Dustin T. Duncan, Director

Dustin T. Duncan, ScD is Associate Dean for Health Equity Research and Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Dr. Dustin T. Duncan is an internationally recognized academic leader and equity strategist. He creates and leads initiatives to rearchitect research systems, faculty development, and university design, operationalizing justice-centered higher education scholarship within academic institutions. His work reshapes organizational structure, power distribution, and production infrastructure for greater equity-centered outcomes. He is widely regarded transformative leader at the intersection of public health, equity, and higher education strategy.

His frameworks include the Health Equity Research Production Model, a redesign of research and governance infrastructures and incentive systems to enable equitable knowledge production at scale; The Step-Up Mentorship Model, which combines intentional sponsorship, structured skill-building, and progressive leadership opportunities to accelerate the success and visibility of early-career scholars, particularly those from historically underrepresented backgrounds; and writing accountability strategies, currently being instituted throughout Columbia University in collaboration with the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Author of several books and more than 300 other publications, Dr. Duncan is Associate Dean for Health Equity Research and Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University, a social epidemiologist with a specialization in spatial, trauma-informed, and mobility-based approaches to health equity. He is the founder of the Dustin Duncan Research Foundation, which provides philanthropic support to advance health equity research, leadership development, and community partnerships. Fluent in Swahili, Dr. Duncan also advances purpose-driven research and global health partnerships and equity across East Africa.

A National Institutes of Health fellow at Morehouse College in his early 20s, Dr. Duncan entered Harvard University at age 21, completed postdoctoral training at Harvard and the University of Oxford, was appointed professor at New York University before the age of 30, and earned tenure at Columbia before 40. He was promoted to the rank of Full Professor at age 40, becoming the first Black male tenured full professor in his department. He is currently engaged in legal systems training to further deepen his understanding of governance and institutional accountability.

Dr. Duncan’s long-term vision is for universities to be globally connected, structurally sound, and designed to cultivate both excellence and belonging at scale.

Jessica Contreras, Program Manager

Jessica Contreras, BA (she/her) serves as the Program Manager for Columbia Spatial Epi Lab. She has dedicated nineteen years to implementing gender-affirming medical service programs in New York City.  She successfully transformed six clinics into trans friendly hubs through staff trainings and community support groups. Her strategic approach has been implemented into the standards of care policies for institutions.  She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Human Development and brings to the lab her specialized knowledge of recruitment and engagement with transgender populations.  She has experience coordinating public health research, including a portfolio of studies focused on HIV prevention science and sexual and gender minority health research.  Ms. Contreras previously lead as the Program Coordinator II for TURNNT (“Trying to Understand Relationships, Networks and Neighborhoods among Transgender Woman of Color”) (Award: R01MD013554), a cohort study examining how social and environmental factors affect the health and well-being of transgender women of color with a focus on HIV prevention and adherence (n=314). 

She co-created and implemented ‘TL Teach Back’, an evidence-informed intervention that focused on enhancing engagement and retention in quality HIV care among transgender women of color.

Her innovative recruitment methods lead to the first collaboration with the HTIC (Human Trafficking Intervention Court) in Queens County and other legal agencies (pro-bono) launching a release program for transgender women who were incarcerated and faced deportation.  Ms.  Contreras project served as a safe haven and referral service, helping thousands of Latinx trans women be granted asylum, work authorization, housing, gender affirming medical services, and benefits.

Jenesis Merriman, Program Coordinator

Jenesis Merriman, (he/they) is a graduate student at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, where he is currently pursuing his master’s in public health in the Sociomedical Sciences department. Jenesis grew up in the Bay Area, California, and graduated from UC Berkeley in 2020 with his bachelor’s, where they also majored in public health. Over the past five years, he has worked in a variety of roles serving LGBTQ communities, ranging from HIV prevention to health education to queer tobacco policy. They are now excited to be supporting work that addresses trans health disparities in New York City. As a queer and trans person of color, Jenesis is interested in research that focuses on trans community health and how it is influenced by things like social support, race, and gender-affirming care.

