IRL Leadership Team

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Michael Oakes is a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, co-director of the University’s US Federal Statistics Research Data Center, Director of the Division of Epidemiology’s PhD program, and the University’s Faculty Liaison to the Minnesota State Legislature. Michael is an active researcher on a wide variety of NIH, NSF and RWJF funded studies addressing a vast array of methodological, health, social and ethical topics. Michael has authored over 115 papers exploring problems at the intersection of social and health sciences. The second edition of his book, Methods in Social Epidemiology is to be released in early 2017.

CO-DIRECTOR, INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH LEADERS

Andriana Abariotes recently joined the University of Minnesota School of Public Health as Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program. With over 25 years of experience in the community development field, Andriana led investments in place- and people-based strategies to promote physical, economic, human and social capital development in neighborhoods and communities. During her leadership at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC – Twin Cities), Andriana guided over $250 million in investments and served as an advisor to several regional and national boards and task forces. She holds a B.A. from Macalester College and M.A. from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. In 2014, she was selected as Bush Foundation Fellow.

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Kathleen Call is a Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She co-chairs the Health Equity Work Group in the School of Public Health and plays a role in the community engagement core of the Clinical Translational Science Institute. Dr. Call has developed a body of research on the complexities of measuring health insurance coverage, understanding variation in estimates of coverage between different state and national surveys, and exploring discrepancies between survey and administrative data counts of insurance coverage—referred to as the “ Medicaid undercount.” Dr. Call’s research examines access to health insurance coverage and the extent to which health insurance translates into equitable access to health care services. She has also worked on a number of community-engaged research projects focusing on barriers to health care.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Ezra Golberstein is an Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. His research areas focus around health economics, mental health services and policy, nonmedical determinants of health, and health care financing and costs. Dr. Golberstein earned his PhD in Health Services Organization and Policy from the University of Michigan and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship in mental health economics at Harvard Medical School.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Sarah Gollust is an Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Dr. Gollust is a social scientist studying the intersections of communication, politics and health policy. In her past research, she has examined the roles of news media and public opinion within significant health policy issues, including obesity, health disparities, the Affordable Care Act and cancer screening. She also examines how research is communicated in the policymaking process. She has received grants from the American Cancer Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health to support her work. Dr. Gollust was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania from 2008 to 2010, and received her PhD in Health Services Organization and Policy from the University of Michigan.

PROFESSOR, COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Joseph Konstan is Distinguished McKnight Professor and Distinguished University Teaching Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota, where he also holds the title Adjunct Professor of Public Health. His research addresses a variety of human-computer interaction issues, including personalization (particularly through recommender systems), eliciting online participation, designing computer systems to improve public health, and ethical issues in research online. He is probably best known for his work in collaborative filtering recommenders (the GroupLens project, which recently won the ACM Software Systems Award). Joe received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993.

VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGIC PLANNING AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, ACADEMYHEALTH

Bonnie Austin Cluxton is Vice President, Strategic Planning and Business Development at AcademyHealth, where she also serves as Deputy Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program. Ms. Cluxton’s HCFO work includes evaluating and administering grants, developing and managing conferences on health care financing issues and authoring monographs, newsletter articles and briefing papers. Her responsibilities also include developing, implementing and refining strategic approaches to business development at AcademyHealth. Ms. Cluxton serves as Assistant Secretary to AcademyHealth’s Board of Directors. Prior to joining AcademyHealth, Ms. Cluxton worked for 10 years as a litigator at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Her practice involved representing clients, including health care providers, in criminal investigations, civil suits and administrative proceedings. Ms. Cluxton received her MPH from The George Washington University, her JD from University of Notre Dame Law School and her BA from Dartmouth College.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ISAIAH

Doran Schrantz is the Executive Director of ISAIAH, a faith-based community organization of faith communities across Minnesota. She has been at the center of ISAIAH’s development into an organization considered one of the most powerful voices in the state around issues of racial and economic justice. In the past eight years, ISAIAH has explored the intersection of community organizing, movement-building, policy and research. ISAIAH has led three community-grounded Health Impact Assessments around school integration, housing and payday lending, as well as partnered with agencies at the local, regional and state level to tackle racial and economic equity—working on issues such as sentencing reform, transit investments, expanding access to paid leave and school disciplinary practices. Doran has also worked to launch Healthy Heartlands, a five-state collaborative working at the intersection of the social determinants of health and democracy building, staging strategic interventions that reduce health inequities.

Paul Marincel is an organizer with Twin Cities ISAIAH; a multi-racial, state-wide, nonpartisan coalition of faith communities fighting for racial and economic justice in Minnesota. Mr. Marincel coordinates Development & Strategic Initiatives for ISAIAH. He is a community partner of IRL and leads trainings on Organizing for Change with the IRL fellows.

ASSISTANT SCIENTIST, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI MILLER SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Zinzi Bailey is a social epidemiologist focused on cancer health disparities, as well as the health impacts of and policy solutions for structural and institutional discrimination, especially at the intersection of public health and criminal justice. She is also interested in the use of data and indicators in equitable policy and management. She is currently an Assistant Scientist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Jay Weiss Institute for Health Equity at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Zinzi was the Director of Research and Evaluation at the Center for Health Equity in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene from 2015–2017. She received her Doctor of Science degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and her Master of Science in Public Health degree with a concentration in Global Epidemiology from Emory University.

MINNESOTA COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH

Jan Malcolm, a former Co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Research Leaders(IRL) Program and on the adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Jan’s most recent leadership roles have been as Vice President of Public Affairs for Allina Health and CEO of the Courage Center, which merged with Sister Kenny in 2013 to become the Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute. She served as Minnesota’s Commissioner of Health from 1999-2003, and in that capacity led one of the top public health agencies in the country. Jan also was a senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the public health and childhood obesity teams from 2003-2005.

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Ira Moscovice is the Mayo Professor and the Director of the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy. Dr. Moscovice is one of the leading rural health services researchers and policy analysts and was the first recipient of the National Rural Health Association’s Distinguished Researcher Award. He has research interests in rural health care and the impact of health policy on disadvantaged populations. His current research interests include the quality of rural health care, the evaluation of alternative rural health care delivery systems and strategies for addressing the social determinants of rural health. He teaches courses on health policy and policy analysis. Ira Moscovice received his PhD in operations research from Yale University.

Toben Nelson is a Social Epidemiologist who works on community-based health promotion and evaluation of strategies to improve population health. He is an Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and works with the Alcohol Epidemiology Program and Minnesota Population Center. His research focus is on policy approaches to prevention of alcohol-attributable harm, injury, and violence; physical activity promotion and social determinants of health. Dr. Nelson received his ScD from the Harvard School of Public Health and MS in Kinesiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.