Meet Our Faculty

Darrell Gaskin, PhD '95, MS, is a health economist who advances community, neighborhood, and market-level policies and programs that reduce health disparities.

Roland J. Thorpe, Jr., PhD, MS, is a gerontologist and social epidemiologist with nationally-recognized expertise in minority aging, men’s health, and place-based disparities.

Keshia Pollack Porter, PhD '06, MPH, uses research to advance policies that promote health equity, especially where people live, work, play, and travel.

Genee Smith, MSPH, PhD, is passionate about using her training in environmental epidemiology exposure assessment and spatial analysis to promote environmental justice and alleviate placed-based health disparities.

Janice Bowie, PhD '97, MPH, is Chair of the Doctor of Public Health program and an expert in health disparities and community-based research methods.

Kelly Bower’s research and her public health nursing practice focus on the elimination of racial disparities in women’s, maternal, and infant health. She aims to understand the structural and social determinants that underlie disparities and develop interventions to reverse them.

Lee Bone, MPH '77, RN, is a community-driven trailblazer and a fearless silo-buster for sustainable change in the context of urban health and chronic disease.

Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH '93, works to advance health equity with scholarship on racial disparities in patient-physician communication and community-informed interventions.

Dr. Dean is Associate Professor in Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. As a social epidemiologist, her work focuses on privilege and health, including social (structural racism, discrimination, social capital) and economic (consumer credit, socioeconomic position) determinants of disparities in cancer and HIV. She has led several studies as PI of NIH and Center for AIDS Research grants. She holds a doctorate from Harvard School of Public Health and was a J. William Fulbright program awardee to Venezuela.  

Chanee Fabius, PhD, MA, conducts research to improve aging and disability policy while supporting health equity for older adults, caregivers, and the direct care workforce.

Danetta Hendricks Sloan, PhD, MSW, MA, uses community-based approaches to inform interventions to reduce inequities in palliative and end of life care with partnerships with the Black Church.

Michelle Spencer, MS, is a public health practitioner who focuses on the impacts of health equity, racial disparities, and health outcomes through community-based initiatives.

Aisha Dickerson, PhD, MSPH, studies environmental exposures and their disproportionate impact on autism and dementia risks in underserved communities across the lifespan.

Cassandra Crifasi, PhD '14, MPH, studies how evidence-based policies and programs can reduce violence and advance equity.

Charvonne N. Holliday Nworu, PhD, MPH, examines racial/ethnic differences in intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion & women’s contraceptive decision making in IPV context.

Dr. Linder is the Co-Director of The Center for Diversity in Public Health Leadership Training (The Center for Diversity)  at Kennedy Krieger Institute and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. 

Sarah L Szanton PhD 2007, RN, ’93 is a gerontologist and nurse practitioner with expertise in innovative models of care to improve health equity, measuring structural racism, structural resilience, and the role of financial strain in health.

Teresa Brockie, PhD, RN, FAAN is an Indigenous nurse scientist and educator whose research focuses on achieving health equity through community-based prevention and intervention of suicide, trauma, and adverse childhood experiences among vulnerable populations. She is an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing with a Joint Appointment in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center for Indigenous Health. She is a member of the A'aninin Nation from Fort Belknap, Montana, Dr. Brockie earned her PhD at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.

Hossein Zare, Ph.D., MS, is a health service researcher with lots of experience in econometrics analysis. His research focuses on neighborhoods and violence (specifically police violence), income inequality and health outcome, and hospital social responsibilities to reduce health disparities.

Tanjala S. Purnell PhD '12, MPH, FASN is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She holds joint appointments in Surgery, Health Policy and Management, and Health Behavior and Society. Dr. Purnell is an internationally recognized thought leader whose research focuses on advancing health equity in transplantation/organ donation and related chronic diseases, including chronic kidney diseases, hypertension, and diabetes. Dr. Purnell has facilitated health equity mentoring opportunities for over 150 diverse scholars, organized novel seminars for over 7,000 academic and community members, and developed health equity research methods courses for over 8,000 learners worldwide.

Andrew Anderson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His work aims to increase the visibility of health care needs among historically marginalized populations. Before Hopkins, he was an assistant professor at Tulane University, a research scientist at the National Committee for Quality Assurance, and a director of quality measurement at the National Quality Forum. Anderson earned a Ph.D. in health services research from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Ellesse-Roselee Akré (pronounced E-lease /rose-lee/ac-cray) is a tenure track assistant professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Health Policy and Management Department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. She completed her BA in Psychology with a minor in Africana Studies from San Diego State University, an MA in Women’s Health from Suffolk University, and a PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Maryland, College Park. 

Dr. Akré is an interdisciplinary health services researcher and health equity scholar with expertise in understanding and measuring structural racism, sexism, and heterosexism in health care and in health systems, and their causal relationship to access and utilization disparities.