Alexander Furuya, Research Analyst

Alexander Furuya, (he/him) is currently an Epidemiology PhD student and is interested in using biostatistics to identify social factors affecting vulnerable populations. His work focuses on HIV prevention and treatment among gender and sexual minorities; he is particularly interested in how intersectionality affects health outcomes. Currently, he is analyzing data from the TURNNT cohort to identify key risk factors affecting trans women of color and finding possible interventions to reduce health inequities. He received his Master of Public Health in Biostatistics from Columbia University in 2023.

Cho-Hee Shrader, Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Cho-Hee Shrader, PhD, MPH (she/her) is an NIH T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Global HIV Implementation Science in ICAP at Columbia University. Dr. Shrader’s research explores the intersection of how social networks and neighborhood characteristics impact minority health disparities, such as HIV, stress, and substance use disorder among sexual, gender, and racial/ethnic minority communities. Additionally, Dr. Shrader’s research incorporates implementation science and its influences on HIV prevention intervention success. Dr. Shrader received her PhD in Prevention Science and Community Health which was funded by a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Minority Health Disparities. Her dissertation explored how personal social networks and neighborhood determinants influenced Latino/x men who have sex with men’s access to PrEP and PrEP-related information. Dr. Shrader received her MPH in Global Health from Emory University and completed her BS in Physiology at the University of Iowa and the University of Cape Town.

Chris Dharma, PhD Canidate

Chris Dharma, (he/him) is a Vanier Canada Scholar and a PhD candidate in epidemiology at the University of Toronto. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Mailman School of Public Health’s Columbia University, working with Dr. Dustin Duncan on the N2 project. With the N2 data, he is examining adverse childhood experiences (ACE) among Black sexual minority men living in Chicago and developing a neighborhood index using GPS data. His doctoral work is funded by the Vanier Canada Graduate scholarship through the Canadian Institute of Health Research. His thesis focused on the methodological development of addressing misclassification biases in population studies and selection biases in convenience samples. These methods are to be applied to improve the estimation of mental health problems among sexual minority men and to identify the factors associated with mental health service use using machine learning. He holds a BSc in statistics and psychology from Simon Fraser University and an Msc in epidemiology and biostatistics at The University of Western Ontario.

Adam Whalen, Research Analyst

Adam Whalen, MPH (he/him) is a first-year pre-doctoral candidate in Epidemiology and a pre-doctoral fellow in the Advanced Training in Environmental Health and Data Science Training Program, jointly managed through the Department of Epidemiology and the Environmental Health Sciences Department. I received my BS in Biology and Public Health Science in 2015 from Santa Clara University, and my MPH in Epidemiology with a Certificate in Applied Biostatistics and Public Health Data Science from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in 2021. Previously, I worked as a data analyst at the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, working on research projects related to Hispanic/Latino health as well as women living with HIV. As a member of the Spatial Epidemiology Lab at Columbia, my current research investigates how discrimination against transgender women of color and sexual minority men affects health outcomes. I also examine activity space exposure to different features of the bult and social environment and how they influence criminal legal system involvement, sleep, access to gender-affirming health care, and other outcomes. My research interests include social and spatial epidemiology, novel spatiotemporal methods including GPS-based activity space analysis and geofencing applications, injury and violence outcomes such as transportation and police violence, and sexual and gender minority health.

Andrea Joiner, Research Associate

Andrea Joiner (she/her) is a trans woman of color, born and raised in New Orleans. Prior to gaining employment with Brotherhood, Incorporated in 2011, Andrea worked for 11 years in the Home Health Profession. During the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Andrea decided that she wanted to do more to aid in the fight the epidemic among communities that were most affected. She is co-founder of Strong, Unified, Sustas, Teaching everyone about HIV/AIDS (SUSTA), which is a New Orleans-based advisory group that advocates for fair treatment of trans women, social policy change, advocating for ending anti-discriminatory practices, and provides social supports for other trans women. As a result of her advocacy efforts and the relentless pursuit of fair treatment of trans women, Andrea has emerged as a highly respected leader and visionary in the trans community. As a result of being victimized by discrimination herself, she has worked with other trans-friendly advocates and has successfully been able to have consent decrees developed by both the local police and Sheriff’s Departments for the Orleans Parish Prison, denouncing unfair treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals. Andrea proudly serves as the Lead HIV Prevention Specialist for all trans women in the Greater New Orleans Metropolitan Area. She conducts both street and venue-based outreach and serves as an active voice in the LGBTQ+ community to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. Andrea has significant research and service experience in HIV prevention and treatment with transgender women of color. Andrea’s strong skills include recruitment, retention, and protocol development.

