Affiliated Faculty

Dr. Qiana L. Brown is an epidemiologist and advanced generalist licensed certified social worker (LCSW). She is an Assistant Professor at the Rutgers University Schools of Social Work and Public Health. She directs the Substance Use Research, Evaluation, and Maternal and Child Health (SURE MatCH) Group at the School of Social Work’s Center for Prevention Science. Dr. Brown’s research uses a person-in-environment approach to examine the role of the built and social environment in shaping substance use and other health outcomes among women, youth, and families – with an emphasis on examining substance use among pregnant and non-pregnant reproductive-age women. Dr. Brown’s peer-reviewed research has been published in top-tier journals, to include JAMA. She is also a member of the editorial boards of Substance Use and Misuse, and the Journal of Substance Use.

Dr. Brown earned her Ph.D. in drug dependence epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in substance abuse epidemiology at Columbia University. Both her pre- and postdoctoral research fellowships were funded by NIDA T32 training grants in epidemiology and biostatistics. In 2019, she was selected into the New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) Society of Scholars and received a KL2 Career Development Award funded through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program. In addition to research, Dr. Brown founded and directs a non-profit, community-based, substance abuse treatment center – Jane’s House of Inspiration – where she focuses on helping women, families, and communities address problems related to substance use disorders.

Publications in My Bibliography

Dr. Jennifer Elliott’s research has focused on HIV and on intervention with substance users. She completed her postdoctoral training in substance abuse epidemiology and studied heavy drinking and drug use in general populations, using the NESARC and other large datasets. She has studied predictors of substance use (e.g., reasons for drinking and abstaining) in high-risk groups, particularly individuals with HIV, which led me to submit a K23 proposal on understanding and intervening with heavy drinking among individuals with HIV and Hepatitis C. Through her research in her K23 grant from NIAAA, she focuses on heavy drinking in high risk medical populations, specifically individuals with HIV and/or liver disease. This research has included studies on the roles of drinking motives, disease-related perceptions, and neighborhood-level factors in understanding problem drinking.

Dr. Daniel Giovenco is a behavioral scientist whose research uses geographical information systems, field data collection, and survey data to identify social and environmental determinants of tobacco use disparities. His specific areas of interest include the marketing of non-cigarette tobacco products in diverse communities, the public health implications of tobacco harm reduction, and the co-use of marijuana and tobacco. Dr. Giovenco's research has been published in leading public health journals such as the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the Journal of Adolescent Health, and the American Journal of Epidemiology. He has been invited as an expert speaker to present his research on electronic cigarettes at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In addition to research, Dr. Giovenco teaches graduate courses in program planning and evaluation. He is a member of the Prevention, Control and Disparities Program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and holds a faculty appointment at the Columbia Population Research Center. Dr. Giovenco is a 2016 recipient of the NIH Director's Early Independence Award, a grant from the National Institutes of Health awarded to junior scientists who have the intellect, scientific creativity, drive and maturity to flourish independently without the need for traditional post-doctoral training. His project will examine how the promotion of tobacco products with varying levels of risk differs across neighborhoods and how this may influence harm reduction behaviors and subsequent health disparities.

Diana Hernandez, PhD, focuses her work on the social and environmental determinants of health by querying the impacts of policy and place-based interventions on the health and socioeconomic well-being of vulnerable populations. Her community-oriented research examines the intersections between the built environment (housing and neighborhoods), poverty/equity and health with a particular emphasis on energy insecurity. Much of her research is conducted in her native South Bronx neighborhood, where she also lives and invests in social impact real estate. Dr. Hernandez is currently a Principal or Co-Investigator on several projects related to structural interventions in low-income housing (i.e. energy efficiency upgrades, cleaner burning fuel source conversions, smoke-free housing compliance, new finance and capital improvement models in public housing and post-Sandy resilience among public housing residents) or otherwise related to alleviating the consequences of poverty on health (i.e. attrition study of the Nurse Family Partnership Program and qualitative evaluation of the Medical Legal Partnership model). Her work is currently funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the JPB Foundation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, among others. Her research has been published in leading journals including the American Journal of Public Health, Energy Policy, Public Health Reports and Energy Research and Social Sciences. Professor Hernandez teaches Qualitative Research Methods at the graduate level and has also taught undergraduate courses on Health Disparities and Cultural Competence. She has advised numerous master's theses and doctoral dissertations. In addition, she actively engages in a variety translational research activities through consulting, board service and social entrepreneurship.

Guohua Li, DrPH, MD, is the Finster Professor of Epidemiology and Anesthesiology and the founding director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention. His research focuses on population-based, injury-related, and policy-oriented studies that encompass novel epidemiological designs, innovative statistical techniques, and complex data systems. He has published extensively on the role of alcohol and other drugs in injury causation and trauma outcomes. Currently, Dr. Li is working on projects aimed at understanding and controlling the epidemic of drug overdose and drugged driving, and uncovering the dynamics of injury risk and injury-disease interaction during the process of aging. Dr. Li is the instructor for the course Clinical Epidemiology (P8450). He also directs the clinical research program in perioperative care and critical care at the Department of Anesthesiology, College of Physicians and Surgeons. Areas of interest include developing practical tools for measuring and monitoring the safety and quality of anesthesia care, identifying and intervening on risk factors for major postoperative complications, and evaluating the long-term effects of trauma and critical illnesses on cognitive functions and health outcomes.

Dr. Pia M. Mauro is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University. Her research focuses on substance use epidemiology, access to substance use and mental health services, behavioral health treatment integration and co-location, as well as structural and policy impacts on substance use and treatment. She is interested in health equity and working with vulnerable populations (e.g., juveniles in drug court, older adults, racial/ethnic minorities, immigrant populations, people with mental illness, people using substances). She obtained a PhD from the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, both supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She has a background in psychology from the University of Notre Dame, and professional experience in SUD treatment program evaluations.

Dr. Seth Prins' two programs of research concern the collateral consequences of mass incarceration for public health, and the effects of the social division and structure of labor on mental illness. Two questions have motivated his work to date: First, what are the theoretical and methodological assumptions underlying the growing use of psychiatric categories, such as antisocial personality, to explain and assess the risk of exposure to the criminal justice system, particularly in the context of mass incarceration? Second, what can we learn about the distribution and determinants of mental illness by examining social class as a dynamic relational process, rather than an individual attribute? He is also working on a project to study the role of adolescent substance use as determinant and consequence of the school-to-prison pipeline, disentangling individual risk, social determinants, and group disparities. He explores these questions at the intersections of epidemiology, sociology, and criminology, combining theory-driven analysis with advanced quantitative methods. Dr. Prins is a social and psychiatric epidemiologist interested in pushing the boundaries of the discipline to encompass rich social theory.

Kristen Underhill is an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and she is jointly appointed at the Mailman School of Public Health (Heilbrunn Deaprtment of Population & Family Health).  Her scholarship focuses on health law, with a particular interest in how the law influences individual decisions about risk and health behavior. She teaches health law and torts. Underhill studies how laws and regulations affect individual choices by arranging incentives, shaping opportunities, influencing underlying preferences, and communicating information about social norms. Recent projects have focused on how financial incentives influence attitudes about organ donation; the influence of implicit racial bias in altruistic decisions; dispute resolution for injuries and complaints related to biomedical research; and relationships between harm reduction and risk behavior.  She is also currently completing a five-year study of access to new HIV prevention technologies, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Underhill received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2011, serving as editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. Underhill also holds a D.Phil. in evidence-based social intervention from the University of Oxford, and she completed an NIH-funded postdoctoral research fellowship at Brown University's Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies.