Recent Brown School doctoral graduates are focused on a wide range of research areas including, race and education, nutrition and obesity, racial differences in older adult health and well-being, medical disparities, opioid use disorders, child and adolescent mental health, and more.
These graduates have published in peer-reviewed journals, and their scholarship has been recognized with multiple awards, fellowships and honors. We are so proud to recognize these scholars as they take the next steps in their careers. Learn more below.
May 2020 Graduates
Jacob Eaton: Senior Associate, Iris Group
Dissertation: “Pillars of the Nutrition Transition: The Impacts of Ultra-Processed Foods on Global Overweight and Obesity”
Lashawnda Fields: Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
Dissertation: “A Case Study of the Experiences of Black Female Faculty at Research Intensive Schools of Social Work”
Karishma Furtado: Research and Data Analyst, Forward Through Ferguson
Dissertation: “Determinants, Outcomes, and Interventions of and on the School-Based Discipline Gap”
Roger Wong: Position Pending
Dissertation: “Lifestyle Behaviors and Racial Differences in Dementia”
Alexandra Morshed: Research Project Manager, Prevention Research Center in St. Louis
Dissertation: “Dismantling of Obesity-Related Policies”
Christina Drymon: Research Scientist (Public Health) of NORC at the University of Chicago
Dissertation: “Maintaining Natural Recovery from Prescription Opioid Use Disorder”
December 2019 Graduates
Richa Joshi: Position Pending
Dissertation: “Participatory Institutions of Forest Management in the Uttarakhand Hills of India: Processes of Emergence and Change”
Whitney Sewell: Research Fellow, Harvard University
Dissertation: “Individual and Social Network Factors Influencing PrEP Uptake Among Black Women”
August 2019 Graduates
Cole Hooley: Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University
Dissertation: “Scale-up of Child and Youth Mental Health Services: Assessing coverage of a county-wide initiative”
Yu-Chih Chen: Assistant Professor, Hong Kong University
Dissertation: “Trajectories and Patterns of Wealth in Later Life: Implications for Physical, Mental and Cognitive Health”
Marian Joan Stahlschmidt: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Denver
Dissertation: “Caseworker Turnover in Child Welfare Services: Problem or Symptom? A System Dynamics Approach”
Harry Chatters Taylor: Postdoctoral Scholar, Duke University
Dissertation: “Risk Factors for Loneliness and Social Isolation among Black Older Adults”
Vetta Sanders Thompson, the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Racial and Ethnic Diversity at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, been appointed to a three-year term on the St. Louis County Health and Hospital Advisory Board.
Sanders Thompson’s research focuses on the health and well-being of diverse communities, particularly the African American community. Her goal is to empower members of the community to improve their health and well-being through education and opportunities for action.
Sanders Thompson is the Brown School’s associate dean of equity, diversity and inclusion, as well as co-director of the Center for Community Health Partnership and Research at the Institute for Public Health. She also is an associate member of the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the Washington University School of Medicine and a faculty affiliate of the Department of African and African-American Studies in Arts & Sciences.
Every year since 1990, Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis students and the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies have hosted an annual Pow Wow—a gathering that brings together people from all across the country to celebrate Native culture. The 30th annual event was to occur on April 11, 2020 with the theme of “Steps to Sovereignty: Decolonize, Indigenize, Revitalize.”
With the coronavirus crises, this year’s Pow Wow was canceled. But, explains Buder Center Director Kellie Thompson, “We wanted to keep our commitment to our Pow Wow Head Staff — individuals who run the event, in their respective roles. We did this through the ways we have been taught by our elders: by creating relationships, learning through listening and elevating stories.”
The 20 students on the Pow Wow Committee each interviewed one Head Staff member as well as event vendor in mid-April about how the current pandemic was affecting their lives, their tribes and their traditions.
The result was a digital book, the Pow Wow Committee COVID-19 Report and Resource Guide, created by the 20 students on the Pow Wow committee. The book contains information about how Native people are dealing with issues of online education, keeping up tribal language revitalization while social distancing, leadership during a time of crises, and of course, the crushing health and economic impact the virus is having on reservations across the country.
“Interviewees were generous with their time, stories and knowledge, and each student created a unique document,” said Thompson. “Our goal was for people to find solidarity in these stories, resources that would be helpful for their communities and hope for our future generations.”
Congratulations to Braveheart Gillani, Omoluyi Adesanya, Shanshan Du, and Tamsen Reed –- these outstanding students have been chosen as the 2020 Brown School Student Marshals.
Selection as a marshal is an honor. Students are nominated by faculty and other students for commitment to their scholarship, passion for their practica and contributions to the school community. Traditionally, student marshals have been tasked with carrying the degree banners and leading their respective classes into the Brown School Recognition Ceremony. Learn about this year’s Virtual Brown School Recognition Ceremony on the Commencement page.
