Expert Directory
Tracy R.G. Gladstone, PhD
Senior Research Scientist and Associate Director
Wellesley College, Wellesley Centers for WomenMental Health, Psychology, Depression
Tracy R. G. Gladstone, Ph.D., is an associate director and senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women as well as the inaugural director of the Robert S. and Grace W. Stone Primary Prevention Initiatives, which aims to research, develop, and evaluate programs to prevent the onset of depression and other mental health concerns in children and adolescents. She is also an assistant in psychology at Boston Children’s Hospital, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, and a research scientist at Judge Baker Children’s Center. At the Wellesley Centers for Women, Gladstone is evaluating an internet-based depression prevention intervention for at-risk adolescents in a multi-site, federally funded trial. As a senior member of the Baer Prevention Initiatives Dissemination Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, she is working on developing and disseminating web-based educational resources for clinicians and for parents who are concerned about depression. She has served as a senior member of the Preventive Intervention Project research team at Judge Baker Children’s Center, which compares two family-based prevention programs for early adolescents at risk for depression because they have a parent with a depressive disorder. She also has developed and piloted a cognitive-behavioral group intervention for women who are recovering from fistula repair surgery in Ethiopia. Gladstone holds a health service provider psychologist license in Massachusetts and has been trained in evidence-based clinical prevention and intervention protocols. She has conducted prevention-oriented work with children and families, and she has served as a clinical supervisor for researchers working with depressed families, as well as for clinical trainees. She has co-authored a number of peer-reviewed manuscripts reporting the results of her research endeavors and has taken an active role in teaching about depression, prevention, and intervention in local, national, and international settings.
Non-traditional students, anti-poverty, Sociology, Student Parent, Higher Education, Higher Education (First Generation)
Autumn Green, Ph.D., is an applied sociologist and nationally recognized scholar in higher education and anti-poverty programs. Her research and advocacy focus on college access and success for low-income, first-generation, and non-traditional students, especially student parents. As a research scientist at WCW, Dr. Green is finalizing multiple publication projects based on her research on college access and success for student parents and their children, particularly a book-length manuscript (with Amanda Freeman, University of Hartford) tentatively titled Low-Income Parents in Higher Education, with the support of a Russell Sage Foundation Presidential Award; she is also working on several article-length manuscripts. Additionally, Dr. Green is developing a pilot and demonstration project proposal for, The Two-Generation Classroom, offering a new approach to postsecondary teaching & learning. Green has presented across the country on two-generational anti-poverty approaches. Most recently, she served as principal investigator on major grants through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Ascend at the Aspen Institute, and the U.S. Department of Education as director of National Replication for the Keys to Degrees Program, founding director of the National Center for Student Parent Programs, and assistant professor of Sociology at Endicott College. Green earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in sociology at Boston College, where she was awarded a nationally competitive American Dissertation Fellowship by the AAUW, as well as multiple competitive awards. She also holds an M.Ed. in Community, Arts and Education from Lesley University, and completed her undergraduate degrees at the University of Oregon and Chemeketa Community College.
Adolescent Development, Sexual Health, Risk-taking, Ethnic Identity, Racial
Jennifer M. Grossman, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) and a former National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) postdoctoral research fellow at WCW. Her research uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate adolescent development, sexual health, and risk-taking, with an emphasis on family communication about sex and relationships, and contexts of teens’ environment and identities, such as gender, race, and ethnicity. Grossman initially joined WCW in August 2006 as a NICHD postdoctoral research fellow. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College, her M.A. in counseling at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Boston College in 2005. In addition to her research work, Grossman is a licensed psychologist. She completed her clinical internship and postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General Hospital, working primarily with children and adolescents. Her clinical experiences inform her research work and enhance her commitment to addressing health inequities through research, program development, and systemic change in support of healthy youth development. Grossman is currently principal investigator of an R21 award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development -- Adolescent Communication with Family and Reproductive Health, which includes the first comprehensive assessment of teens’ sexuality communication with extended family and its associations with sexual behavior as well as an exploration of extended family approaches to talking with teens about sex. Grossman is also principal investigator of an R03 award from the National Institutes of Child and Human Development -- Risk Behaviors Among Offspring of Teen Parents: Effects of Parenting on the Next Generation, which addresses the potential of maternal and paternal parenting to reduce the high risk of early sex and teen pregnancy for offspring of teen parents. She recently completed a project funded by Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts (PPLM) – the Formative Evaluation of Planned Parenthood Family Communication App, which assessed the preliminary effectiveness of a mobile website for parents of youth enrolled in PPLM’s middle school curriculum, Get Real: Comprehensive Sex Education That Works. Findings showed that parents and teens reported significantly more talk with teens about relationships and sexuality after exposure to Get Real family activities than before participating in the program. Parents described the online activities as useful in talking with their teens about sexuality and relationships and found the activities helped bring up new conversation topics about teens’ health. Grossman’s current research focuses on adolescent sexual risk and prevention, evaluation of preventive programs, teens’ communication with parents and extended family about sex and relationships, and how that communication influences teen sexual attitudes and behavior.