Jonathan Russell, Doctoral Candidate

Jonathan Russell, MPH (he/him) is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology and a pre-doctoral fellow in the Global HIV Implementation Science Research Training Fellowship, who works closely with the Columbia Spatial Epidemiology Lab. His academic adviser is Dr. Max O’Donnell, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine. His research interests focus on HIV prevention in U.S. men who have sex with men, and specifically on the implementation of pre-exposure prophylaxis and treatment-as-prevention in this population. He has an MPH in epidemiology from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where his master’s thesis explored the racial and ethnic disparities in Tuberculosis incidence among New York City’s U.S.-born population. Before returning to Columbia he was an epidemiologist with the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS), a longitudinal evaluation of the long-term effects of HIV infection and antiretroviral medication among perinatally HIV-infected or exposed children and young adults. As part of PHACS, his research assessed different treatment regimens and their impact on hearing and language, mitochondrial function, and oral health outcomes. Mr. Russell has served as a teaching assistant for the Department of Epidemiology for the following courses: Epidemiology I and II, and Infectious Disease Epidemiology.

Seann Regan, Data Analyst

Seann Regan, MA (he/him) is a geographer and social scientist with a focus on how place and space influence issues of public health and well-being. He uses the tools of computer-based mapping technologies, geographic information system (GIS), GPS, and statistical spatial analysis in an effort to better understand how the places in which we live, work, and play relate to human health and disease. He has worked at MD Anderson Cancer Center researching health disparities and health inequality, the Baylor College of Medicine focusing on issues of environmental health, and with the Texas Department of State Health Services as a senior GIS specialist. Mr. Regan works closely with the Columbia Spatial Epidemiology Lab and is a contributing author to multiple academic publications. He is a strong advocate for enhancing a geographic approach and perspective to research in the public health domain.

Su Hyun Park, Data Analyst

Su Park, PhD, MPH (she/her) is a Data Analyst in Columbia’s Spatial Epidemiology Lab and a research fellow in the National University of Singapore. As an epidemiologist, Dr. Park has been analyzing and interpreting various datasets, including national, population-based cohort, and birth-cohort datasets to address public health issues. Her research interests encompass a broad range of topics, including environmental health, life-course epidemiology, substance use, food insecurity, chronic diseases, HIV prevention, and meta-analysis. Currently, she has a keen interest in applying ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to study how psychosocial and environmental factors influence behavior to elucidate health disparities among populations, and coupling this with real-time geospatial methods and tools (GIS/GPS and accelerometers). She completed her PhD in Epidemiology from Ewha Womans University, an MPH from New York University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Boston University.

Giselle Barreto, Doctoral Student

Giselle Barreto, (she/her/hers) is a 2nd-Year PhD student at Florida International University (FIU) focusing her research on the structural and spatial barriers to HIV prevention and healthcare access in underserved populations. Giselle will be working with Dr. Dustin Duncan and Dr. Diana M. Sheehan (FIU) on the TURNNT project to contextualize mobility classes and explore the association spatial mobility has on PrEP initiation and retention for transgender women of color. She received both a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from FIU.  With a decade of experience in applied epidemiology, Giselle has contributed significantly to public health at Federal, State, and NGO levels. Her roles have included serving as a Quarantine Public Health Officer for the CDC in Jamaica, NY, and as a Program Evaluator for the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity team in Atlanta, GA. In Florida, she worked as a Bioterrorism Epidemiologist and Epidemiology Manager in Lake County, and as an Environmental Specialist for the Childhood Lead Prevention Program in Miami-Dade County. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Giselle served as a Senior Epidemiologist for the Rhode Island Department of Health through The CDC Foundation, managing the COVID-19 Variant and Vaccine Equity Data Pipeline and providing critical reports to senior staff and government officials. 

