IRL Team

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. Email: abar0001@umn.edu

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 was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill’s Institute for Health and Social Policy from 2014-2015, and a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management 2011-2014. 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. Zinzi serves as a member of the IRL Research Team and co-chair of IRL Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Taskforce.

DIVISION OF EPIDEMIOLOGY & COMMUNITY HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Ifrah Biyoow is the Research & Analytics Specialist for the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL) program. Ifrah is a research professional interested in research methodology, social epidemiology, and leadership development. She has worked in the public health arena since 2009 in various capacities – researcher, data analyst, evaluator, and project coordinator. Ifrah is dedicated to promoting health and health equity through cross-disciplinary, collaborative approaches that incorporate scientific rigor, meet community needs, and focus on solutions and impact. In addition to her IRL role, she is working towards completing a doctorate degree in Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota.

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 and an investigator with the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 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. Her research focuses on the complexities of measuring health insurance coverage, including the discrepancy between survey and administrative data counts of insurance coverage, and how well health insurance translates into equitable access to health care. She is also interested in developing community-driven solutions to health insurance and health care barriers.

VICE PRESIDENT, ACADEMYHEALTH

Bonnie A. Cluxton is a Vice President at AcademyHealth, where she leads the organization’s strategic planning and staffs the Board of Directors and board committees. She currently conducts programmatic and grantmaking activities on a number of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation projects with an emphasis on facilitating the use of research in policy and practice. For fifteen years, Ms. Cluxton supported the RWJF Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization initiative, including serving for seven years as director. Prior to joining AcademyHealth in 2001, she 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 M.P.H. from The George Washington University, her J.D. from the University of Notre Dame School of Law and her B.A. from Dartmouth College.

DIVISION OF EPIDEMIOLOGY & COMMUNITY HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Libby Fortner is administrative lead for Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL). Her work involves assisting with meetings and events; coordinating contracts, invoices, and other financial activities; and participating in a variety of special projects. Libby has more than five years of experience in providing high-level support to faculty in the Division of Epidemiology & Community Health of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. She enjoys learning about how the IRL research projects are working to make our world a better place.

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.

ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH, COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING; AND 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 serves as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Science and Engineering.  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 was awarded the ACM Software Systems Award and the Seoul Test of Time Award). Joe received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993.  He looks forward to interacting with IRL Fellows around issues of innovative social computing and collaborative technologies, integrating health research with engineering and computer science, and research methods for online studies.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Shalini Kulasingam is an Associate Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Kulasingam’s research interests include human papillomavirus (HPV), cervical cancer, cancer screening, vaccines, and decision and cost-effectiveness modeling. Her expertise centers on chronic diseases including cancer, infectious diseases including sexually transmitted infections, evaluation of screening tests, vaccination, decision modeling and cost-effectiveness analyses.

DIVISION OF EPIDEMIOLOGY & COMMUNITY HEALTH, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Mandy LaBreche is the Associate Director of Opersations of the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota (UMN). Her work involves managing all program aspects, including logistics, operations, finances, and reporting. She has had diverse experiences, both domestically and abroad, working to address health disparities through collaborative research and programming. Prior to joining IRL, Mandy managed a National Cancer Institute-funded center to reduce cancer health disparities among southern California’s Pacific Islander population. She is constantly inspired by collaborative and creative work that sparks social change within communities.

DIVISION OF EPIDEMIOLOGY & COMMUNITY HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Praise (Fiyinfoluwa) Mafe attended the University of Minnesota, majoring in Biology, Society and Environment. During her undergraduate career, Praise participated in MCAE, African Student Association, North Stem Alliance, and was a Community Advisor for three years. The skills and experiences gained in these roles framed her career path and led her to Interdisciplinary Research Leaders. Praise is excited and grateful to join IRL as Curriculum Coordinator because of the fascinating people and the amount of professional growth she will experience learning from the IRL team and fellows. In addition to her role with IRL, Praise is also a self taught beauty artist and hair stylist, using her talents to run her own business in Minnesota.

