The secondary faculty at the School of Public Health includes 86 members from across the university.

Alison Antes, PhD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of General Medicine & Geriatrics. Her work examines factors that foster and hinder excellence and integrity in research. Current areas of interest include ethical decision-making, instruction aimed at promoting professionalism and ethics, and leadership and management in research.

Devin Banks, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychiatry. Her research interests are racial and cultural determinants of health, substance use development and prevention, behavioral health equity, and community-engaged research and intervention. 

Jacquelyn Benson, PhD, MA, is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Palliative Medicine. A family gerontologist, her research focuses on improving health outcomes and advancing health equity for older adults and caregiving families across the continuum of serious illness.   

Philip J. Budge, MD, PhD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and the director of clinical research at WashU Medicine’s Death to Onchocerciasis and Lymphatic Filariasis project. He works to help end parasitic worm infections as public health threats by developing improved diagnostics and treatments for worm diseases including elephantiasis, river blindness and African eye worm.  

Anne Mobley Butler, MS, PhD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. Her research is aimed at answering important clinical questions about drug and vaccine utilization, effectiveness, safety, and related outcomes by applying epidemiologic study designs and analytic methods to data from large clinical and health-care utilization databases. 

Patricia Cavazos-Rehg, PhD, is a professor of psychiatry and director of the Division of Addiction Science, Prevention, and Treatment. Her research interests include mental health epidemiology, and understanding how policy and technology shape health behaviors of young people. 

Emily Cloessner, MD, MSPH, is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at WashU Medicine. An expert on global emergency medicine, Cloessner studies how to adapt protocols developed in high-income countries to resource-limited settings.

Victor G. Davila-Roman, MD, is a cardiologist and a professor of medicine, and vice chair for Global Health and co-director of the Center for Global Health in the Department of Medicine. He is also a co-director of the School of Public Health’s Global Health Futures Innovation Research Network. He uses implementation science frameworks to improve health systems and heart health, with a focus on hypertension, heart failure and how conditions such as diabetes, obesity, pregnancy and HIV infection affect heart health. He has major research projects in seven African countries, Peru and the U.S.  

Kia Davis, MPH, ScD, is an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Public Health Sciences. A social epidemiologist by training, Davis’ research explores how structural racism affects chronic disease risk factors and identifies place-based and organization-level solutions to mitigate the adverse health impacts. 

Nathaniel Dell, PhD, is a clinical social worker and an assistant professor of psychiatry. He uses evidence-based approaches to promote the well-being of people living with both mental illnesses and substance use disorder, and leverages big data to identify the needs of hard-to-reach populations such as refugees, people who are unhoused, and survivors of human trafficking. 

Bradley Evanoff, MD, MPH, is the Richard A. and Elizabeth Henby Sutter Professor of Occupational, Industrial and Environmental Medicine. Evanoff studies the epidemiology and prevention of work-related injuries and illnesses, work-related musculoskeletal disorders, and workplace health promotion, including mental health.  

Mark A. Fiala, MSW, PhD, is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Oncology. His work focuses on cancer disparities, including how social determinants of health such as race, socioeconomic status and insurance coverage impact treatment decisions and health outcomes for people with cancer.  

Peter Uwe Fischer, PhD, is a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. Fischer directs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Death to Onchocerciasis and Lymphatic Filariasis (DOLF) Project, which seeks to develop and evaluate new treatments and methods for mass drug administration to accelerate programs to eliminate parasitic worm infections.

Nickole Forget, MD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of General Medicine & Geriatrics. She provides medical care to underserved populations and mentors medical students and residents. Her research is focused on finding ways to improve health care for uninsured and underinsured people.  

Elvin Geng, MD, MPH, is a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and co-director of SPH’s Dissemination & Implementation Science Innovation Research Network (DISIRN). Using the lens of implementation science, he conducts research to optimize the use of evidence-based interventions to end the HIV epidemic as a public-health threat.  

Ige A. George, MD, MS is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. He specializes in the epidemiology and treatment of infections in people with compromised immune systems such as organ-transplant recipients and patients with tuberculosis. 

Burel Goodin, MA, PhD, is a professor of anesthesiology at WashU Medicine. A clinical health psychologist with a specialization in pain-related behavioral medicine, Goodin studies how social factors influence pain physiology, perception, and treatment responses, with a goal of finding ways to eliminate disparities in pain and its treatment.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, is the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and a professor of pathology and immunology. Gordon is credited with founding the field of gut microbiome research. His body of work has opened up the vast new therapeutic potential for the microbiome, exemplified by his identification of ways to repair the gut microbiomes of children with malnutrition and restore their healthy growth. 

