IRL Leadership Team

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ISAIAH

Doran Schrantz is the Executive Director of ISAIAH, a community organization of faith-based and community institutions 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. ISAIAH also hosts a Midwest Collaborative to support the training and development of community-based organizing organizations across the Midwest region.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.