LAB DIRECTOR

Wizdom Powell Hammond, PhD, MPH

>Wizdom Powell Hammond is an assistant professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. She is also a faculty member in the cancer prevention and control core at the University of Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center. Dr. Powell received her bachelor’s degree in forensic psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She completed both her M.S. and PhD in clinical psychology at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and her MPH (Health Behavior and Health Education) from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She completed her clinical internship at The University of Michigan Psychological Clinic. Following her graduate studies, Dr. Powell Hammond was a postdoctoral scholar in the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program at the University of California San Francisco/Berkeley site. Dr. Powell Hammond is the recipient of numerous awards including the APA Minority Fellowship, Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, and the Loren Frankel Student Research Award (APA Division 51). Her research has been funded by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. Currently, she is receiving funding from the UNC Lineberger Cancer Center, National Cancer Institute, and the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities. Her research investigates the interplay between social constructions of masculinity and African American men's acquisition of healthcare/social capital across the lifespan and the impact of racial discrimination on their trust of medical organizations and professionals. Her work also examines the impact of masculinity ideology on African American men's prostate cancer screening practices and survivorship.

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FACULTY MEMBER ASSOCIATES

Shawn M. Bediako, PhD



Shawn M. Bediako, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he contributes to both the behavioral medicine and the community and applied social psychology programs. Bediako’s general research interests are concerned with socio-cultural aspects of the adult experience of sickle cell disease. Currently, he examines: (a) social psychological processes that influence public attitudes towards individuals with sickle cell; (b) the impact of employment, unemployment, and underemployment on persons coping with sickle cell; and (c) the role of manhood and masculinity in shaping health care utilization among African American men with sickle cell.

Bediako completed undergraduate studies at the University of Central Arkansas and received a master’s degree in community psychology from Florida A&M University. After completing a doctorate in social/health psychology from Stony Brook University, he was a Carolina Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity in the psychology department at UNC-Chapel Hill.

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Giselle Corbie-Smith, MD, MSc

Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith is an Associate Professor of Social Medicine and Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and trained as an Internal Medicine Intern, Resident and Chief Resident at Yale University School of Medicine. She received a Masters of Science in Clinical Research from the Epidemiology Department at Emory University. Her interest in minority health issues, especially access to care and the influence of culture, race, ethnicity, and social class on health, dates from early in her academic career. Her clinical work has always focused on serving underserved populations in public hospitals or clinics. She currently maintains a clinical practice at a local community health center. Since joining the faculty at UNC in 2000, she has continued her research on barriers to minority participation in research. Her work focuses on trust and distrust as it impacts participation in research among minorities and the methodological and ethical issues involved in the inclusion of minorities in research. She is currently the Principal Investigator on grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to examine the patient-specific and investigator-specific factors that influence participation in research. She is also the Director of the Minority Research Core of the Carolina-Shaw Partnership for the Elimination of Health Disparities (Project Connect). Dr. Corbie-Smith was recently awarded the Jefferson-Pilot Fellowship in Academic Medicine, the highest award for Assistant Professors in the School of Medicine. The Jefferson-Pilot Corp. established a trust fund within The Medical Foundation of North Carolina Inc. to create the fellowship program. Jefferson-Pilot fellows are selected annually, and the program’s aim is to attract and retain promising junior faculty in the School of Medicine. Dr. Corbie-Smith is also the Director of the Program on Health Disparities at the UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. The purpose of this program is to coordinate and enhance disparity research within the Sheps Center and throughout UNC, to build expertise in working with minority communities, and to improve collaboration and communication with minority serving institutions in North Carolina and the nation.

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Rashawn Ray, PhD

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Cheryl Woods Giscombe, PhD, MSN, RN

Pamela Valera, PhD, MSW, is a faculty member at the Division of Community Collaboration and Implementation Science, Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.  Dr. Valera is a trained community social worker and HIV prevention researcher.  Her work focuses on social health inequalities, particularly along the lines of class, gender, and culture among Black men.  Dr. Valera is also interested in health seeking behaviors and health prevention interventions for men coming home from incarceration.