Learn more about this year’s marshals, their time at the Brown School and what comes next for these changemakers.
Master of Social Work Marshal: Braveheart Gillani
MSW Concentration: Individualized, combining elements of Social & Economic Development and Mental Health
Braveheart’s nominators cited his kindness, his advocacy and his dedication to the Brown School community. As the MSW representative on the Student Coordinating Council, he advocated for inclusive practices, including the name and pronoun placards that are now in use throughout School classrooms.
During his time at the Brown School, he was a research assistant in the Social Systems Design Lab, where he worked on system dynamics models to better predict policy outcomes and helped facilitate modeling sessions across various communities.
“It’s hard to find solutions when you don’t understand the problem,” he said. “Community-based system dynamics helps us break out of our silos to better understand the mental models of others and clearly visualize systems driving our society.”
Braveheart has used his systems-focused training at the Center for Diversity and Inclusion and the Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention (RSVP) Center. He is also part of the first cohort for St. Louis Queer + Support Helpline, and during his concentration practicum, he helped lead RSVP’s Men’s Project, a student group that helps men examine concepts of masculinity.
After graduation, he will pursue his PhD at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he plans to utilize system dynamics to research issues that impact the queer community.
Master of Public Health Marshal: Omoluyi Adesanya
MPH Concentration: Global Health; Dual Degree MBA Student at Olin Business School
Luyi Adesanya came to the Brown School after completing a fellowship at the National Institute of Health in Washington D.C. When she was ready to start her graduate education, the opportunity to study public health within social entrepreneurship and a sustainable business framework led her to the Brown School.
“This program has given me the opportunity to see the interconnectedness of the disciplines. I think it gave me a different perspective on healthcare. Especially now with the pandemic, we see how much we need social work efforts and how all of this is still layered by business and economics,” Luyi says.
Luyi, the daughter of Nigerian and German immigrants, has served as a fellow for the university’s Africa Initiative. Through her involvement with the local National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE) minority health student advocacy group, she has advanced the availability of public health screenings for underserved populations within St. Louis City and County.
After graduating, Luyi looks forward to attending the public health sciences doctoral program at the University of Texas, furthering her interests in translational research, and dissemination and implementation sciences. She hopes to eventually work in lower-resource settings, developing and implementing sustainable and effective health systems.
Master of Social Policy Marshal: Shanshan Du
Shanshan Du knows that the key to good work and positive impact is expressing passion in all of the work that she does.
“I want to believe in myself, believe that I can make a difference through a commitment to work, and make a future that we want to see. Passion is really important,” she said.
Shanshan has been a dedicated researcher at the Brown School, focused on problems related to aging and working with Shenyang Guo, assistant vice chancellor for International Affairs – Greater China. She has even been able to apply her research to her interest in social entrepreneurship. Shanshan recently participated in Olin Business School’s Big Ideabounce, a campus-wide pitching contest, where she developed an idea around supporting older adult caregivers.
Shanshan is in a dual degree program with a partner university in China. After completing a summer policy research practicum, she will return to Renmin University in Beijing to complete her master of demography program.
Master of Social Work/Master of Public Health Dual-Degree Marshal: Tamsen Reed
MSW Concentration: Individualized; MPH Concentration: Generalist
When Tamsen Reed realized that the vital voices of social workers were not being included in voices around climate adaptation, she realized she had found her niche.
Tamsen developed her own research practicum with the help of professor Christine Ekenga to look deeper into mitigation efforts around coastal erosion. She also started the Climate Change at Brown group, which is dedicated to giving students more professional development opportunities, while also emphasizing that all Brown School students are going to have to navigate the social and health impacts of climate issues at some point. She believes public health and social work practitioners can offer a much-needed perspective: an awareness of vulnerabilities and inequities that have been built into our current systems, and how they may be exacerbated by climate issues.
Tamsen volunteered her time in the Admissions Office as well as in the coordination of Research Without Walls, the annual student research symposium. Tamsen says she chose the Brown School because she recognized early on that she would find other dedicated and passionate people like herself.
“We have so many incredible people who have come from very different places to do very different things. What unites everyone, in my opinion, is the dedication with which we do it,” she says.
She’ll be entering a PhD program in City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill in the fall where she will continue working on climate mitigation issues.
High levels of social distancing would lower the COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death rates over the next six months across all counties in Missouri, finds a new study from Washington University in St. Louis.
Although death rates will be lower than in urban areas due to lower population density, rural areas will see significant numbers of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. In all regions, projections are impacted by the local levels of social distancing, the study’s authors wrote in a recently released paper.
