Incoming Doctoral Student Profiles
PhD Student Profiles: 2016 Cohort
Sharon Green
Track: Sociology
Areas of interest: Social determinants of health • Health disparities • Racial and social inequality • Health and social policy • Criminal justice • Drug and tobacco policy • Harm reduction • Substance Use • Stigma • Community health • Gun violence • HIV/AIDS
Education: MPH, Sociomedical Sciences and Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University (2015)
BA, Public Health, Johns Hopkins University (2011)
Sharon Green currently directs research on frameworks invoked in the gun control debate, a project within the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health. Previously, her research examined mass incarceration through a public health lens, the criminalization of drugs, and harm reduction approaches to tobacco control. As a master’s student, she co-founded and served as president of the Association for Justice and Health (AJAH), leading advocacy efforts to assess and address the health impacts of the US criminal justice system on individuals and communities. Simultaneously, she led an HIV/STI prevention program for adolescents in the juvenile justice system through the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the NYS Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University. Prior to her master’s program, she worked as an HIV screening and counseling program coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Emergency Department in East Baltimore. She also worked as a middle school science teacher in rural Ghana; as an emergency medical technician in Israel, where she treated Israelis, Palestinians, and refugees; and volunteered in a syringe exchange program in New York City.
Kristen Meister
Track: History
Areas of interest: History of public health and medicine • History of disability • Health policy and politics • Disability and chronic disease • Social determinants of health • Food Policy and Nutrition • Data collection and surveillance • Public health ethics
Education: MPH, Columbia University (2016)
BA, University of California-Berkeley (2011)
Kristen Meister’s interest in the social history of medicine and public health began while she was as an undergraduate history student at the University of California-Berkeley, where her research explored health reform during the Progressive Era. Meister pursued this interest further as an M.P.H. student in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, conducting research on the relationship between policy, social thought, and the lived experience of disease and disability. Building on her previous professional experience in health promotion and health technology, Meister conducted research on the use of big data in public health surveillance for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health and the World Health Organization, and she became interested in the role of new technologies in public health practice. As a doctoral student, Kristen’s work integrates history, disability studies, and sociology to study public health, biomedical, technological, and political approaches to the prevention, management, and elimination of disease and disability. Through her work, Meister seeks to bring disability theory into public health research and practice. She plans to one day launch a center for disability research.
Sonia Mendoza
Track: Sociology
Areas of interest: Social determinants of health • Chronic health conditions • Stigma • Obesity and diabetes • Mental health • Clinical cultures • Addiction • Latino health • Policy
Education: MA, Sociology, Columbia University (2012)
BA, Human Biology, Stanford University (2010)
Sonia Mendoza became interested in mixed-methods research and Latino health as an undergraduate at Stanford where she worked on community-based health intervention studies. As an MA student at Columbia she continued to pursue her interest in the social determinants of health and minority health. Her MA thesis analyzed the role of social networks and social cohesion in relation to obesity rates and health measures within enclaves of Latino communities in the US. Her publications to date, which explore addiction and racialized medicine, draw on and have been informed by her work on a NIDA-funded study at NYU Medical Center and her interests in mental health, stigma, and policy. Current major areas of focus include structural influences on health and qualitative research methods. As a doctoral student, Mendoza uses her ethnographic and quantitative research methods to study clinical cultures, the production of medical knowledge, and dissemination of health interventions in ethnic minority communities.
DrPH Student Profile: 2016 Cohort
Matthew Lee
Areas of interest: Health promotion • Implementation research • Dissemination science • Intervention design • Program evaluation • Structural interventions • Sustainability • Policy planning • Health care reform • Safety net programs • Collective agency • Political economies • Comparative effectiveness • Cost-effectiveness • Quality improvement
Education: MPH, Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University (2014)
BA, Anthropology, English Literature, Washington University in St. Louis (2012)
Matthew Lee’s undergraduate coursework at Washington University in St. Louis introduced him to questions about the social construction of health, healing, and illness. He built on this interest while completing his MPH at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health with a certificate in Health Promotion Research and Practice. As an MPH student, Lee learned to apply his interests in the form of theory-driven intervention design and evaluation, with a special interest in structural interventions, as well as in dissemination and implementation research. Afterwards, he joined the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. There, he provided technical assistance to hospitals and CBOs throughout New York City to implement and deliver HRSA-funded Ryan White Part A programs through the lens of quality improvement to ensure high program fidelity and quality of care. As a doctoral student, Lee aims to bring together frameworks and methods used in health promotion and health policy research to better understand how public health theories, evidence, and programs intersect at the structural level with politics and the public sphere. He also seeks to answer questions about building sustainability into program and policy planning.