Brown School Welcomes New PhD Students

The Brown School proudly welcomes its newest cohort of doctoral students. The 14 students in our 2024 cohort bring a wide variety of research interests and experiences that include mental and physical health disparities, reproductive justice, forced displacement, data science and machine learning, and dissemination and implementation science. Among these scholars, six are pursuing a PhD in Social Work and eight are pursuing a PhD in Public Health Sciences.

New Students in Social Work

Grace DeHorn is committed to finding avenues to restore a social safety net and improve working conditions for low-income populations. Following her Master’s in Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago, Grace worked as a project manager on the Fulfillment Center Intervention Study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she analyzed how work conditions impact health and well-being, personal and family life, and decisions about whether to stay in the job or leave.

Lindsay Bendell is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with an MSW from Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her career started in a Public Defender’s office where she developed a deep commitment to advocating for individuals facing criminal charges. Lindsay has bridged clinical practice in both public and private sectors, identifying gaps in current research that she aims to address in her PhD studies. Notably, she has contributed to securing freedom for five individuals serving life sentences while significantly reducing sentences for others. 

Saria Bechara holds bachelor degrees in Biology and Psychology from the Lebanese American University and a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan. Her research interests center around well-being among forcibly displaced and immigrant communities, and they are informed by her prior work as a psychosocial support provider for refugee caregivers and children in Lebanon. She is interested in examining the impact of migration trauma on well-being in different settings to compare how contextual factors differentially affect individual and community outcomes and in identifying individual- and community-level protective factors. Her goal is to translate this knowledge into practice by using it to inform the design and evaluation of migration policies and culturally-responsive interventions. 

Frederick Godwil Amissah earned his Bachelor of Arts in Social Work with Sociology from the University of Ghana and completed an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree in Social Work with Families and Children (MFAMILY) from four universities/countries in 2021. His years of experience as a child protection officer and youth mentor empowering care leavers, street-connected and other vulnerable (including trafficked) children across residential and non-residential settings in Ghana and Sweden have defined his research interests. Frederick’s research goals include developing culturally-/context-relevant interventions that (1) promote better psychosocial outcomes for young care leavers as well as children with caregiving responsibilities, and (2) strengthen family capacity in under-resourced settings.

Byeongju Ryu completed his undergraduate studies in health administration and social welfare in South Korea and received his MSW degree from the Brown School. After earning his MSW, Byeongju worked as a social worker specializing in community organizing at a social service organization in a public housing complex in South Korea. He also spent several years as a research project coordinator at the Brown School. With a strong interest in social and civic engagement in later life and environmental gerontology, he has chosen to pursue doctoral studies to empirically demonstrate the need to reframe aging and to examine how residential environments intersect with participation in social and civic activities in later life.

Shauntal Van Dreel earned their MSW from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in social work within school settings. They have extensive experience in various school-based mental health roles supporting clinical research trials for adolescents with ADHD, implementing K-12 district mental health interventions, and creating learning opportunities to enhance the social emotional professional practices of adult educators. Shauntal is a Predoctoral Fellow in the NIMH Mental Health Services Research T32 Program at the Brown School, where they focus on implementation science and school-based mental health interventions for youth. Their research particularly addresses the needs of queer adolescents facing issues of belonging and suicidality.

New Students in Public Health Sciences

Jemima Adepehin has a background in Food Science and Technology from the Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria. She has valuable experience as a program officer with two non-governmental organizations, where she coordinated nutritional, emotional, academic, health, and economic support for orphans and vulnerable children. She is particularly driven to address public issues related to maternal-child health and infant malnutrition through interdisciplinary research and health policy.

Debbie “Dada” Dada is passionate about global health justice, implementation science, and decolonial thought. Her research interests are in improving access to infectious disease prevention and care services among marginalized populations in Sub-Saharan Africa using participatory implementation science and addressing epistemic injustices within the field. She has conducted equity-focused research on HIV, TB, and COVID-19 in Ghana, Senegal, Chad, Uganda, Canada and the USA. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Urban Health. She earned her BA from Yale University double majoring in the History of Science, Medicine & Public Health, and African Studies while in the Global Health Scholars Program at the Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Lauren Nacke, MSW, LCSW, is deeply committed to the St. Louis community, where she has built her life and successful social work career. As chair of Abortion Action Missouri, she champions reproductive rights in the state. With a decade of experience as a perinatal social worker, Lauren is passionate about increasing access to healthcare and mental health services for pregnant and parenting individuals. She championed the creation of hospital policies within large healthcare systems that combat racial and insurance payor disparities, working towards a more just healthcare landscape.

Cindy Lixin Kang obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University in 2022 and her Master of Public Health degree from Yale School of Public Health in 2024. She has worked as a research assistant and medical assistant at Yale School of Medicine. She has conducted several cancer epidemiology research projects focusing on CNS tumors and hematological cancers with the aim of alleviating health burdens for society.

Anita Kabarambi, a medical doctor by training, has a bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery (MBChB) from Makerere University and a Master of Public Health degree from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has over a decade of experience conducting research in areas of HIV epidemiology and intervention studies mainly focused on HIV prevention -Oral PrEP, HIV vaccine trials and microbicides. She previously worked at the MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit as Scientist prior to joining the International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD) as a Research Director, a role which involved planning and overseeing the implementation of multiple NIH-funded studies. Her research interests include adolescent health, implementation science, HPV vaccine uptake, and HIV prevention and treatment outcomes.

Lena Schulhofer is committed to promoting adolescent mental health and well-being, preventing intergenerational trauma and violence and understanding the complex role of stigma and gender norms on related health and implementation outcomes in collaboration with communities affected by conflict and adversity. As a PhD in Public Health Sciences, she aims to combine systems and implementation science with participatory approaches to improve the uptake, implementation, evaluation and scale-up of culturally sensitive mental health and psychosocial interventions, with the ultimate goal of ensuring systems and services are effective, responsive and sustainable.

Shaquille Christmas grew up in Trinidad and Tobago and moved to Richmond, Virginia, where he earned a BA in Biology and Geography from the University of Richmond after which he earned an MPH from George Washington University. For the last two years, Shaquille has been an Epidemiologist at the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) working in program evaluation, cancer prevention, and maternal/child health. Prior to his role in DHSS, he worked for 6 years in vaccine development and vaccine education. His research interests are chronic disease prevention, particularly cancer, dissemination and implementation science, food security, and how we can utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to improve public health.

Odalis Hernandez is an incoming PhD student in public health sciences and AI-ACCESS fellow. Before returning to the Brown School, Odalis was an epidemiologist for the largest health insurance provider in Kansas City. Odalis is passionate about data storytelling, analysis, and centering equity and justice into data practices. She has co-authored a published article in the “Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.”