Sociomedical Sciences

Christopher Alley, PhD (Medical Anthropology)
Email: ca2205@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: Medical waste and commodification, masculinities and bisexuality, and urban poverty and the street economy. Geographic areas of interest include New York City, Brazil, and South Africa.

Christopher Alley has been a doctoral student Department of Sociomedical Sciences since 2005. His current research explores the meanings of medical waste. He asks how medical waste comes to be defined, disposed of, ritualized, recycled, and commodified? Of special interest to him is the growing field of re-functioning, or redevelopment, of body wastes into new therapeutic products, and their subsequent deployment into living humans.

Mr. Alley has also studied the medicalization of genital cutting practices, with a special focus on the institutional cultures responsible for promoting biomedical claims that male circumcision is an effective and acceptable HIV prevention strategy.

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Jocelyn Apicello, MPH, DrPH Candidate
Email: jla2117@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: Contextual effects on urban health; housing and neighborhoods; homelessness; community-based research; inequalities and social justice; population-level interventions; and the translation of research findings into public policy.

Ms. Apicello received her M.P.H. from the Department of Sociomedical Sciences in 2006 and has continued with the department as a doctoral student. She is interested in how housing, neighborhood, and other contextual factors influence health outcomes of individual agents, households, and communities. In particular, she is exploring how housing as an intervention can impact health, and how growing social disparities can be addressed by implementing population-level interventions and public policies.

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Tiphani Burrell-Piggott, MA, MPH, DrPH Candidate
Email: ttb2103@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: HIV/AIDS (among women and adolescents), global health, mental health, gender, and qualitative research methodology. Geographic areas of interest: US Urban cities, the West Indies, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tiphani Burrell-Piggott has been a Doctor of Public Health candidate in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences since 2005. Her current research explores how individual risk factors, community factors and structural factors create vulnerabilities to HIV infection among minority youth. Educational Background: MPH in Global Health (Yale University), MA in Psychology (Howard University), BS in Psychology (Howard University).

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Yessica M. Diaz, MPH, MSW, DrPH Candidate
Email: ymd2001@columbia.edu
Yessica Diaz's research focuses on the self-management practices of elderly Latinos in Washington Heights/Inwood with Type 2 Diabetes. She is interested in the social and cultural factors that influence the management of diabetes among elderly Dominicans. Ms. Diaz participated in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's Public Health Fellowship (1997) and was awarded the National Hispanic Health Foundation Scholarship in 2005. She graduated from the University of Michigan's Schools of Public Health and Social Work. Currently, she is a mentor in Hunter College's Public Service Scholar Program and a Board Member for The Center for Independence of the Disabled, New Yorkers.

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Jennifer Farnsworth Francis, PhD Candidate (Sociology)
Email: jaf59@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: Child and family health policy, social construction of illness, impact of childhood developmental disorders on low-income families, and welfare and public policy analysis. Geographic areas of interest: United States

Jennifer Francis has worked as a research associate at the National Center for Children in Poverty at the Mailman School of Public Health where she analyzed the effects of changing welfare and public policy on children. Her current research analyzes the impacts of developmental disorders in low-income families.

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Robert Frey, PhD Student (Medical Anthropology)
E-mail: rbf2101@columbia.edu
Interests: critical and interpretive studies of the body, the mind, and emotions; biomedicine; memory; violence; political economy; personhood and kinship; ethnography, phenomenology, and life history; Israel/Palestine

Mr. Frey’s research interests focus on cultural conceptions of mental health, illness, and care, particularly in contexts where collective identity is marked by a traumatic past or ongoing violence in the present. His dissertation research investigates experiences of loss and bereavement related to political violence in Israel. He holds a M.A. in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University and a B.A. with highest honors in anthropology and French from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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Allison Goldberg, PhD Student (Political Science)
Email: abg2141@columbia.edu
Areas of Interest: HIV/AIDS, Women and Child Health, Health Systems Strengthening, Health Disparities, Mixed-Methods. Geographic Areas of Interest: East and Southern Africa, United States

Allison Goldberg became a doctoral student in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences in 2008. She received her B.A. in Political Science from the University of Michigan. As part of her senior honors thesis in Political Science, Ms. Goldberg conducted independent research on why Uganda, a country considered a model in coordinating HIV prevention and care efforts, has largely failed to deliver care to orphans. Prior to joining Columbia, she worked at Abt Associates Inc. conducting research on a variety of domestic and international HIV/AIDS and health systems strengthening projects. Ms. Goldberg is particularly interested in using a mixed-methods approach to understanding the political and institutional factors influencing the health and well-being of vulnerable populations.

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Gina Jae, MD, MPH, PhD student (Medical Anthropology)
Email: gj2008@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: health disparities, sickle cell disease, refugees and survivors of torture, chronic illness management, translating medical technologies to clinical practice Geographic areas of interest include: New York City, Brazil/Lusophone diaspora, Spanish-speaking Latin America

Ms. Jae has been a SMS doctoral student since 2008. Her ongoing research has involved refugee survivors of torture and families and caregivers of children with sickle cell disease. She received her BA in Spanish from Rice University, her MD from University of Illinois at Chicago, completed her residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and her MPH in Forced Migration at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She has worked as a community-based public health worker in Brazil, Mexico, and Paraguay and as a primary care physician for refugee survivors of torture living in New York City.