Richard T. Griffey, MD, MPH, is a professor of emergency medicine and general medical education director for patient safety and quality improvement. Griffey’s interests in patient safety and quality extend to adverse event detection, evidence-based imaging and radiation safety, health literacy, implementation science, operations and organizational performance and innovations in management of diabetic ketoacidosis in the acute care setting. 

Pediatric emergency medicine physician George Hoganson, MD, is an assistant professor of pediatrics. He leads studies on pediatric mental health, health communication, caregiver experience, and equity in care delivery for populations disproportionately affected by barriers to care, while also collaborating on multicenter studies addressing infectious disease and pediatric trauma.

Mark Huffman, MPH, MD, is the William Bowen Endowed Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, co-director of the Global Health Center in the Department of Medicine, and co-director of SPH’s Global Health Futures Innovation Research Network. His research focuses on cardiovascular implementation science, health systems and health policy with an aim of improving cardiovascular health and health care globally.   

Cultural anthropologist Jean Hunleth, MPH, PhD, is an associate professor of surgery in the Division of Public Health Sciences. Hunleth studies caregiving and treatment-seeking for infectious and chronic diseases. Her research across Zambia and the United States aims to involve children’s experiences, insights and creativity as sources of innovation in public health research, programs and policies.

Juliet Iwelunmor, PhD, is a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and a passionate advocate for sustaining evidence-based health interventions. She uses participatory research to study how to make impactful interventions last by amplifying the voices of communities and young people in these health interventions. 

Kenton Johnston, MPH, PhD, is an associate professor of medicine in the division of General Medicine & Geriatrics. He is associate director for research at WashU’s Center for Advancing Health Services, Policy, and Economics Research, and he studies the impact of Medicare value-based payment models on patients and health care providers

Karen Joynt Maddox, MPH, MD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Cardiology Division and the co-director of SPH’s Policy and Structural Solutions (PS2) Innovation Research Network. She studies health equity, and her main areas of research are quantifying inequities in health-care quality and outcomes for historically marginalized populations, and evaluating the impact of federal and state health policies on quality, outcomes and cost. 

Allison A. King, MD, MPH, PhD, is the Fred M. Saigh Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Research at WashU Medicine. She investigates the factors that influence a child’s learning opportunities, including the impact of chronic diseases such as sickle cell disease and brain tumors on cognitive function. She also employs implementation science methods to enhance the care and outcomes for affected children. 

James Krings, MD, MSCI, is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonology & Critical Care Medicine. His work spans implementation science, health communication, and health policy, including collaborations with MO HealthNet. He partners with local federally qualified community health centers to strengthen asthma care, including through the CHEST Study, and is actively seeking new collaborations with public health and community partners.

Melissa Kroll, MD, an associate professor of emergency medicine at WashU Medicine, joins the SPH secondary faculty. Kroll’s clinical research is targeted at improving prehospital care and delivery of medicine in low-resource environments.

Margaret Kruk, MD, MPH, is the Distinguished Endowed Professor of Health Systems and Medicine at WashU Medicine. Kruk is the director of the Quality Evidence for Health System Transformation (QuEST) Network, a multi-country research consortium working to produce a global evidence base for improving health systems. She is also director of the WashU QuEST Center. Kruk and her team use implementation science and econometric methods to design and evaluate large-scale health system reforms. 

James Li, MD, MEd, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at WashU Medicine, joins the SPH secondary faculty. The medical director for multiple EMS agencies and fire departments in the St. Louis region, Li cares for patients both in the emergency department and the prehospital environment. His academic interest is in developing EMS educational innovations to improve patient care outside of the hospital.

Stephen Liang, MD, MPHS, is an associate professor of medicine at WashU Medicine. An infectious diseases specialist and emergency physician, Liang is particularly interested in infection prevention and infectious disease management in the emergency department, and in prehospital care, including in disaster settings.

Sunny C. Lin, PhD, MS, is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of General Medicine & Geriatrics. Her research aims to improve cost, quality, and access of health-care delivery for older adults by evaluating the impact of Medicare payment reform programs and innovative models of care delivery enabled by IT solutions and other innovations.  

Julia López, PhD, MPH, LCSW, is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. Her research focuses on understanding how gaps in research and clinical practice in the areas of HIV care, immigrant health, and sexual and gender minority health affect mental and physical health outcomes and developing ways to address these gaps effectively through community collaboration, both domestically and globally. 