Miho Kawanami, Research Assistant

Miho Kawanami (she/her) is an MPH candidate in the Department of Epidemiology, specializing in population mental health. Her research interests include the prevention of mental illness, early-life adversity, and the influence of social, structural, and environmental factors on both physical and psychiatric health outcomes.

Miho has four years of clinical experience in psychiatry, family medicine, and public health. During her training, she conducted community health assessments in diverse regions across Japan, including Chiba, Tokyo, and Fukushima. These experiences deepened her understanding of how economic conditions, the built environment, and access to social services affect population health. Her international volunteer work in the Philippines and Nepal further broadened her perspective on global health disparities. She also conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on nurse-led lifestyle interventions to prevent cardiovascular disease, which she presented at the American Public Health Association conference.

Nathaniel Alemayehu, Research Assistant

Nathaniel Alemayehu (he/they) is a MS Epidemiology student at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Their work is grounded in an intersectional approach to public health and focuses on using quantitative methods to inform prevention and intervention efforts for trans and gender nonconforming communities and other BIPOC populations. Their research interests include substance use, mental health, social networks, and the ways systems of gender, race, and class shape risk, resilience, and access to care.

They have prior experience in data analysis and have worked at the Providence/Boston University Center for AIDS Research and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health on research regarding HIV and substance use interactions, food insecurity, and health decision sciences. Nathaniel earned a bachelor’s degree in Computational Biology and Global Health from Harvard College in 2023.

Makella S. Courday, Research Associate

Makella S. Coudray, PhD, MPH, CPH (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Coudray's research uses an intersectional lens, to examine how the social determinants of health inequities, multiple marginalized identities, and discrimination (e.g., sexism, cisgenderism) contribute to HIV/STI testing, risk, and prevention among sexual and gender minority groups and racial and ethnic minority groups (e.g., transgender women, cisgender women of color). Currently, Dr. Coudray is a member of the HIV, Infectious Disease, and Global Health Implementation Research Institute (HIGH IRI) and is advancing her skills in implementation science. Dr. Coudray is the principal investigator of a National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) funded K99/R00 grant titled Sexually Transmitted Infection Testing Risk and Prevention among Trans Women (STRiP-T). STRiP-T aims to validate self-collected specimens for STI testing among trans women and examine the differences in STI prevalence and socio-spatial STI risk factors between trans women with and without neovaginas using self-collected samples. Dr. Coudray received her PhD in Public Health (Epidemiology) from Florida International University, her MPH in Epidemiology from St. George's University, and her BSc in Biology from St. Geoge's University. 

Kamiah Brown, BA, Research Assistant

Kamiah Brown (she,her) is an MPH candidate with a concentration in Sociomedical Sciences with a certificate in infectious disease at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She is committed and passionate about eliminating health inequities amongst underrepresented populations. Her research interests in public health are centered around infectious diseases, health equity research and social epidemiology.

Kamiah has 5 years of professional experience engaging in quantitative research; developing, implementing, and evaluating public health programs, community outreach, engagement strategy, and developing needs assessment. She received her Bachelors of Science from The George Washington University in public health with a double minor in Africana Studies and Sociology.

Aleya Khalifa, MPH, PhD Canidate

Aleya Khalifa, MPH (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Epidemiology studying the impact of human mobility on the HIV epidemic using spatial and network methods. Her dissertation research - unpacking the HIV epidemic among people on the move in Uganda - is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health under the Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral National Research Service Award. Ms. Khalifa’s research aims to improve HIV programs and research methodologies for migrant and other mobile populations. Ms. Khalifa also has experience in global HIV implementation science, epidemic modeling, and monitoring of HIV programs for vulnerable populations. As a Global Health Fellow from 2014-17, she supported CDC projects related to HIV clinical surveillance and population-based surveys in sub-Saharan African countries. Ms. Khalifa received her MPH in Epidemiology from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.