She has collaborated and partnered with several health related agencies and advocacy groups, including Osbourne Association, Correctional Association of New York, Palmetto AIDS Life Support Services, South Carolina HIV/AIDS Council, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Applied Research Center.

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POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLARS

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Janelle Armstrong-Brown, MPH

Janelle is a PhD student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She received her BA from University of Rochester and her MPH from the State University of New York at Albany. Janelle’s interests include community-based participatory research, racial health disparities, specifically, understanding the mechanisms by which racial residential segregation impacts the health behaviors of residents and using this information to develop interventions to improve the health of the community. Janelle is also concerned with identifying effective intervention tools to impact the health behaviors of African American men. She is currently involved with intervention efforts among members of predominantly black churches in the Raleigh/Durham area. In the future, Janelle plans to develop health interventions that target social ecological issues, such as education and neighborhood resources, affecting minorities and underserved populations.

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Derrick D. Matthews, MPH

Derrick is a fourth year PhD student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education.  He received his BA from Rice University and his MPH from the University of Michigan.  His research interests lie in primary and secondary HIV prevention in the United States, specifically among gay male and MSM populations of color. He is particularly interested in how masculine ideology operates among these groups of men and how it influences the formation of integrated identity, social networks, and sexual behaviors.  Currently he is a UNC Kenan Fellow, works with the Student Health Action Coalition providing free HIV counseling and testing to the local community, and serves as co-chair of the HIV/STD control section of the North Carolina Public Health Association.  Derrick hopes to pursue an academic career that more deeply examines health disparities experienced by African American men by viewing their health behaviors and health outcomes through the lenses of gender, sexuality, race, social position, and social networks.

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Allison Matthews

Allison Mathews continues her studies in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She completed her master's thesis titled, "Black Masculinity: An Examination of the Coping Mechanisms used by Black Men to Deal with Stress Associated with Gender Non-Conformity."  Her research focused on the ways in which religious coping and religiosity play a role in coping with stress in different contexts.  In April 2010, she presented a version of her master's paper at the AGEP-SBES Conference at the University of Texas at Austin.  Over the summer, she had the opportunity to travel to South Africa to attend the World Cup games and Bermuda for a wedding.  She learned a lot about different cultural practices and norms, and hopes to incorporate international comparisons of racial identity formation in her future research endeavors.

In the fall semester 2010, Allison is studying for her comprehensive exams and hopes to begin working on her dissertation by Spring semester, 2011.  Lastly, Allison is working as a research assistant with the LinCS 2 Durham project.  This community-based participatory research project is co-sponsored by Family Health International (FHI), North Carolina Central University, Durham County Health Department, and UNC Chapel Hill.  It examines the ways in which members of the Black community can gain more trust and interest in participating in HIV/AIDS prevention research in Durham County.  With the project, she conducted focus groups, ethnographic field work, and survey development.

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Yasmin Cole-Lewis, MPH

Yasmin Cole-Lewis graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology from Emory University and is currently a first year master’s student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. Her research interests include health disparities in African Americans, particularly the psychosocial factors that cause higher disease incidence and prevalence, as well as the societal factors that perpetuate these inequalities. Through her work in the Men’s Health Research Lab, she has also taken an interest in the role of perception and acknowledgment of discrimination in African American men’s self perception, as it relates to healthcare and help seeking patterns. Her practice interests include Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and photo voice.