Georgia Hall, PhD
Associate Director; Director, National Institute on Out-of-School Time
Wellesley College, Wellesley Centers for Womenyouth development , out-of-school time, Physical Activity, Healthy Eating
Georgia Hall, Ph.D., is director of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) and associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women. Hall specializes in research and evaluation on youth development programs, settings, and learning experiences. Her work has focused extensively on strategies to improve out-of-school time program quality along with investigations of summer learning programs and STEM initiatives for girls. Hall serves as principal investigator on several multi-year research projects and is a frequent presenter at national conferences, seminars, and meetings. Hall’s work has included management of many types of large research and technical assistance projects including supervising logistics, development and execution of fieldwork and data collection systems, data processing, analysis, and reporting, and overall communication and collaboration with project partners and funders.
Layli Maparyan, PhD
Katherine Stone Kaufmann '67 Executive Director - Professor of Africana Studies
Wellesley College, Wellesley Centers for Womenwomanist theory, activist methodology, womanism, Social Identities
Layli Maparyan, Ph.D., is the Katherine Stone Kaufmann ’67 Executive Director of the Wellesley Centers for Women and Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She is best known for her scholarship in the area of womanism and is the author of two groundbreaking texts in the field of womanist studies, The Womanist Reader (Routledge, 2006) and The Womanist Idea (Routledge, 2012); a third book is forthcoming. Maparyan has also published significantly in the areas of adolescent development, social identities, (including biracial/biethnic identity and the intersections of racial/ethnic, sexual, spiritual/religious, and gender identities), Black LGBTQ studies, Hip Hop studies, and history of psychology. Maparyan’s scholar-activist work interweaves threads from the social sciences and the critical disciplines, incorporating basic and applied platforms around a common theme of integrating identities and communities in peaceable, ecologically sound, and self-actualizing ways. Prior to joining WCW, Maparyan was Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and associated faculty of African American Studies at Georgia State University (GSU). While there, she served as inaugural Chair of the University Consortium for Liberia (UCL), a regional collective of Southeastern U.S. institutions with projects in Liberia, West Africa. In 2009, Maparyan was a Contemplative Practice Fellow of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, and, in 2010, she served as a Fulbright Specialist at the University of Liberia, where she developed a model gender studies curriculum. Before GSU, she was Assistant Professor of Psychology and African American Studies at the University of Georgia (UGA). While at UGA, she co-founded and co-directed the Womanist Studies Consortium, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowships residency site, for which she recruited and supported scholars and interns from the U.S. and around the world and published a journal, The Womanist (later Womanist Theory and Research). Maparyan holds a Ph.D. in Psychology with an emphasis on lifespan human development from Temple University and an M.S. in Psychology with an emphasis on developmental psychology from the Pennsylvania State University. She is a graduate of Spelman College, where she majored in philosophy.
Early Childhood Education, Child Development, early care and education, School Readiness
Wendy Wagner Robeson, Ed.D., is a senior research scientist on the Work, Families, & Children Team. Her work at the Centers is focused on child development (birth to age 8), child care policy, early childhood care and education, and school readiness. Robeson began her career as a middle school language arts, reading, ESL and English teacher in Houston, Texas, after graduating from Boston University with a degree in education, math, and English. After finishing her master’s degree in early childhood education at the University of Houston, Robeson pursued her interest in children’s language development and psycholinguistics at Harvard Graduate School of Education and earned her doctoral degree. In addition, to her research, Robeson has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Robeson’s vast body of work includes the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which sought to determine the relationship between children's early experiences and their developmental outcomes, the Massachusetts Early Care and Education and School Readiness Study and the Ready Educators Quality Improvement Pilot.