Mark Manary, MD, is the James P. Keating Professor of Pediatrics and a professor in pediatric emergency medicine at WashU Medicine. An expert in childhood malnutrition, Manary helped develop a peanut-based ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) that has been successfully used to treat malnourished children worldwide. His nonprofit Project Peanut Butter produces and distributes the supplemental food in Malawi, Sierra Leone and Ghana. His research in malnutrition and his advocacy with United Nations agencies has successfully reshaped international policy and practice.  

Caline Mattar, MD, is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases. Her research focuses on antimicrobial resistance, infection prevention and control in resource-limited settings, global health policy and the health workforce. She also serves as the director of global health education and partnerships at WashU Medicine.

Margaret L. (Molly) McNairy, MD, MSc, is the David C. and Betty Farrell Professor of Medicine and chief of the Division of General Medicine, Geriatrics and Hospital Medicine at WashU Medicine. A global health scholar with a particular focus on improving primary health care for chronic diseases including HIV and cardiovascular disease for people in extreme poverty, McNairy uses a multidisciplinary approach including rigorous observational research as well as clinical and implementation trials.

Kristen Mueller, MD, is an associate professor of emergency medicine at WashU Medicine. She studies firearm violence and injury prevention, and she serves as director of Life Outside of Violence, the St. Louis regionwide hospital-based violence-intervention program.     

Susan Searles Nielsen, MS, PhD, is an associate professor of neurology. She studies the environmental, pharmacological and occupational factors that influence the epidemiology of neurological diseases such as Parkinson disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).   

Kyle Pitzer, MSW, PhD, is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Palliative Medicine. He studies the experiences of patients receiving care for serious illness and their family caregivers, with an aim of finding ways to improve psychosocial and care-related outcomes. 

William G. Powderly, MD, is the Dr. J. William Campbell Professor of Medicine at WashU Medicine. Also the director of WashU’s Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences, Powderly is focused on helping translate advances in biomedical science into improvements in population and community health. Powderly has also led WashU’s Institute for Public Health since 2013, where he was instrumental in facilitating the establishment of the new School of Public Health. 

Hilary E. L. Reno, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, and principal investigator of the St. Louis Sexually Transmitted Infections/HIV Prevention Training Center. Her research focuses on the use of large clinical databases to improve care for sexually transmitted infections.

Cynthia Rogers, MD, is the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry.  Also the vice chair and division director for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Rogers specializes in psychiatric illness in young children and their mothers. Her research interests include the impact of adverse experiences on brain development and the relationship between abnormal brain development and psychiatric disorders in toddlers and preschoolers. 

Aaron M. Schuh, MD, MPH, is an assistant professor of pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent Medicine. His work focuses on eating disorders, sexual and reproductive health, and mood disorders. 

Michelle Silver, PhD, ScM, is an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Public Health Sciences. An epidemiologist and health services researcher, Silver examines how to best use results from epidemiologic studies to make and implement evidence-based decisions in cancer screening and prevention globally. 

Nicholas Szoko, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor of pediatrics in the Division of Adolescent Medicine. His research has focused on identifying protective factors to support systems-involved youth, as well as design, implementation, and evaluation of community-partnered youth empowerment programs. 

Hannah Szlyk, MSSW, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychiatry. She studies how to harness technology and mobile health tools to facilitate and enhance recovery from substance use and mental health disorders, with a particular emphasis on suicide prevention and health disparities. 

Tomi Toler, DrPH, MS, is an assistant professor of pediatrics and the associate director of the Program in Genetic Counseling at WashU Medicine. A certified genetic counselor, Toler is interested in the return of research results related to genetic testing, neurogenetics and public health genetics and genomics.

Denise Wilfley, PhD, is the Scott Rudolph University Professor and a professor of psychiatry. Her research focuses on the prevention and treatment of eating disorders and obesity. She uses technology, community partnerships and implementation science methods to achieve real-world impact in colleges, secondary education and primary-care settings. 

Candice L. Woolfolk, MPH, PhD, is an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology. She studies maternal and fetal illnesses, including how racial discrimination and social disadvantage affect pregnancy outcomes.  

Kevin Young Xu, MD, MPH, is an assistant professor of psychiatry and a health services researcher who specializes in substance use disorders. Xu studies how clinical trial findings on the treatment of and recovery from addiction apply in real-world situations, especially in populations underrepresented in research such as pregnant people. 

