Staff and Advisors

Marshall H. Chin, MD, MPH, FACP
Director, Finding Answers
Dr. Chin is a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and a general internist with extensive experience improving the care of vulnerable patients with chronic disease. His current research projects are improving diabetes care and outcomes on the South Side of Chicago, and evaluating the implementation of the patient-centered medical home in safety-net clinics. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Future Directions for the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports.

Scott Cook, PhD
Deputy Director, Finding Answers
Dr. Cook is a clinical psychologist with extensive experience serving diverse inner-city populations with multiple medical, social, and economic challenges. He joined the team at the University of Chicago after eight years in leadership roles in research, community services, and clinical coordination at Howard Brown Health Center, a clinic that serves diverse communities of varied racial, ethnic, and sexual identities in Chicago. Dr. Cook received his masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Missouri at Columbia. He completed his internship at Cook County Hospital, the major public hospital in Chicago that serves an indigent, multiethnic population.

Morgen Alexander-Young, MPH

Project Coordinator, Finding Answers

Ms. Alexander-Young completed her undergraduate studies in Government and Spanish at Smith College. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, she worked as a civil rights investigator for the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, and as a crisis counselor at Cook County Hospital. She received a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan in Health Behavior and Health Education, and completed a post-master fellowship in Population Health from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Amanda R. Clarke, MPH

Project Coordinator, Finding Answers

Ms. Clarke joins us following several years in Ghana, West Africa, where she worked as Program Manager of a reproductive and sexual health initiative, sponsored through the United Nations Population Fund. She offers experience in program development, strategic planning, project management, and evaluation. Amanda holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor's degree in Psychology from George Washington University.

Ms. John holds a bachelor's degree in General Health Sciences from Purdue University. She received her Master of Public Health degree from Indiana University at Bloomington specializing in the areas of obesity policy and diabetes research. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Ms. John was a Project Coordinator at the Department of Veteran Affairs for a weight reduction trial in veterans that used personal digital assistants as a means to monitor food intake and physical.

Ammon R. Johnson
Program Administrator, Finding Answers

Mr. Johnson is a knowledgeable administrator who joins us from Purdue University where he was responsible for the fiscal management and contract administration for all registered student organizations. Additionally, he brings experience in diversity training, volunteer management, and human resources to our team. Ammon received his bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Southern Illinois University.

Nicole Keesecker, MA

Health Communication Manager, Finding Answers

Ms. Keesecker joins us after completing a Health Communication Fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. In that capacity, Nicole communicated high-risk, high-impact research findings to a variety of professional and lay audiences and managed public, media, and congressional relations for the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. Nicole has also worked with health campaigns including the Alzheimer’s Associations’ Quality Care Campaign and the Michigan Department of Community Health’s Michigan Steps Up. She received her master’s degree in Health Communication from Michigan State University and a bachelor’s in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Hui Tang, MS
Programmer, Finding Answers
Ms. Tang holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and master’s degrees in both Computer Science and Statistics. She works as a Senior Statistical Program Analyst in the Center for Health and Social Sciences. Currently she is working on web programming, database management, complex statistical analyses, and analysis of large databases using Stata and SAS. Prior to working in the University of Chicago, she also worked as a database analyst and a system analyst at Northern Illinois University and gained experience on database design and network maintenance.

Anusha Vable, MPH

Project Coordinator, Finding Answers

Ms. Vable holds her bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Grinnell College and her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan with a focus on International Epidemiology. Before joining the University of Chicago, Ms. Vable interned with the National Cancer Institute of Cairo University on an inflammatory breast Cancer study, and spent a year in India teaching chemistry.

Vineet Arora, MD, MA, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine who serves as an Assistant Dean for the Pritzker School of Medicine and an Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency. She currently directs Training Early Achievers for Careers in Health (TEACH) Research Program, which uses a novel multi-tiered structure of mentorship and realistic career experiences to prepare and inspire talented minority youth from Chicago Public Schools to enter clinical research careers. Her work has led to a 1.8 million dollar R01 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to support the evaluation of this program over the next four years.