Sexual Violence, sexual violence prevention in K-12 schools, gender violence, Sexual Harrasment
Nan Stein, Ed.D., is a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She has conducted research on sexual harassment/gender violence in K-12 schools and teen dating violence for more than 30 years and co-led the Shifting Boundaries, school-based dating violence prevention program. A former middle school social studies teacher, drug and alcohol counselor, and gender equity specialist with the Massachusetts Department of Education, she has collaborated with teachers’ unions and sexual assault/domestic violence agencies throughout the U.S. Stein has authored many book chapters, law review articles, and academic journal articles as well as commentaries for the mainstream media and the educational press, and often served as an expert witness in Title IX/sex discrimination-sexual harassment lawsuits in K-12 schools heard in federal and state courts. She has been featured in scores of print and broadcast media stories. Stein’s research portfolio has been funded by the National Institute of Justice of the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Education, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Education Association, the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation, and other private family foundations. With funding from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Stein has been studying schools to prevent Dating Violence/Harassment (DV/H). The long-term goal of this study is helping prevent dating violence, sexual violence, and sexual harassment by employing the most rigorous methods to evaluate strategies for altering the violence-supportive attitudes and norms of youth. The study evaluates the relative effectiveness of Shifting Boundaries, a multi-level approach to DV/H prevention programming (in terms of knowledge, attitudes, intended behavior, behavior, and emotional safety of youth participants) for middle school students in 55 middle schools in a large urban school district. Stein is also working with the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative Team at the Wellesley Centers for Women to document the current landscape (the breadth and differences) of campus approaches to investigations and adjudication of sexual assault. The project will result in guidelines that will assist colleges with assessing their capacity and preparedness to meet new and existing demands for sexual assault response models. Stein holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Wisconsin, a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Antioch College Graduate School of Education, and a Doctorate in Education from Harvard University Graduate School of Education. In 2007, she received the Outstanding Contribution to Education award from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
Linda M. Williams, PhD
Senior Research Scientist; Director, Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative
Wellesley College, Wellesley Centers for WomenCriminal Justice, Sexual Violence, Human Trafficking, Child Abuse
Linda M. Williams, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist and director of the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative at the Wellesley Centers for Women. The focus of her current work is on the justice system response to sexual violence, commercial sexual exploitation of women and children, human trafficking, intimate partner violence, child maltreatment, and prevention of sexual violence on college campuses. Williams returned to WCW after serving as a professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell (2005-2015), where she is now Professor Emerita. Author of many books and scholarly publications, Williams has lectured internationally on sexual violence, commercial sexual exploitation, trauma & memory, and researcher-practitioner collaborations. She served as an invited expert for the first international expert meeting on domestic sex trafficking under the auspices of the National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings and Sexual Violence against Children in The Hague, Netherlands, and on the National Research Council Panel on Violence Against Women. For the past 42 years, Williams has directed research on violence against women, sexual exploitation of children, sex offenders, and the consequences of child abuse. She has been the principal investigator on 16 U.S. federally funded research projects (and has directed research funded by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, the National Institute of Mental Health, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of the Navy, and private foundations). Williams earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania where she studied at the Center for Criminology and Criminal Law. In 1996 Williams joined the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) as director of research at the Stone Center. Until her departure in the fall of 2005, she continued her examination of the resilience of women, children, and families. She conducted research designed to understand and prevent the negative consequences of violence against women and children and collaborated on international research and action projects.