“Our analysis illustrates that greater levels of social distancing will lead to lower rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death over the next six months throughout Missouri,” said Abigail Barker, research assistant professor at the Brown School and faculty lead for data and methods at the university’s Center for Health Economics and Policy at the Institute for Public Health (CHEP). She is lead author of the CHEP policy brief “High Levels of Social Distancing Lower the Projected Impact of COVID-19 in Missouri.”
“For example, with low social distancing, St. Louis County, with a population of 998,684 people, is projected to have 901,386 infections over the next six months, a 90.2% infection rate,” Barker wrote. “However, that number is reduced dramatically to 8,481 infections with high social distancing, or a 0.8% infection rate.”
The model that Barker and her colleagues built predicts that the overall rates of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death will be lower for rural areas than for urban areas over the next six months.
“However, we expect to see higher rates of hospitalization and death in rural areas among those infected, based on the age distribution and health of rural Missouri residents,” she said.
“Regardless of population size, all counties will see significant drops in the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths when social distancing is high,” Barker wrote. “Net changes in numbers will be larger for urban areas due to higher population counts, but rural areas may see higher relative decreases. Further, unlike urban areas, rural areas’ projections suggest cases could drop to zero with robust social distancing measures, due to the lower baseline spread of disease in the setting of lower population density.”
While the findings support social distancing to limit the spread and impact of COVID-19 in the state, higher levels of social distancing may lead to economic and social costs and it is unclear the amount of time a high level of social distancing will be needed to protect the health of Missourians.
“Areas with greater proportions of older individuals and people with chronic conditions face greater risks due to COVID-19 — and benefit more from social distancing — than other areas,” Barker said. “High levels of social distancing will lower the projected number of infections and hospitalizations, preventing hospitals from exceeding their maximum capacity, which would affect their ability to care for patients.”
In particular, she said, this could help reduce the burden in rural areas, which have fewer hospital beds and other resources, and would therefore be disproportionately burdened by an uncontrolled COVID-19 caseload.
The brief is accompanied by an interactive data visualization that is updated weekly with the latest data. Contributing authors to the policy brief were Kristine Huang, Leah Kemper, Linda Li, Timothy McBride and Karen Joynt Maddox, all affiliated with the Center for Health Economics and Policy. Second author Huang will be at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis this fall.
The Brown School faculty has published ground-breaking, field-defining work over the past year. Our publications range in issues across the broad spectrum of social work, public health and public policy.
“We are proud of the work of our faculty and gratified by the recognition of their achievements afforded by these publications,” said Mary McKay, Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School. “Publication ensures that their work will have lasting impact for the people it serves, and for the next generation of researchers.”
2020
Research Methods for Public Health
Amy Eyler (Springer 2020)
The textbook fills a gap in methods texts to focus on skills that are particularly needed for graduate students in public health in areas such as epidemiology and biostatistics. The book also addresses some topics not covered by other texts, such as summarizing and disseminating research.
Foundations of Physical Activity and Public Health, 2nd edition
Deborah Salvo, co-editor (Human Kinetics, 2020)
An updated edition of this textbook, which introduces the concepts of public health and kinesiology, techniques used to measure physical activity, and health effects of exercise and physical activity. The text shows readers how to advance the use of physical activity as a significant component in public health initiatives.
Inclusive Child Development Accounts
Jin Huang, Michael Sherraden and Li Zou, editors; Michal Grinstein-Weiss; Proscovia Nabunya; Stephen P. Roll, Fred Ssewamala, contributors (Routledge, 2020)
In the first part of the volume, scholars highlight the core feature of “inclusiveness” of CDAs in Singapore, Israel, and the United States. In the second part, scholars report on CDA policies and projects in Taiwan, Uganda, Korea, and mainland China. The book shows how asset building can be effective in diverse cultural and social contexts, and will be of great interest to scholars of social work, policy, investment, and development, as well as financial inclusivity.
Multilevel Modeling, 2nd edition
Douglas Luke (Sage Publications, 2020)
A concise, practical guide to building models for multilevel and longitudinal data, it provides a rationale for multilevel models; outlines the basic approach to estimating and evaluating a two-level model; discusses the major extensions to mixed-effects models; and provides advice for where to go for instruction in more advanced techniques. Rich with examples, the Second Edition expands coverage of longitudinal methods, diagnostic procedures, models of counts, power analysis, cross-classified models, and adds a new section added on presenting modeling results.
Statistics with R: Solving Problems Using Real World Data
Jenine Harris (Sage Publications, 2020)
Drawing on examples from across the social and behavioral sciences, this book introduces upper-level undergraduates and first-year graduate students to statistics, research, and the R software through an exploration of the world’s “tricky problems” faced by the book’s characters. Inspired by the programming group “R Ladies,” the book’s “R Team” works together to master the skills of statistical analysis and data visualization to untangle real-world messy data using R. This is the first student-friendly text to integrate foundational concepts with beginner-friendly R programming to guide students towards real-world application of statistical problems.
