Archives: Affiliates

Muazu Alhaji Shamaki works at the Department of Geography, Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto. He is currently on sabbatical with Demography and Social statistics Department, Federal University Birnin Kebbi-Nigeria and is the present HOD. Muazu does research in Human Development Demography and Population Health, Health Geography and Cultural Anthropology. Their current project is ‘Maternal Health’.

Dr. Dornell Pete is a member of the Navajo Nation and an epidemiologist who uses community-engaged approaches to study the factors influencing stomach cancer, including lifestyle, environmental, and pathogenic factors (such as H. pylori infections and gut microbiome) in Native American communities. Dr. Pete aims to identify strategies for cancer prevention and intervention while improving overall gastrointestinal health. Current projects include the Navajo ABID (Stomach) Study, which is designed to be tribally based and driven.

Maria Y. Rodriguez, MSW, PhD Rodriguez joined the University at Buffalo in 2020. Her research is at the intersection of applied demography, computational social science, and social policy. Dr. Rodriguez’ work explores systems of care across technology and human services. From offline child welfare systems to online social media platforms, her work examines the systems we build to care for marginalized groups, particularly how we make decisions about whom those groups are. Based on a central tenet of ethical social work practice, the aim of Dr. Rodriguez’ work is to support the reorientation of systems towards working best for outlier cases. In her work, Dr. Rodriguez explores if and how the values and ideals that define systems can come from the lived experience of the system involved.

April Fernandes’ work focuses on a range of outcomes, from physical and mental health, employment prospects and wage outcomes, as well as the impacts of monetary punishment from legal financial obligations and practices such as pay-to-stay, where states sue incarcerated people for the room and board costs of their incarceration. This work has succeeded in expanding inquiries beyond felony incarceration and bringing compelling theoretical and empirical analysis to both seen and unseen forms of social control and punishment. In addition, Dr. Fernandes’ future research will include an expanded exploration of the intersection between criminal legal contact and disability, looking specifically at the prevalence of people with traumatic brain injuries in jails and prisons and focusing on the experience and outcomes of their time in confinement. Dr. Fernandes has a robust pipeline of publications of both co-authored and sole-authored pieces and public and private grant applications that will ensure continued productivity within the field as well as transmission of these findings through public and policy-related scholarship.

Dr. Chua is the Director of the Reproductive Biology and Culture Laboratory at Notre Dame. Her research combines evolutionary and biocultural anthropology perspectives to understand how chronic stress “gets under the skin” during pregnancy. She utilizes methods from anthropology, biology, and public health to explore the social and biological factors that create and sustain peri- and postnatal inequities. She also studies the role that cultural practices play in shaping health norms. Chua works closely with pregnant women in the Philippines and the U.S.

Chua is currently co-leading a project addressing how the maternal immune system responds to fetal cells circulating throughout pregnancy (Co-director: Amy Boddy, UCSB). This is part of a larger international, multidisciplinary project (“Microchimerism, Human Health and Evolution Project”) funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Because adverse pregnancy-related outcomes (e.g., preterm birth) have been linked with maternal immune dysregulation and an influx of fetal cells, an important component of this project is incorporating the social environment to provide a more holistic understanding surrounding the experience of pregnancy, stress, and biology.

Chua also leads the Pinoy-Pinay Health (PH) Project in collaboration with Mariano Marcos State University, Northwestern University, Laoag City, and the Governor Roque B. Ablan Sr. Memorial Hospital. This project examines how ecological stressors, including socio-political conditions, influence maternal-fetal dynamics and their biological systems among pregnant Filipina mothers. This project explores the political landscape and the range of political beliefs, cultural norms, and stress responses, connecting them to pregnancy and birth outcomes. The overarching goal is to understand what causes preterm birth, how health disparities manifest in this population, and how to address specific health-related needs.

Ongoing projects include exploring when preterm birth may be an adaptation and why gestation varies considerably across species. Chua also investigates how stress is conceptualized in different cultural contexts and its implications for public health initiatives in order to mitigate mental health disparities.

Chua was recognized as a 2023 STAT Wunderkind for her contributions to health and medicine. Her work has been published in Scientific Reports, Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, and other scholarly journals.

Kamryn S. Morris (she/her) is an Assistant Professor with the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. Dr. Morris earned her Ph.D. in Family and Human Development, where she was a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) T32 Predoctoral Fellow with training in prevention, dissemination, and implementation science. Her research seeks to promote thriving among Black youth through supporting school belonging and improving school climate. Using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, her program of research examines social (e.g., teacher-student relationships) and contextual (e.g., school racial segregation) factors that promote and/or prohibit Black youths’ development of school belonging and subsequent wellbeing. As part of this research, she learns from and amplifies the voices of educators and Black youth to cultivate pathways towards mitigating the pervasive effects of racism (e.g., interpersonal, structural) in schools and communities.

Jessica Acolin’s work centers on understanding how systemic, social, and environmental factors shape mental and behavioral health outcomes, with a particular interest in climate change impacts on youth and young adults. Dr. Acolin holds a PhD in Public Health (Health Services), postdoctoral training in psychiatry, and has over a decade of
professional experience in mental health research and practice. She holds advanced expertise in quantitative epidemiologic methods appropriate for population health research (e.g., geospatial data analysis, multilevel models) and is developing skills in qualitative and mixed methods. Further, she strongly values interdisciplinary
collaborations and is actively engaged with social scientists, clinicians, and climate scientists, among others. Her practice-oriented partnerships with local health jurisdictions are motivated by her commitment to ensuring her research results in real-world impact. She has 13 peer-reviewed manuscripts published or under review (7 first author), including in leading journals such as Social Science & Medicine and Prevention Science. Her current research focuses on climate change as an environmental stressor. To date, this work has resulted in 6 conference presentations (2 additional under review), 1 research manuscript under peer review, and 2 research manuscripts in preparation. She has served as Principal Investigator on multiple projects and has secured competitive funding, with over $70,000 awarded to date. She has experience with statistical methods appropriate for hierarchical or longitudinal data. She has worked with geocoded data, merged multi-level datasets, utilized generalized linear models, mixture models, and time-varying effects models, and Monte Carlo simulation models.

Mark Henderson’s research focuses on environmental and social policy issues in the United States and China, often employing spatial analysis methods using Geographic Information Systems. Based on Northeastern’s Oakland, California campus, he has supervised over 200 student projects with local governments and community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Professor Henderson has a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs (75%) and Mills College at Northeastern University (25%).