Elizabeth Yanik, PhD, ScM, is an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery, where she studies prevention of musculoskeletal disease. Her current research focuses on understanding factors that influence risk of shoulder osteoarthritis, including the contributions of genetics and occupational exposures; and investigating the relationship of sleep and circadian rhythm disruption with osteoarthritis risk

Ellis Ballard, MSW, MPH, an assistant professor of practice at the Brown School, is a leader in advancing participatory methods to model the behavior of complex systems. Ballard uses computational simulation models and group model building to support community-driven strategies to improve health access and social justice.  

Laura Brugger, PhD, a research assistant professor at the Brown School, investigates socio-environmental issues, particularly the interaction of natural and human systems, and explores pathways to strengthen both ecological resilience and social equity. She has studied spatial disparities in climate-related issues and examined how disasters, risk and resilience relate to voting outcomes. 

Cal J. Halvorsen, PhD, MSW, is an associate professor at the Brown School and a gerontological social work scholar. Halvorsen studies the intersection of aging societies, paid and unpaid work, and social purpose. He has expertise on self-employment, job-training programs, volunteering in later life and intergenerational initiatives.  

Kim Johnson, PhD, is a cancer epidemiologist and a professor at the Brown School. She studies how factors associated with access to care influence outcomes in pediatric, adolescent, and young adult cancer patients. Her research integrates data-driven methods to evaluate disparities, improve survival, and inform policies that enhance equitable care delivery.  

Phillip L. Marotta, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor at the Brown School. His research focuses on the impact of the criminal legal system on disparities in public health, with an emphasis on substance use treatment interventions in justice-involved populations and the HIV care continuum for justice-involved persons with substance use disorders. 

Mary McKay, PhD, is a WashU executive vice provost and former dean of the Brown School. Her research focus is child- and family-focused HIV prevention and care, poverty and economic inequality, and public health interventions to strengthen families, communities and systems. She also brings expertise in implementation research methods. 

Mitra Naseh, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Brown School and the director of the Forced Migration Initiative. Naseh is a forced migration scholar whose research focuses on the multidimensional social and economic integration of forcibly displaced populations, shaped by her interdisciplinary academic training, lived experience as an immigrant, and extensive fieldwork with non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies.

Byron Powell, PhD, is an associate professor and associate dean for research at the Brown School, and a co-director of the School of Public Health’s Dissemination and Implementation Science Innovation Research Network (DISIRN). His work focuses on improving the quality of health and social services by advancing methods in implementation research and practice. 

Nhial Tutlam, PhD, is an assistant professor at the Brown School. His research focuses on how intergenerational war trauma affects the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide, substance use and HIV infection among youth and their caregivers,both in refugee camps and after resettlement, with a goal of developing culturally appropriate, community-based interventions. 

Heather Corcoran, MFA, is the Halsey C. Ives Professor of Art at the Sam Fox School. A graphic designer and writer whose work explores data, place and belonging, Corcoran integrates personal and collective history with text, color and image. She teaches courses about the visualization of words and numbers, forming word and image relationships, and writing creative non-fiction in visual contexts.  

Jonathan Hanahan, MFA, is an associate professor at the Sam Fox School. Hanahan’s research is centered on alternative and ambient interfaces with technology and explores the physical, cultural and social ramifications of digital experiences in shaping our everyday realities.  

Linda C. Samuels, PhD, the chair and a professor of urban design at the Sam Fox School, joins the SPH secondary faculty as a professor. Samuels’ work is focused on the design, mapping, and metrics of public infrastructure to create more equitable cities. She was co-principal investigator on the Mobility for All by All project that aims to increase the social and environmental benefits of the St. Louis MetroLink expansion for residents living along the alignment. 

Cindy Brantmeier, PhD, MA, is a professor of applied linguistics and of global studies in Arts & Sciences. A scholar of health literacy, Brantmeier studies language use in the services provided to linguistically diverse patients at sites within and outside the U.S.

Kristin Brig-Ortiz, PhD, is a lecturer in the Public Health & Society Program in Arts & Sciences. A historian of environment and public health in southern Africa, Brig-Ortiz focuses on coastal communities and urban life. Her current work is a comparative analysis of water management and urban public health in three nineteenth-century South African port cities.