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Nora J. Kenworthy, PhD Student (Political Science)
Email: njk2110@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: HIV/AIDS and chronic infectious disease policy development, delivery, and change in Southern Africa.

Nora J. Kenworthy has been a doctoral student in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences as well as an NIH training fellow in Gender, Sexuality and Health since 2006. Prior to attending Columbia she received her BA in Political Science from Williams College and worked in public health program delivery in the Western US and in South Africa. Her current research examines political processes, systems of representation, and institutional factors related to the creation and delivery of effective HIV policy in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Sara E. Lewis, MA, MSW, PhD student (Medical Anthropology)
Email: sel2127@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: severe mental illness, religion, healing, child refugees, psychoanalysis Geographic areas of interest include India, Tibet & Peru

Sara Lewis has been a doctoral student in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences since 2007. Her current research involves a study of mental illness among Tibetan child refugees in Northern India, exploring the role of Buddhism in strengthening resiliency. She is particularly interested in clinical ethnography and intersections between anthropology and psychoanalysis.

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Debra Pelto, MPH, PhD Candidate (Medical Anthropology)
Email: dp36@columbia.edu
Topics of interest: sexuality, gender, health disparities, immigration, religion.
Geographic areas of interest: Latin America, Mediterranean, and Scandinavia.

Debra Pelto’s dissertation research explores heterosexual negotiation and communication in the context of migration. The project seeks to increase our understanding of adult heterosexual discourses and practices, by examining the meanings, communications, negotiations, and activities around sexuality and sexual health among adult Mexican women and men in New York City.

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Sanyukta Mathur, DrPH (Sociomedical Sciences)
Email: sm2892@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: Sexual and reproductive health, youth, marriage, and empowerment. Geographic areas of interest include South Asia and East Africa.

Sanyukta Mathur has been a doctoral student in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences since 2007. Ms. Mathurs holds a Masters of Health Science degree from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining Columbia, she worked at the nternational Center for Research on Women as a public health specialist focusing on adolescent sexual and reproductive health, including HIV and AIDS. Ms. Mathur is particularly interested in the intersection of economic empowerment and reproductive health outcomes for young women.

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Destiny Q. Ramjohn, MA, PhD Candidate (Sociology)
Email: dqr1@columbia.edu
Website: www.columbia.edu/~dqr1/
Areas of interest: socio-cultural aspects of health and disease, qualitative methods, health disparities in communities of color, HIV/AIDS prevention and research, community-based participatory research, and international public health policy.

A native New Yorker with a great appreciation for consulting, Ms. Ramjohn has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Mailman School of Public Health- Office of the Dean, the Northern Manhattan Perinatal Partnership, the Harlem Health Promotion Center, and The Commonwealth Fund. In 2003, Ms. Ramjohn was awarded a fellowship grant from the American Legacy Foundation. This graduate fellowship award afforded her the opportunity to closely examine the Harlem community's capacity for tobacco control using community based participatory research approach. Ms. Ramjohn has several years experience teaching, moderating, and facilitating various workshops, seminars, and courses employing qualitative methods within public health education and practice.

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Erin N. Simpson, DrPH Candidate (History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine)
Email: ens2002@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: Tobacco control, the influence of the state in public health policy, consumerism, and the role of advertising in public health issues, specifically tobacco and African-Americans.

Erin Simpson has been a doctoral student Department of Sociomedical Sciences since 2003. Her current research explores how tobacco advertising has evolved during the latter half of the 20th century, specifically how that advertising has been used to target minority populations. She is especially interested in the meanings of consumerism in the post World War II era, particularly the relationship between African Americans and the products they consumed (such as cigarettes) as the Civil Rights Movement began. She explores the social, political, racial, and economic consequences of those relationships in Cold War America.

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Ana Stefancic, MA, PhD Candidate (Sociology)
Email: as2463@columbia.edu
Research interests: homelessness, mental health services, housing programs, survey research, qualitative methods

Ana Stefancic is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences. Her recent research focuses on exploring the effectiveness of Housing First services and studying homelessness, mental illness, and housing, within the context of poverty, disability, recovery, social inclusion and citizenship. She is a research consultant with Pathways to Housing, Inc., the NIMH-funded New York Services Study, and The Osborne Association.

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Siri Suh, MPH, PhD Candidate (Sociology)
Siri Suh began her doctoral program in the Sociomedical Sciences Department in 2007. Having recently worked in family planning and maternal health programs in Senegal, her research interests continue to center around reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa. Ms. Suh wishes to investigate the silence surrounding unsafe abortion in this region and the role of religion, social constructions of gender and sexuality, politicized national and international reproductive health agendas, organized medicine and the law in perpetuating this silence. She is particularly interested in how health professionals negotiate decisions to provide clandestine abortion within this context.

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Brooke S. West, MA, PhD Student (Sociology)
Email: bsw2110@columbia.edu
Areas of interest: HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, gender and sexuality, marginalized populations, sex work, structural interventions, monitoring and evaluation, women’s health in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Brooke S. West joined the PhD program in Sociomedical Sciences in 2007 after completing a MA in Sociology at Cornell University. Most recently, her research focused on the evaluation of a community-based HIV prevention intervention for sex workers in southern India. This project explored the links between sexual behavior and community mobilization, control over sex work, and empowerment. Ms. West plans to continue her research on the implications of women’s empowerment for health outcomes, and is particularly interested in the role of economic opportunity in health decision-making.

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