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Dinushika Mohottige, MPH



Dinushika Mohottige is a second year medical student at the UNC School of Medicine.  She graduated from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in May 2008. As a graduate student, she worked with the Greensboro Cancer Care and Racial Equity Study and completed a masters paper examining disparities in breast cancer-related mortality and breast cancer care between African American and White women in North Carolina. Dinushika graduated from Duke University in May 2006 with honors and a B.A. in public policy and a certificate in health policy. Throughout her undergraduate years, she facilitated and developed dozens of dialogues on identity and social-marker based oppression as an executive board member of the Center for Race Relations. As a Robertson scholar at Duke, she interned with Feminist Women’s Health Center, Atlanta, developed health education programming for a Black women’s soccer league in Guguletu, South Africa, and volunteered at the Red Cross Children’s hospital in Cape Town. Dinushika hopes to pursue an M.D. and merge the disciplines of public health and public policy while focusing on infectious diseases and the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

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Justin Smith, MPH

Justin Smith is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE) at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.  His primary research interests lie in developing novel HIV prevention interventions for Black men who have sex with men (BMSM), and in using qualitative methods to bring the lived experiences of Black men to bear on understandings of the determinants of Black men's sexual health.  Before coming to HBHE, Justin served as the project coordinator for STYLE (Strength Through Youth Livin' Empowered), an HIV prevention and care program serving BMSM based at the UNC School of Medicine.  In this capacity, he organized HIV testing events on college campuses across North Carolina and facilitated support groups for young HIV+ men, which he continues to do.  In addition to his work at UNC, Justin serves as a consultant on HIV prevention research projects focusing on Black communities through RTI International and FHI.

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Andre Brown, MPH

Andre L. Brown is currently a doctoral student in Health Behavior and Health Education.  His professional passions include HIV prevention, improving the health of Black men, and understanding how to improve health services by utilizing more effective outcome mechanisms and measurements.  Most recently, he worked as an HIV Prevention Consultant with the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) in Detroit.  At MDCH, he works on various projects designed to improve HIV prevention services for Men who have Sex with Men (MSM), particularly young Black MSM.  Prior to this position, he coordinated an HIV prevention program for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) youth in Chicago.  He is an alumnus of the HBHE program as well as the University of Michigan, where he completed his undergraduate studies (Go Blue!!!).

Outside of his professional life, he enjoys spending time with friends and family.  He loves to travel and enjoys riding his bike, running, and spending time on the water.  He also enjoys watching his two favorite TV shows, "The Golden Girls" and "Martin."

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Amma Agyemang, MPH

Amma Agyemang earned her Masters in Public Health from the department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in May 2009.  As a graduate student, she worked as a graduate research assistant on Dr Eugenia Eng's community-based participatory project, Are We Our Brother's Keeper? Her master's paper, entitled, "Ready or Not: An Evaluation of Rural African-American Churches' Readiness to Engage in Research" was based on findings from the study.  Her research interests include the psychosocial correlates of health behavior, minority health, and the elimination of health disparities.  She was a double major in Psychology and Sociology at The College of William and Mary, where she graduated with honors. She plans to pursue her PhD in clinical psychology and to combine clinical psychology and public health in work that improves the health of diverse populations.

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Travis Melvin

Travis Melvin is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, planning to graduate in May 2011.  His hometown is Wilmington, NC, where he lived until his trek to UNC.  He majors in Business Consulting and Economics and plans to enter the financial consulting side of Corporate America.  His occupations include work at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, UNC Center for Developmental Science, and Housing and Residential Education.  Outside of academics and work, Travis is extremely involved on campus and enjoys performing original pieces of poetry.  He works very closely with the data utilized by the research lab.  He is interested in learning more about health from his colleagues while applying creative ideas from his scholastic instruction to papers, presentations, and many other functions of the research lab.

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Justin Rucker

Justin Rucker is a senior in the Bachelor's of Science in Public Health program in the Department of Health Policy and Management.  His previous research projects include an assessment of access to nutritious foods in West Philadelphia, an information dissemination project for the Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center, and a study to gain more understanding on the relationship between heart disease and depression based on various factors of ethnicity and socioeconomic status.  His research interests include the effects of stigma and medical mistrust, health disparities (especially those in the diagnosis of mental health disorders and access to preventative care), community based participatory research, and health communication.

Justin is currently in the process of applying to Master's in Public Health programs in Health Behavior and Health Education, Sociomedical Sciences, or Behavioral Health Sciences.  After completing his master's, he hopes to continue on to obtain his PhD or MD.

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