Arshiya A. Baig, M.D. M.P.H., is an Instructor in the Department of Medicine. She completed her internal medicine residency at the University of Michigan and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Baig's research interests are in mitigating Latino health disparities using community-based research methods. Her research focuses on the development and evaluation of faith-based interventions in improving healthcare delivery to underserved, urban populations. Dr. Baig has worked on community-based participatory research projects to improve healthcare delivery to low-income, uninsured minority communities in partnership with faith-based organizations in Los Angeles and Chicago. She has also conducted research that investigates the importance of social networks in vulnerable populations and on physician domestic violence screening practices in domestic and international settings.

Deborah Burnet, MD, MA, is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics, with extensive community ties on Chicago’s south side. She developed the cultural competence curriculum for the University of Chicago School of Medicine, and she recently completed a Child and Family Policy Fellowship at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Studies. She is currently conducting community-based translation research funded by NIDDK to implement and evaluate the REACH-OUT intervention for overweight African American youth at risk for diabetes. Dr. Burnet also serves as the Section Chief for General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago.

Kathleen A. Cagney, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Health Studies and Comparative Human Development. She examines racial and SES differences in health with a focus on aging and the life course. Currently underway is a data collection effort aimed at exploring neighborhood social context and its role in the health of older Chicagoans. She is Co-Director of the Health Disparities/Neighborhoods Core of the Chicago Center of Excellence in Health Promotion Economics and Assistant Director of the AHRQ Pre-doctoral Training Program.She teaches a course in the demography of aging, as well as alternating courses in health outcomes and health status assessment.

Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD, is a physician and health services researcher in the Department of Health Studies. He worked for 20 years as a family physician in a small private practice. His report for the National Academy of Social Insurance – “Individual Physicians or Organized Processes: How Can Disparities in Clinical Care Be Reduced?” – is available on the NASI web site. His research focuses on the effects of varying forms of organization of physician practice and of physician-hospital and physician-health plan relationships on the quality and costs of health care and on the ways in which public and private policies shape these forms.

Andrew M Davis, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor and Clinician Educator in the Section of General Internal Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago, and residency training at the University of Iowa. Before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 2000, he served as the medical director for quality at a 350,000 member Chicago managed care plan where he directed a large diabetes disease management program. He is currently serving as the diabetes site PI for the NIH BARI 2D trial, and is conducting research on the value of nurse practitioner led group visits for diabetic patients in the academic general medicine practice.

Dawnavan S. Davis, PhD, MS, is a medical psychologist and behavioral scientist with extensive experience in community-based obesity and faith-based interventions, CBPR, and racial disparities research. Dr. Davis received her B.A. from Loyola College of Maryland in Psychology, M.S. in Community Health Education from Towson University, and doctoral degree in Medical Psychology from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Dr. Davis completed a two-year Kellogg Foundation Community Health Scholars Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health to continue her work in fostering social and community change in the context of health education, promotion, and community-level interventions. Currently, Dr. Davis is a Research Assistant Professor and the Director of the CBPR Program in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago.

John Easton is the Director of Media Relations for The University of Chicago Hospitals, The Pritzker School of Medicine, and the Biological Sciences Division at The University of Chicago. He was a graduate student in history at this university before stumbling into the world of public relations. He has handled media relations for the Hospitals since 1987.

Thomas Fisher, MD, MPH, is an Instructor of Medicine in the section of Emergency Medicine. He recently completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program where he worked on clarifying mechanisms which produce disparities in the health care of communities of color. His research endeavors include work on the role of race in the physician-patient relationship. He actively invests time addressing racial disparities in health and health care as a community member, educator and via his clinical practice. Dr. Fisher is a Chicago native and a product of the Chicago Public Schools.