Social Determinants, racial injustices, cultural biases, Black Women, Black Girls
LaShawnda Lindsay, Ph.D., is a research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW). Over the past decade, her research has created a platform that sheds light on the social determinants, racial injustices, and cultural biases that burden the progression and viability of Black girls and women. She has mentored Black girls, implemented sustainable programs and initiatives for Black girls, and most recently founded Black Girls Matter: A Social Media Campaign. Prior to joining WCW, Lindsay served as the interim chairperson and an associate professor of education at Paine College in Augusta, GA. Lindsay also uses her passion and creativity to enhance the wellbeing of girls and women by designing and creating her own line of jewelry and accessories, Ananse Design Essentials, LLC. This entrepreneurial endeavor and decade of research on/about/for black girls has promoted the creation of a new initiative, Black Girls Create (BGR). BGR is an informal STEM learning program that integrates fashion design and engineering to increase Black girls’ interest and value in STEM education and careers. Lindsay directs Black Girls Create, a culturally responsive STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) program that uses digital fabrication projects to increase underserved girls' interest and confidence in science and math. The project builds on the notion that informal learning spaces can provide underserved students with access to quality STEM activities that are often unavailable in their schools. M.Ed., Counselor Education, Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Augusta University, December 2015 Ph.D., Educational Psychology, Georgia State University, May 2010 Graduate Certificate, Women’s Studies, Georgia State University, May 2009 M.Ed., Educational Psychology, Howard University, May 2003 B.S., Psychology, Morris Brown College, May 2001
Literature, environmental literature
During his 17 years at Saint Mary's, Sindt provided exceptional academic and administrative leadership, serving as program director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing, the associate dean of the School of Liberal Arts, the dean of the Kalmanovitz School of Education, the vice provost for graduate and professional studies, and the vice provost for academic affairs. He has led initiatives in several areas, such as career and professional development, community engagement, educational effectiveness, faculty development, institutional research, international studies, sponsored research, and student success. In 2011-2012, he was selected as an American Council of Education Fellow, the nation's premier training program for university administrators. He currently serves as chair-elect of the Board of Directors of the Council of Graduates and Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Sindt earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, and his master’s and doctoral degree in English from the University of California, Davis. Sindt has been honored with numerous awards and fellowships for his poetry, including the James D. Phelan Award and fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Blue Mountain Center. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Bodies, and most recently, System and Population. In addition to poetry, his research interests include the literature of California and environmental literature.
law and business , Behavioral Neurosciences, Business
Jonathan Brand became the 15th president of Cornell College in July 2011. Under his leadership and thanks to two consecutive institutional strategic plans, the college continues to anticipate and respond to the needs and wants of students. This includes launching new academic programs, developing a new core curriculum, strengthening student support services, starting a summer research institute, and adding intercollegiate sports. The college opened a new science building and renovated its Thomas Commons, first-year residence halls, numerous academic buildings, and an expanded athletics facility. The recent $80 million Greater>Than campaign resulted in gifts of $118 million.
Before coming to Cornell, he served six years as President of Doane College in Crete, Nebraska, and seven years as Vice President of Institutional and Budget Planning and Special Assistant and Counsel to the President at Grinnell College.
Brand teaches in Cornell’s Department of Politics. His writing on higher education includes a chapter in the book “Making College Better: Views from the Top,” an ongoing Presidential White Paper series, and articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and The Huffington Post. He has spoken at conferences sponsored by the NCAA and the Council of Independent Colleges, among others.
He is an avid runner, practicing with the college’s track and cross-country teams and competing in 12 marathons.
Brand has been involved with Cornell’s Center for Law and Society’s Mock Trial program and he is on the advisory committee for the Law School Admission Council’s new Legal Education Program to help students develop the skills necessary for success in law. He is a member of the board of directors of the Putney Open Door Fund, which offers scholarship support for economically disadvantaged high school students, and has led the annual fundraising for the Iowa Peace Institute, a non-profit organization committed to alternative dispute resolution.
He holds a law degree from Cornell University, a master's degree in French literature from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor's degree in history and French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Gender Equality, Gender Equity, Multicultural Education, Privilege, Oppression
Emmy Howe is a co-director of the National SEED Project, a peer-led professional development program of the Wellesley Centers for Women that creates conversational communities to drive personal, organizational, and societal change toward greater equity and diversity. Howe trains educators and community leaders to facilitate experiential, interactive exercises and conversations that explore issues of systemic privilege and oppression.