Carol Camp Yeakey, PhD, is the Marshall S. Snow Professor of Arts & Sciences and the founding director of the Center on Urban Research & Public Policy and the Interdisciplinary Program in Urban Studies. Her primary area of research is social welfare policy as it pertains to marginalized children, young adults and families and the neighborhood contexts in which they live.  

Jeff Catalano, PhD, is a professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences and the director of the environmental studies program in Arts & Sciences. Catalano investigates diverse topics spanning the fate of environmental contaminants, novel resources for critical minerals, and the habitability of other planets. He currently leads a team testing for soil lead in the path of the May 2025 tornado in St. Louis as part of the CLEAN STL project organized through the Brown School’s new Public Exchange.

Tristram R. Kidder, PhD, is the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences and the co-director of the Public Health & Society program.  Kidder studies how climate and environment shape human societies through time. He is especially interested in the Anthropocene concept, which argues that humans have come to rival nature as a force shaping the earth. 

Bo Li, PhD, is the Stanley A. Sawyer Professor of Statistics and Data Science in Arts & Sciences. Li’s work applies spatial and spatiotemporal statistics to public health, climatology and environmental questions related to HIV, vector-borne diseases, heat wave-related human morbidity, climate variability, agriculture and other topics.

Rebecca Messbarger, PhD, a professor of Italian and leader of Medical Humanities at WashU Arts & Sciences, joins the School of Public Health as a secondary faculty member. Through the intersecting histories of the gendered body, art, religion, and criminal justice, Messbarger studies how medical science shaped public health in the Enlightenment Age. 

Chen Reis, MPH, JD, PhD, is a professor of practice in the Program in Public Health & Society in Arts & Sciences. Reis’s work on sexual violence in humanitarian settings combines policy development, practice, advocacy, capacity development, and mixed methods research. Her work has influenced international and organizational policy, humanitarian practice, transitional justice processes, funding decisions, and research ethics standards.

Daniel Giammar, PhD, is the Walter E. Browne Professor of Environmental Engineering at McKelvey School of Engineering, director of WashU’s Center for the Environment, and the co-director of the School of Public Health’s Planetary Health Innovation Research Network. His research focuses on sustainable solutions to produce safe drinking water. 

Feng Jiao, PhD, is the Lauren and Lee Fixel Distinguished Professor of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at McKelvey School of Engineering and a member of the School of Public Health’s Food and Agriculture Research Mission. Jiao’s research is aimed at advancing electrochemical technologies to tackle critical global challenges in energy storage, chemical manufacturing and sustainable food production. 

Chenyang Lu, PhD, is the Fullgraf Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at McKelvey School of Engineering. As the founding director of WashU’s AI for Health Institute, he leads a multidisciplinary initiative uniting AI researchers and health professionals to address critical health challenges through innovative, data-driven approaches. His current research focuses on developing machine learning models to predict health outcomes using multimodal data, advancing both precision medicine and public health.

Kimberly Parker, MS, PhD, is an associate professor at McKelvey School of Engineering. Parker studies the fate of chemical and biological pollutants in soil, air and water with a goal of optimizing strategies to minimize the risk posed by these contaminants to human and ecosystem health.  

Patrick Aguilar, MD, MBA, is the managing director of health and a professor of practice of organizational behavior at Olin Business, and maintains a practice in pulmonary medicine at WashU Medicine. He works at the intersection of business and public health, aligning financial returns with social good, bridging academic theory with solutions to drive change and help health-care providers, employers, investors, and entrepreneurs use business as a force for better health.   

Hillary Anger Elfenbein, PhD, MA, is the John K. Wallace Jr. and Ellen A. Wallace Distinguished Professor and a professor of organizational behavior at Olin Business. Her research is in organizational behavior, focusing in particular on emotion and emotional disorders in the workplace. 

Barton Hamilton, PhD, is the Robert Brookings Smith Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at WashU Olin Business. He studies the economic impacts of health policies and the effects of health-care systems on economic behavior.   

Clive Muir, PhD, is a teaching professor at Olin Business School where he studies minority participation in business organizations and the larger economy, and teaches business and economic discourse, leadership development, organizational behavior, and teamwork.  

Applied economist Nishant Vats, PhD, is an assistant professor of finance. His research investigates demand-side dynamics across diverse contexts, such as farmers-entrepreneurs in India and Black and Hispanic communities in the U.S. He is also interested in examining the effect of financial hardships on mental and physical health.

Brenda Dvoskin, SJD, is an associate professor of law. Her research focuses on legal and social questions surrounding sexuality, privacy and digital spaces, with a focus on the regulation of online sexuality.