Joe G.N. "Skip" Garcia, MD, the Lowell T. Coggeshall Professor in the Department of Medicine is a leading authority on lung biology and disease, the genetics of acute lung injury and the molecular mechanisms of edema formation (vascular leak). Results from his lab have led to novel approaches to prevent vascular leak, reduce physiologic derangements and restore the integrity of vessel walls. Dr. Garcia has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals. Dr. Garcia is an active supporter of minority medical and science students and has nurtured dozens of under-represented minority students guiding them into MD and PhD programs.

Elbert Huang, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of General Medicine and a co-investigator of the Prevention and Control Core of the Diabetes Research and Training Center (DRTC) at the University of Chicago. He is a clinician-investigator whose main research focus is in the area of medical decision making for elderly patients with type 2 diabetes. Dr. Huang is also leading efforts in the evaluation of the costs and cost-effectiveness of Bureau of Primary Health Care’s Health Disparities Collaborative, a quality improvement program for the nation's federally funded community health centers.

Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, MAPP, is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Medicine (Geriatrics). Dr. Lindau is an integrated health researcher, combining biomedical and social scientific techniques to study health and health behavior in the population setting. Her primary interest is deciphering the biological pathways linking women’s sexual relationships to health and health outcomes. She is Co-PI of the NIH-funded National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) and directs the Chicago Core on Biomarkers in Population-Based Research. Integrated, population-based health research offers a powerful tool to address health disparities and to reach remote populations by including individuals who cannot or do not access clinics and hospitals for health and medical care.

James L. Madara, MD, graduated from Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia in 1975, completed residency and research training in pathology at Harvard Medical School’s New England Deaconess and Peter Bent Brigham Hospitals, and joined the faculty at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in 1980, serving as director of the division of gastrointestinal pathology. In 1993, he was appointed professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School, and from 1994 until 1997, when he left Harvard for Emory University; he served as Director of the Harvard Digestive Diseases Center. From 1997 to 2002 Madara served as chairman in the departments of pathology & laboratory medicine at Emory University. In 2002, he became the current Dean of the Biological Sciences Division and The Pritzker School of Medicine & Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Chicago.

Christopher M. Masi, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine. Dr. Masi is a general internist and health disparities researcher at the University of Chicago. With a PhD in social service administration, Dr. Masi is a key member of the University of Chicago’s Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research (CIHDR) and the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study (CHASRS). In these projects, he is working with psychologists, geneticists, and molecular biologists to explore the genetic and psychosocial foundations of racial and ethnic disparities in breast cancer and cardiovascular disease risk. These issues are being addressed through community based participatory research and biomarkers of stress and estrogen metabolism.

David Meltzer, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Economics, and Harris School of Public Policy Studies and Director of the Center for Health and the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Meltzer received his MD and PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and completed his residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Meltzer is co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the Director of the MD/PhD Program in the Social Sciences, the Chicago Center for Excellence in Health Promotion Economics and The University of Chicago Program in Pharmaceutical Policy.

Monica Peek, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago and a member of the Diabetes Research and Training Center. Her research focuses on the role of race and culture on the patient/provider relationship and its subsequent impact on diabetes health outcomes and disparities. Dr. Peek is currently funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and NIH-NIDDK to explore racial differences in shared decision-making (SDM) among patients with diabetes and develop/pilot test a culturally appropriate intervention to enhance SDM among African-Americans with diabetes.

Michael T. Quinn, PhD, is a social psychologist with experience in the design, implementation, and evaluation of health education and behavior change curricula. Since 1989, he has served in the role of Educational Specialist with the Chicago Diabetes Research and Training Center at the Department of Medicine, and has collaborated on the development and evaluation of community-based nutrition, exercise and weight loss programs for African-American and Hispanic women with, or at risk for, diabetes. Dr. Quinn is currently a co-investigator on a CDC-funded, community-based program designed to reduce disparities in cardiovascular disease and diabetes among African-American and Hispanic Chicago residents.