Economics of labor markets, Economy, gender pay gap, Entreprenership, Immigrant Workers, Women In The Workforce
Sari Pekkala Kerr, Ph.D., is an economist and a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) at Wellesley College, whose studies and teaching focus on the economics of labor markets, with a focus on women in the workplace and immigrant's economic contributions. Her current research explores the way the gender pay gap changes throughout a woman's career. She is also studying entrepreneurship as a pathway to social mobility for women and their children. Prior research by Dr. Kerr has explored the characteristics of immigrant entrepreneurs in the U.S. Before joining WCW in 2010, Dr. Kerr previously worked at the Government Institute for Economic Research in Helsinki. She also served as an adjunct professor or visiting scholar to the economics departments of MIT, Boston University, and the University of Kent at Canterbury. Additionally, Dr. Kerr has extensive private sector experience as an economic consultant for Charles River Associates and Keystone Strategy. Dr. Kerr received a University Diploma in Economics from the University of Kent at Canterbury in England, and her M.A. in Economics, Business Studies, Education and Linguistics, and her Ph.D. from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.
Michael B. Dennin, PhD
Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Dean of Division of Undergraduate Education & Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning
University of California, IrvineBiophysics, condensed matter physics
Professor Dennin earned his A. B. from Princeton University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He held a postdoctoral position at UCLA. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and a Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar. Professor Dennin's main research interest is systems that exhibit emergent properties. These include the behavior of complex fluids, such as foam and sand, as well as the complex dynamics of biological systems. Professor Dennin is well-known for popularizing science for the public. He has taught many online courses on the nature of science, including team teaching a MOOC based on the television program, The Walking Dead. He has appeared on a number of television programs, including Spider-man Tech, Batman Tech, Star Wars Tech, and Ancient Aliens.
Stephen Conard, MA
Continuity & Emergency Manager
University at Albany, State University of New YorkEmergency Management, Human Resources, Public Administration
Conard worked as the state exercise officer for the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA). He started as an intern under the regional planning program in 2009, where he supported municipalities through planning initiatives and developing the Rhode Island School Safety Program. Three years ago, he began an initiative at RIEMA to assist the 39 Rhode Island municipalities in becoming recognized “StormReady” communities and achieved this goal last February. Conard received a bachelor’s degree in emergency management from SUNY Canton in 2010, and both a master’s certificate in human resources (2012) and a Master of Public Administration (2013) from the University of Rhode Island.
Jeffrey Cohen, MD
President
Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS)Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Lumbar Puncture, Devic's Disease, Neuroimmunology
Cohen began studying multiple sclerosis (MS) in the 1980s when it was still considered an untreatable disease. Today, 15 disease-modifying treatments are approved for MS, and Cohen said he has “been involved in some way or another” with the development of each of them. Cohen has worked with ACTRIMS since its founding in 1995. The group is made up of clinicians and researchers across North America who focus on sharing knowledge in hopes of improving MS treatment options and providing training to early-career physicians and scientists. It has counterparts in other areas of the world, including the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS). During his residency, which began in 1981, Cohen was drawn to neuroscience and immunology, both fields than in their infancies and both notoriously complex. “MS is a field where those two topics intersect,” he told Multiple Sclerosis News Today. He came to the Mellen Center in 1994, just one year after the first disease-modifying treatment, Betaseron (interferon beta 1b, marketed by Bayer HealthCare), was approved for MS. He treats a large population of MS patients there and was named director of its Experimental Therapeutics Program in 2014. He designs and runs clinical trials for MS and related diseases, while training other specialists in the skills necessary to run MS trials.
