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Assistant Professor
Ohio State University, College of Public Health, Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
I am an Assistant Professor of Public Health at The Ohio State University. I am an intervention scientist dedicated to conducting the scientific work needed to improve health and reduce disparities for those impacted by violence and trauma. In the USA, one in four women will experience sexual and/or domestic violence and over one million youth are homeless. An interconnected web of comorbid conditions are concentrated within these populations, including undiagnosed head injury, disability from mental health, alcohol, tobacco, and other substance use and exposure to past and ongoing violence. My work focuses on building and optimizing service access and behavioral interventions for these populations recognizing the chaotic circumstances in which they live and are trying to seek safety and health services. Informed by nearly two decades of community work in violence prevention and crisis response, and trained as a feminist theorist, I bring gender, culture, justice, and community practice lenses to the promotion of health equity. I am the co-founder of the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, a 501(c)3 organization recognized by CDC and the Office on Violence Against Women as Ohio’s coalition addressing sexual violence response and its prevention. I received a NIH K07 Career Development Grant (2017-2022). In addition, I served as an evaluator on an Office of Victims of Crime funded demonstration grant (2016-2019) awarded to the Ohio Domestic Violence Network; this work focused on the creation, implementation, and evaluation of the C.A.R.E. model, designed to increase advocacy organizations’ capacity to better meet the complex and often interconnected health concerns of domestic violence survivors—including brain injury, mental health, trauma, and substance use. I also am currently working to found the Brain Injury from Violence CARE Alliance, a university-community partnership to raise awareness and provider practices regarding the need for brain injury-aware, trauma informed care.