Lisa Sánchez-Johnsen, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine, a clinical psychologist, and the Director of the Multicultural Health Research Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. She has a 15-year history of conducting research with Latinos, African Americans, and other underserved ethnic minority groups, particularly in the areas of developing culturally competent health promotion assessments and interventions. Her current focuses on developing a diet, physical activity, and body image intervention with overweight Latinas using a community based participatory research framework. She previously had numerous federal and foundation grants to examine cultural variables associated with obesity and smoking in Latinos and African Americans.

Benjamin Van Voorhees, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago. He received is BA in History from Dartmouth College, his Doctor of Medicine from Vanderbilt University, and his Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins. He completed a Combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency at Vanderbilt University Hospital and a General Internal Medicine Fellowship at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Van Voorhees research focuses on the development and evaluation of primary care-based depression prevention interventions for adolescents and emerging adults. This work has been supported by the CDC, NARSAD and RWJ Foundations.

Prashila Dullabh, MD, is a Senior Project Manager and currently serves as the Health IT Program Manager for AHRQ’s National Resource Center for Health Information Technology. Dr. Dullabh provides technical assistance to a number of health IT grantees in the AHRQ portfolio that are involved in the planning and implementation of various Health IT Systems and she has been involved in enterprise-wide system implementations and various projects to promote physician adoption of health IT. Dr. Dullabh has more than ten years experience in the healthcare and information technology environment in both management and delivery positions.

Oscar J. Espinosa, MA, serves as Research Scientist for NORC, and is an experienced bilingual social science researcher with over 10 years of experience conducting evaluations of programs that deliver health care services to minorities and other underserved populations. Mr. Espinosa is a trained moderator who has developed strong management and field-based research skills by leading various multi-year evaluations of federally-funded programs. These evaluations included convening strategic meetings with stakeholders to discuss various aspects of health care, including: access to care; customer satisfaction with health services; and the prevalence of culturally and linguistically appropriate health care services in local public health agencies and community health centers.

Shara Godiwalla, MPH, is a Senior Survey Director and offers more than 16 years in the field of survey research and project management with academia, non-profit, government, and international organizations with expertise in data collection and quality control. Additionally, Ms. Godiwalla currently serves as Associate Project Director with NORC for the National Children’s Study, a survey that follows children from before birth to 21 years of age. Prior to this, she was based at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the Director of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics that published the Nation’s report on children and families.

Karen Harris, MPH, is a Research Scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Evaluation at NORC. Harris has worked at the federal, state, and community levels on policy issues related to cardiovascular disease, women’s health, diabetes, and obesity. She is currently leading an evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s InformationLinks project, a nationwide effort that provided funds to state and local health departments to support and encourage their participation in regional health information networks. The evaluation involves conducting and analyzing semi-structured key informant interviews with grantees throughout the United States.

Adil Moiduddin, MPP, is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Evaluation at NORC. Mr. Moiduddin is a skilled research and health policy analyst with a solid track record delivering on complex and quantitative, qualitative and technical assistance projects. He has successfully managed a number of HIT and research coordination related projects including site visits assessing use of EMRs and other forms of HIT to three hospitals in the state of Florida to be used in developing a blueprint for HIT in that state; a qualitative study looking at EMR use among physicians in private practice for ASPE; and a project that examines HIT implementations among CHCs and their networks through site visits and structured interviews, also for ASPE.

Caitlin Carroll Oppenheimer, MPH, is a Principal Research Scientist in the Health Policy and Evaluation Department at NORC with over fifteen years’ experience conducting research for the federal government. Oppenheimer managed activities related to the 2005 Assessment on the Users and Uses of HealthierUS and Healthy People 2010, including conducting key informant interviews that informed questionnaire development, working with the survey operations team during data collection and providing input into the data analysis tasks. In addition to her work related to Healthy People, Oppenheimer is well-versed in all aspects of survey design, operations and analysis.