Brown School › 2023 › Page 4

Dear Brown School Community,

The violence in Israel and Gaza is weighing heavily on all our hearts. It is essential to remember that within our own community, there are individuals who have loved ones residing in Israel and Gaza, directly impacted by the chaos brought about by this war.

Unfortunately, the assault has now evolved into a humanitarian crisis affecting both Israelis and Palestinians, leading to ongoing casualties and trauma, especially among innocent children and families. Please check in with each other, ensuring that everyone feels cared for and supported. If you need additional assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ve also included a list of resources below for further support.

Sincerely,

Dorian Traube, PhD, LCSW (pronouns: she/her/hers)
Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean and Professor
Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis

Student Resources:

There will be a Jewish Community Solidarity Gathering on Wednesday, October 11, from 5:30 – 6:30 at the Jewish Community Center, 2, Millstone Campus Drive, Creve Coeur.

In addition, we welcome conversations with you to help you navigate these resources. If you would find this helpful, please contact:

Faculty & Staff Resources:


Nhial Tutlam, assistant professor at the Brown School and associate director for research at the International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD), has been awarded the highly prestigious K01 Research Scientist Career Development Award.

Over the next four years, this $720,000 award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will support Tutlam’s innovative research aimed at addressing mental health outcomes among youth from vulnerable refugee families resettled in the United States. Importantly, this award will provide him with training in community-based intervention development, mixed methods, and implementation science research.

Tutlam’s study titled, Resettled Refugee Families for Healing (RRF4H): A Study of the Intergenerational Impact of War Trauma and Resilience, will test an intervention designed to enhance the mental health well-being of second-generation refugee children by addressing intergenerational trauma-related mental health symptoms. This intervention combines a family strengthening intervention that has been successfully implemented to address mental health challenges among families facing multiple adversities in the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a peer mentorship program called TeenAge Health Consultants (TAHC), which Tutlam implemented as part of a violence prevention program in St. Louis county schools. The project will be implemented in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, cities with large resettled refugee populations.

Tutlam said, “Despite the high prevalence of trauma-associated emotional and behavioral problems among these vulnerable youth, there are very few interventions to address them. Therefore, this work has the potential to transform the lives of countless youth, providing them with the support and resources they need to heal and thrive.”

Learn more on the ICHAD webpage.

Ruopeng An, associate professor at the Brown School, has been accepted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Health Behavior (AAHB), the professional home for health behavior scholars and researchers.

“We are delighted to count Dr. An as a member of the Academy because of his significant record and scientific accomplishments,” said Hsien-Chang Lin, the AAHB president and a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington. 

An, one of three fellows accepted by the AAHB this year, also works in the Division of Computational and Data Services at Washington University in St. Louis. His research includes the assessment of population-level policies, local food and built environment, and socioeconomic determinants that affect individuals’ dietary behavior and physical activity, as well as adiposity in children, adults of all ages, and people with disabilities. His research aims to develop a well-rounded knowledge base and policy recommendations that can inform decision-making and the allocation of resources to combat obesity.

An’s research has been funded by federal agencies and public/private organizations, and he founded and chairs the Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics for Public Health Certificate program and hosts the “Artificial Intelligence in the Social Sciences” Open Classroom series at the Brown School. An has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal publications, and he is recognized as one of Elsevier’s top 2% most cited scientists, with work highlighted by media outlets such as TIME, the New York Times, and NPR.

“I am deeply honored to be elected a Fellow of an academy representing excellence and integrity in health behavior research,” An said. “This recognition underscores the importance of our interdisciplinary efforts to assess and influence the diverse determinants affecting health behaviors at the population level, and encourages our pursuit of actionable knowledge and the development of equitable policies that can substantively improve public health outcomes.”

A Brown School PhD student and three alumni are honorable-mention recipients of the 2023 Disability Manuscript Award, presented by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) for an article on refugees with disabilities.

Their submission, “A Scoping Review of Needs and Barriers to Achieving A Livable Life Among Refugees with Disabilities Implications for Future Research, Practice, and Policy,” examines the needs and barriers for refugees with disabilities in achieving better well-being.

The Brown School recipients are social work PhD student Mustafa Rfat, and alums Yingying Zeng, PhD ’23, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia; Yiqi Zhu MSW ‘12, PhD ‘21, an assistant professor at Adelphi University; and Yibin Yang, MSW ‘17.

Both Yingying and Mustafa are recognized as co-first authors, signifying their equally substantial contributions to the manuscript. 

The Disability Manuscript Award recognizes scholarship that contributes to knowledge about disability; full participation of persons with disabilities; social, political, and economic issues related to disability and persons with disabilities; and social work education curriculum materials focused on disability and persons with disabilities. 

The award recipients will be honored during the upcoming CSWE Annual Program Meeting, scheduled to be held from October 26-29 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Brown School alumna Sara Paracha, MSW ’19, has been named the 2023 Outstanding Emerging Professional by the St. Louis chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

The award is presented to an individual with five or fewer years of professional experience, recognizing their commitment to professionalism and leadership in the nonprofit community. Paracha is slated to be formally honored during the National Philanthropy Day event, set to take place on November 14 at the Marriott St. Louis Grand.