Benjamin Segal, MD
Chair, Department of Neurology; Director, Neuroscience Research Institute Co-director, Neurological Institute
Ohio State UniversityMultiple Sclerosis (MS), Neuroimmunology
As of July 1, 2019 Benjamin M. Segal, MD, assumed the roles of chair of the Department of Neurology and Director of the Neurological Research Institute at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He is also co-director of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Neurological Institute. He earned his medical degree Brown University, completed his internship in medicine at University of Chicago and conducted his residency in neurology at New York Hospital/Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Dr. Segal began his academic career at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he conducted innovative research in multiple sclerosis and immunology. In 2000, he was recruited to the Department of Neurology at the University of Rochester. That year he was awarded the prestigious Harry Weaver Neuroscience Scholar award by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. The University of Michigan—home to one of our nation’s top neurology programs—recruited Dr. Segal to lead its Division of Multiple Sclerosis in 2007. Under Dr. Segal’s leadership, the University of Michigan became a national referral center for the treatment of patients with multiple sclerosis. The MS clinic population expanded in size from approximately 400 to 4,000 patients during his tenure. Dr. Segal is internationally recognized for his work in multiple sclerosis (MS) and neuroimmunology. With annual NIH funding for his ongoing research programs in excess of 1.3 million dollars, his discoveries have contributed to the basic understanding of the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS) and similar diseases. He has shown that the type of inflammation that causes damage to the nervous system during MS can vary among individuals, suggesting that pharmaceutical regimens must be personalized for each patient. Dr. Segal has directed a number of industry- and government-sponsored clinical trials and biomarker studies that focus on individuals with relapsing and progressive forms of the disease. More recently, his laboratory is investigating how destructive immune responses in the nervous system can be skewed and redirected to initiate repair. He publishes in high impact academic journals, including the Journal of Clinical Investigation,Annals of Neurology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and Lancet Neurology. Dr. Segal has received innumerable awards, lectured nationally and internationally and served on multiple NIH study sections, including co-chairing the major review panel in his field. He holds several patents and is a member of every major organization in neurology. Dr. Segal served as Program Chair for the annual meeting of the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) between 2016 and 2018, and he currently serves as a Director at ACTRIMS. Through ACTRIMS, he has developed an annual national symposium to educate neurology residents and young research investigators about the diagnosis, pathogenesis, and treatment of MS. Dr. Segal was inducted into the University of Michigan League of Research Excellence in 2014. He was a Senior Scholar of the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute and has been named among the Best Doctors in America for the past eight years.
Michael J. Yedidia, PhD
Research Professor & Senior Medical Sociologist Center for State Health Policy
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers UniversityChildhood Obesity, Childhood Obesity Prevention, Public Health
Michael J. Yedidia (Ph.D., Brandeis University; M.P.H., Yale University) is a Research Professor and Senior Medical Sociologist at the Center for State Health Policy. His research focuses on health professions education, prevention of childhood obesity, population health, access to care, patient perspectives on health and illness, and quality improvement. He currently leads an NIH-funded study of the determinants of childhood obesity, following a panel of low-income children in four cities over five years and assessing the impact of aspects of the food and physical activity environment on weight status. He also directs a project providing support for promoting a culture of health to 20 community coalitions in New Jersey. He has conducted numerous evaluation studies of health professions education programs including two multi-site, controlled evaluations of curricular interventions, one in undergraduate medical education (teaching communications competencies at three medical schools) and the other in graduate medical and nursing education. He was also national program director for Evaluating Innovations in Nursing Education, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s national initiative to support evaluation of interventions addressing the nurse faculty shortage. Prior to joining the faculty at Rutgers, Dr. Yedidia was a senior health services researcher at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and taught medical sociology, health policy, and research methods at the Department of Sociology and the Medical Education Program at Brown University.
