, information visualization, and implementation
of clinical practice guidelines for older adults.
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 Equity 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 community 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, Dominique Sylvers, MPH is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Health Behavior
& Health Equity. She is also a trainee with the Population Studies Center and the
Landscapes of Population Health, both within the Institute for Social Research. Dominique’s
research largely centers around racial inequities in healthy aging, with a specific
focus on the role of structural and socio-historical influences. To-date, her work
has examined inequities in education and employment, neighborhood segregation, and
place specific context and their role on various aging outcomes, including cognition,
dementia care giving, and muscle strength.
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.