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.

Paul Marincel is a Senior Advisor to the IRL Program. Paul has worked as a professional community organizer since 1978. In the 1980’s Paul hired a team of organizers who started a set of community organizations in Minnesota.  He served as founding director of one of those organizations: the St Paul Ecumenical Alliance for Change (SPEAC) beginning in 1990. SPEAC’s mission was to act as a vehicle for low and moderate income people and people of color in St Paul to build independent power to seek justice for themselves and their communities. SPEAC worked with many partner organizations in St Paul and the Metropolitan Region including Joint Ministry Project/Interfaith Action in Minneapolis and GRIP in St Cloud.  In 2000 they united to form ISAIAH and Paul became a founding co-Director of ISAIAH.  He helped launch and lead ISAIAH’s (ISAIAHMN.org) Healthy Heartlands Initiative and also PICO’s (now Faith in Action) national Center for Health Organizing. The Healthy Heartlands Initiative and the Center for Health Organizing worked with organizers and public health institutions to build toward health equity and to fight racism. Initially Faith-based and neighborhood community organizations in five Midwestern states partnered to forge community power, build public support for change, and win policy victories for healthier, equitable and anti-racist communities. The states include: Minnesota, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan. These Midwestern urban areas are experiencing some of the country’s most extreme health inequities based upon race, income and geography. Paul has served as Chair of the Central Staff/Gamaliel Foundation (2000 – 2010).  As part of the Gamaliel Foundation Central Staff he provided consultation to organizations in the Midwest (with a Co-Director) and established a Development Department.  He also helped to launch Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity (MORE2) in Kansas City.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

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.

ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH AND PROFESSOR OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Michael Oakes is Associate Vice President for Research and Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining university administration and co-founding the IRL program, Michael was 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. He has authored over 130 papers exploring problems at the intersection of social and health sciences and the second edition of his book, Methods in Social Epidemiology, was released in 2017.

DIVISION OF EPIDEMIOLOGY & COMMUNITY HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Hemant Persaud (He, Him, His) earned his B.A. in French Studies with minors in Leadership, Retail Merchandising and Fashion Studies from the College of Liberal Arts in May 2019, and has his certificate in Fashion Industry Essentials from Parsons School of Design in partnership with Teen Vogue. He brings an array of experiences from fashion, diversity and inclusion, and communications in multiple roles. Previously, he worked as the Program Coordinator for the CFANS Office for Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), as well as the President’s Emerging Scholars Program (PES). Hemant is a strong advocate for folx like himself who hold one or more “minority” identity(ies). He brings his welcoming and positive energy, and he is dedicated to DEI work anywhere he goes.

Dr. Ela Rausch is a Senior Advisor for the RWJF Interdisciplinary Research Leaders Program. In her role, she coaches national research teams on the implementation of rigorous studies to improve community health and on the writing of research briefs designed to bridge academic thought and practice. She has worked in the fields of housing and community development in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region for over 20 years and has extensive experience with designing research studies and measuring program performance. Her research has been cited in Health Affairs, The Washington Post, Forbes Magazine, and PEW Stateline. Past positions include employment with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Wilder Research, HousingLink, Minnesota Housing Partnership, and Seward Redesign. She holds a Ph.D. in Housing Studies, a Master’s Degree in Public Policy, and a B.A. in Sociology and American Studies, all from the University of Minnesota. She is an active member of the Minnesota Homeownership Center board, the Minnesota Homeownership Opportunity Alliance, and the Hennepin County Community Health Improvement Program advisory committee.

Bob-e is a trauma specialist, relationship builder and an expert in facilitation helping individuals, communities and systems leaders to acknowledge historical trauma and its impact on making meaningful change.   With a deep understanding of what it means to be equitable, inclusive and diverse and the necessity to address and operationalize practices recognizing race and justice throughout and across systems. Bob-e uses methods that lift up and support authentic and truthful conversations to build relationships and take action that can be sustained overtime.