Johanna Schoen, PhD
Professor, Department of History
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers Universityreproductive policies, Abortion, Death And Dying, end-of-life care
Johanna Schoen (Ph.D. Univ. of North Carolina, 1996) is a professor in the Department of History. Her major interests are the history of women and medicine, the history of reproductive rights, and the history of sexuality. Her research traces women’s health and reproductive care through the twentieth century. Her first book, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare, examines the role which birth control, sterilization, and abortion played in public health and welfare policies between the 1920s and the 1970s. In 2002, she shared her research on the history of eugenic sterilization in North Carolina with a journalist from the Winston Salem Journal. North Carolina’s sterilization program ran from the 1920s to the 1970s and led to the sterilization of more than 7,000 people. The paper ran a week-long series of articles on the subject which ultimately resulted in an official apology by the governor of North Carolina. In 2007, Schoen designed an exhibit on North Carolina’s eugenic sterilization program which opened that year in the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. In 2014, North Carolina began to pay restitution to sterilization victims – the first state in the country to take such a step. Schoen’s second book, Abortion After Roe, which won the William H. Welch Medal for the best book in the history of medicine by the American Association for the History of Medicine, traces the history of abortion since legalization. Abortion is – and always has been – an arena for contesting power relations between women and men. When in 1973 the Supreme Court made the procedure legal throughout the United States, it seemed that women were at last able to make decisions about their own bodies. In the four decades that followed, however, abortion became ever more politicized and stigmatized. Abortion After Roe chronicles and analyzes what the new legal status and changing political environment have meant for abortion providers and their patients. It sheds light on the little-studied experience of performing and receiving abortion care from the 1970s – a period of optimism – to the rise of the antiabortion movement and the escalation of antiabortion tactics in the 1980s to the 1990s and beyond, when violent attacks on clinics and abortion providers led to a new articulation of abortion care as moral work. More than four decades after the legalization of abortion, the abortion provider community has powerfully asserted that abortion care is a moral good. For decades, Schoen has worked with abortion providers to preserve the history of legal abortion in the United States and to use historical analysis and insights to help preserve access to abortion care. Her current work explores ethical frameworks in defense of the right to decide over life and death in abortion care, neonatology, and at the end of life in so-called physician assisted deaths. With Kim Mutcherson from the Rutgers Law School at Camden, she is co-directing the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis Life and Death Seminar from 2019-2021. In her spare time, she volunteers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where she is a member of the Patient and Family Advisory Counsel for Quality and the Ethics Committee and works on improving end-of-life conversations between clinicians, patients, and caregivers.
Stephen Crystal, PhD
Director, Center for Health Services Research Board of Governors Professor, School of Social Work
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research at Rutgers UniversityOpioids, Children's Mental Health, long-term care, Nursing Homes, substance abuse treatment, Mental Health Medications
Stephen Crystal (Ph. D., Harvard, 1981) is a Research Professor and Chair of the AIDS Policy Research Group at the Institute. He directs the Center for Health Services Research, focusing on pharmacotherapy, chronic disease management, and outcomes, as well as the Center for Health Services Research Development, funded under a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research and Quality (AHRQ). Dr. Crystal also serves as Associate Director for Research of the Center for State Health Policy. Dr. Crystal’s research group conducts a variety of studies addressing use, access, costs and outcomes of health care services, as well as research on policies and programs affecting the elderly. The group has published extensively on HIV treatment and on health care for the elderly. A growing area of the group’s work in recent years has focused prescription drug use, management, outcomes and policies. The research group has developed and utilized a number of large and rich research databases to support research in all of these critical areas. Dr. Crystal’s work over the years in both academic and non-academic settings has addressed a range of key issues in state and local health policy; he has worked extensively on the delivery of health care services through state Medicaid programs. His research and publications in the aging area include work on economic well-being of the elderly; long-term care of older people; insurance status and the impact of out-of-pocket health care costs; Medicare policy; and pharmaceutical drug policies for lower income elderly. He heads a team of investigators addressing HIV health services delivery issues. His research group has developed the capacity to carry out detailed studies of Medicaid health care utilization and outcomes using claims and other administrative files and has applied this expertise to a series of studies funded by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and Quality (AHRQ), the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute on Aging, HHS’s Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Commonwealth Fund, and other agencies and foundations. He currently heads an NIMH-funded national study of treatment for geriatric depression. His more than 200 publications include books on old-age policy and on home health care, and research articles, reviews and technical reports addressing a wide range of issues in old-age policy, health services research, long-term care for the elderly, pharmaceutical use, mental health services, and other topics related to healthcare and aging. He is a frequent advisor to federal, state and international health agencies and has served on numerous study sections and peer reviews. He has served as Visiting Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy and as Chief of the Division of Health Care Sciences at the School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, he held a variety of senior positions in health services delivery in New York City government, managing major health and human services programs, and created and headed the Center for Human Services Research and Development, which conducted national studies in areas including home care and adult protective services. He has also served as an Urban Fellow in New York City’s Office of the Mayor, and consultant at the City’s Office of Management and Budget. His awards include the Abt Associates Prize for Public Policy Research and the John Kendrick Award for research on the economic status of the elderly.
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