Currently, Paracha is the Lead Resource Development Catalyst at Forward Through Ferguson (FTF), where she spearheads fundraising efforts. Additionally, she serves on FTF’s Lead Council, a crucial component of the organization responsible for fostering overall organizational growth and development. 

Paracha’s earlier professional roles include working with the North Side Community School and Mathews-Dickey Boys’ & Girls’ Club. While still early in her fundraising career, she has drawn inspiration from the direct-service and front-line staff within these organizations.

“They are amazing!  Whether it’s leading a program, teaching a class, or organizing a town hall, the work that these folks do is critical to the execution of the organization’s mission,” she said. “I love being able to support by organizing resources so that these staff have everything they need to do their work in the communities that we serve.” 

A first-generation college student, Paracha is deeply appreciative of the support she received during her tenure at the Brown School. In particular, she is grateful for the pivotal mentorship provided by Barry Rosenberg, a professor of practice, with whom she maintains a close relationship.

“I was not familiar with all the management roles in the nonprofit space (especially on the development side) until my management class with Barry. I have sought advice on new jobs and areas of growth from him,” said Paracha, who was a Management Specialization student and Bettie Schroth Johnson Management Scholar. 

In 2022, the global Association of Fundraising Professionals recognized Paracha as an Outstanding Young Professional. The award spotlights fundraisers under the age of 31 who display excellence in raising funds, inspiring donors, managing campaigns, and dedication to the charitable sector.

For more than two decades, Brown School Professor Lora Iannotti’s work has focused on nutrition around the world, from a study of wild foods in Madagascar to an intervention aimed at feeding fish to more children in Kenya. Her new job title is certainly a mouthful, but it signifies important work that she believes will help carry public health to a new level at Washington University in St. Louis.

Iannotti has been named the first Director for Planetary Health and Environmental Justice at the new Center for the Environment at the university. The center will focus on biodiversity, planetary health, environmental justice, and environmental solutions with two underlying themes of earth systems and climate change as part of the university’s effort to elevate research and action in critical environmental domains. It will play a key role in “Here & Next,” the university’s strategic vision, and in the university’s plans to create a new school of public health, which it hopes to launch next year.

“We need to be serious about environmental change and its impacts globally,” Iannotti said. “There can be no more important issue underlying humanitarian crises, political turmoil, and overall destruction of our natural systems. It’s why I want to shift my own research portfolio in this direction and how I intend to spend the rest of my time in academia.” She said the effort is aimed at expanding the university’s portfolio in sustainability and environmental research and attract top faculty, students and staff from across the world in related areas. 

In announcing the creation of the Center for the Environment, Beverly Wendland, the provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the effort was a response to “the pressing need to protect and preserve our planet and its inhabitants,” while building on the environmental research that has long been done at the university. 

Iannotti’s career has positioned her well to be a leader of the effort.

She received her doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health after working for over 10 years with United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations on nutrition and food-security programming and policy; she joined the faculty at the Brown School in 2010. Her research has investigated ways to reduce stunted growth and development, and she’s led projects in Haiti, Ecuador, Madagascar and East Africa, where she collaborated with local partners to test new approaches to using animal-source foods and develop sustainable fisheries.

Her work in Madagascar and Kenya has been particularly relevant to her new post. In Madagascar, she collaborates with the Missouri Botanical Garden looking at the nutritional value of wild foods.  In Kenya, she led a team that worked with small-fisher households, encouraging them to keep a portion of the fish they catch to feed their children, and to use modified traps that allow young fish to escape, thereby protecting the marine ecosystem and increasing fish biomass. The result, she said, was the kind of win-win-win that she hopes to replicate many times over at the new center: “They caught more fish,  contributed to the richness of the species, and improved child nutrition.”

In 2018, Iannotti founded the E3 Nutrition Lab, which identifies affordable, sustainable and evolutionarily appropriate nutrition solutions around the world. She currently serves on public health advisory and journal editorial boards and is a consultant to the World Health Organization, among others.

A year ago, Wendland invited her to be part of the university’s strategic planning effort; she’s also on the nominating committee for a potential new Dean of Public Health.

Her new role at the Center for the Environment will require her to reduce her teaching responsibilities, but she will continue to do research, a major aim of the center.  “We want the center to be about serious research,” she said. In addition to attracting new students and faculty, she is planning to accelerate research through a new climate focus at the planned school of public health, and convene workshops to encourage collaboration, write grants, and communicate the center’s challenges and achievements.

Part of her role as a public-health representative at the center is to be a bridge to a new school of public health. “Our hope is that as the school is established and grows, we will be able to attract more faculty in planetary health research,” she said.

Overall, she and the center’s other leaders will be focused on the center’s ultimate goal: saving and renewing nature’s benefits for the planet. The results will benefit the world’s population, as well as its plants and animals, she said. “We’re all in the same ecosystem,” she said. “We need to address global environmental change and human health challenges by learning how to live in better harmony with our environment.”