Rugged Individualism and the Misunderstanding of American Inequality
Mark Rank, co-author (Lehigh University Press, 2020)
This work explores and critiques the widespread perception in the United States that one’s success or failure in life is largely the result of personal choices and individual characteristics. As the authors show, the distinctively individualist ideology of American politics and culture shapes attitudes toward poverty and economic inequality in profound ways, fostering social policies that de-emphasize structural remedies.
Toward a Livable Life: A 21st Century Agenda for Social Work
Mark Rank, editor; Contributors: Wendy F. Auslander, Ana A. Baumann, Derek S. Brown, F. Brett Drake, Amy Eyler, Vanessa Fabbre, Patrick J. Fowler, Eleni Gaveras, Janelle Gibson, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Jenine K. Harris, Darrell Hudson, Kim J. Johnson, Melissa Jonson-Reid, Shanti K. Khinduka, Patricia L. Kohl, Matthew W. Kreuter, Edward F. Lawlor, Carolyn Lesorogol, Gena Gunn McClenden, Mary M. McKay, Molly Metzger, Nancy Morrow-Howell, Sojung Park, David Patterson Silver Wolf, Mark Rank, Rodrigo Reis, Stephen Roll, Barry Rosenberg, Anna Shabsin, Joseph Steensma, Rachel G. Tabak, Vetta Sanders Thompson
(Oxford University Press, 2020)
This volume explores many of today’s most critical issues facing America and the profession of social work. It features a wide range of leading social work scholars, brought together to explore and provide innovative solutions to these societal issues. Key topics include reducing health disparities; alleviating poverty; confronting discrimination; addressing inequality; building assets for lower income populations; preventing child maltreatment, fostering civic engagement; building healthy communities; achieving environmental justice; and engaging older adults.
2019
Physical Activity and Public Health Practice
Amy Eyler, co-editor (Springer Publishing, 2019)
This is the first evidence-based, practical textbook to guide readers through the process of conceptualizing, justifying, implementing, and evaluating physical activity interventions across a broad array of settings and populations. Presented from both a research and a practice perspective while discussing the best available research, it provides the basis for planning and implementing physical activity programs that work and can build healthier communities.
Grand Challenges for Society 2019
Tonya Edmond; Michal Grinstein-Weiss; Nancy Morrow-Howell; Mark R. Rank; Margaret Sherraden, contributors (NASW Press, 2019)
A primary resource for social work researchers, practitioners, policymakers, faculty, and students. Grand Challenges for Society not only provides the most up-to-date research, but also alerts the field to gaps in the literature that still need to be explored to achieve the aims of the Grand Challenges for Social Work.
Handbook of Health Social Work, 3rd edition
Wendy Auslander; Byron Powell, contributors (Wiley, 2019)
Thoroughly revised and updated, the third edition is an authoritative text that offers a comprehensive review of the diverse field of health social work. With contributions from a panel of international experts in the field, the book is theory driven and solidly grounded in evidence-based practice. The contributors explore both the foundation of social work practice and offer guidance on effective strategies, policies, and program development.
Re-visioning Public Health Approaches for Protecting Children
Melissa Jonson-Reid, contributor (Springer Publishing, 2019)
A focused and comprehensive examination of how to prevent and respond to child maltreatment using evidence-informed public health approaches and programs that meet the needs of vulnerable children, struggling families and communities. Presenting the reader with an array of innovative services used in different institutional and community context, this volume confronts the complex challenges found in implementing successful prevention programs in diverse cultural and political environments.
2018
Advancing the Science of Implementation across the Cancer Continuum
Peg Allen, Ross Brownson, Todd Combs, Douglas Luke, Byron Powell; Rachel Tabak, contributors (Oxford University Press, 2018)
An overview of research that can improve the delivery of evidence-based interventions in cancer prevention, early detection, treatment, and survivorship. Both comprehensive and accessible, this book is an ideal resource for researchers, clinical and public health practitioners, medical and public health students, and health policymakers.
Social Work Practice with Survivors of Sex Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation Tonya Edmond, co-editor (Columbia University Press, 2018)
As awareness and identification of sex trafficking and exploitation have grown, so has the need for improved social work responses. In this volume, expert practitioners, survivors, and researchers model the best practices for working with this population, using case examples and illustrative guides. Intended as a teaching tool for students or a supplementary manual for organizations, this book emphasizes interventions and treatments, working with specific populations, programmatic design recommendations, preventative work, and outreach interventions.
Brown School faculty, staff and students can access these publications through the Library website.