Investigator Development Core
- MCUAAAR Pilot Scholar Investigators-
The Investigator Core funds and mentors research projects for junior African American and other underrepresented faculty. The focus of pilot projects has been identifying and developing
potential pilot scholars and providing mentoring during proposal development.
Current MCUAAAR Pilot Scholars
2009-2010
Florence J. Dallo, PhD, MPH (Oakland University)
Derek M. Griffith, PhD (University of Michigan)
Ronica N. Rooks, PhD (University of Michigan)
Previous MCUAAAR Pilot Scholars
2008-2009
Bo MacInnis, PhD (University of Michigan)
Hasan Shanawani MPH, MD (Wayne State University)
Karen Patricia Williams, PhD (Michigan State University)
2007-2008 MCUAAAR Pilots
Nicole M. Huby, PsyD (University of Michigan)
Fayetta Martin, MSW, DL (Wayne State University)
Trina R. Shanks, PhD (University of Michigan)
Florence J. Dallo, PhD MPH
Dr. Dallo is currently an Assistant Professor of Wellness, Health Promotion and Injury Prevention in the School of Health Sciences at Oakland University. As a Chaldean (Iraqi Catholic) immigrant growing up in a racially and ethnically diverse community, she was curious why some individuals led healthy lives, while others did not. For her Master’s in Public Health thesis, Dr. Dallo interviewed 130 Chaldean American women in Detroit to better understand the link between acculturation and blood pressure. After that experience, she knew her passion was to promote health and prevent disease in minority communities. After obtaining her PhD and completing a two-year Kellogg Health Disparities Post-Doctoral Fellowship, she began as an assistant professor at the University of Texas, School of Public Health in Dallas. During her three years in Dallas, and while teaching and mentoring students, Dr. Dallo published several manuscripts, many related to the health of Arab and Chaldean-Americans.
In 2006, she received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to analyze national data focusing on quality of health care among immigrants. In July 2009, she received a grant from the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research to analyze American Community Survey data to better understand disability status of Arab, Hispanic, and Asian Americans 65 years of age or older. Through all of these experiences, Dr. Dallo has discovered that balance breeds happiness and treasures spending time with her family and hiking and running with her two dogs.
Derek M. Griffith, PhD
Derek Griffith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the University of Michigan, School of Public Health and the Assistant Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health. The primary focus of Dr. Griffith’s research is using qualitative and quantitative approaches to develop and test theories that will help improve older African American men’s longevity and quality of life. He is particularly interested in how racism, social support, stress, and life priorities influence men’s health behavior and health outcomes. Dr. Griffith is currently the Principal Investigator of Men-4-Health, an American Cancer Society funded study to examine and improve urban African American men’s diet and physical activity by conducting a multi-level, community-based participatory research intervention in Flint, MI. With supplemental funding from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, he has been conducting focus groups that explore facilitating factors and barriers to healthy eating and physical activity for men in Ypsilanti, MI and he will be conducting groups in Detroit, MI in 2009-2010. The goal of the MCUAAAR grant is to support the analysis and dissemination of findings from these grants, with a focus on data obtained from older focus group participants (age 50 and older). These analyses and papers will also support the development of interventions to improve African American men’s eating and physical activity in each city.
Nicole M. Huby, PsyD
Dr. Nicole M. Huby is a neuropsychologist investigator. Her specific research interests are mild cognitive impairment and methods of memory assessment in African American elders. She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from Howard University in Psychology, and a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of the District of Columbia. Dr. Huby completed her pre-doctoral internship at the Wayne State University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences and earned a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology (Forensic track) from Argosy University/Washington, DC Campus. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology at the University of Michigan Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry and is an Adjunct Clinical Lecturer in the Pediatrics Department in the University of Michigan Health System. She works as a Forensic Psychologist with the State of Michigan at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry and is a current pilot scholar with the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research. Currently, Dr. Huby analyzes secondary data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine questions about the role of cognition in caregiver burden in old age.
Bo MacInnis, PhD
Dr. MacInnis’ research focuses on the economic incentives that influence consumers’ health production and labor market participation decisions, and the impact of public policies and market imperfections. In her dissertation, Dr. MacInnis examined the relationships between parental occupational choice and children’s physical and cognitive health, the effect of the changing nature of food manufacturing on childhood obesity, and the long-term dual impact of college education and military service on obesity and related health morbidities. Her current research focuses on the economic well-being, physical and mental health, and the retirement expectation of the baby boomer generation, and the impact of the baby boom on Social Security and Medicare programs.
Back to Top
Fayetta Martin, MSW, DL
Dr. Fayetta Martin received her doctorate of law in Health Law in 2003. She completed a two year postdoctoral research fellowship funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse with a focus on behavior addictions issues affecting older adults. Her research centers on the co-morbidity of health disorders, particularly those relating to behavior addictions (i.e. casino gambling), risk taking and antisocial behaviors of urban elders. Other areas of interest include closing the gap between health disparity and successful minority aging, elder law, social and aging policy and online teaching. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University, School of Social Work in Detroit, Michigan.
http://socialwork.wayne.edu/bio.php?id=969
Back to Top
Ronica N. Rooks, PhD
Ronica N. Rooks, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver (UCD). At UCD she teaches a graduate course on social epidemiology, as well as undergraduate courses in Health Disparities/Ethnicity, Health and Social Justice, the Social Determinants of Health, and Health, Culture, and Society. Prior to her current position she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Kent State University in Ohio. She also completed a W. K. Kellogg postdoctoral fellowship in health disparities at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan and a postdoctoral fellowship in geriatric epidemiology, in the intramural Laboratory of Epidemiology, Demography, and Biometry at the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Rooks graduated from the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park with concentrations in demography and social stratification. She received her bachelor’s degree in economics and sociology/anthropology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Dr. Rooks’ research focuses on explanations for racial and ethnic disparities in chronic conditions in adult and older adult populations. I have specifically focused on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, physical functioning, and mental health among African Americans, generally examining why African Americans have an earlier age of onset of chronic conditions, poorer sequelae in terms of management and declines leading to disability, and earlier age at death compared to Whites. To understand these racial health disparities I have explored explanations of socioeconomic status, health insurance, access to care, health service utilization, mistrust, and discrimination, and I am exploring community-level social and physical environmental factors through a recently submitted R03 grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health. I am currently funded by the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research to investigate two papers on: 1) the relationship between health and racial health disparities to employment among older, well-functioning Black and White adults; and 2) whether well-functioning Black adults, who have already survived certain higher health risks (e.g., selective survival), will be more robust than White adults over time with regard to chronic conditions. In the future, I hope to pursue similar research on health disparities in chronic conditions with Latinos. Results of this research will establish important groundwork for my long-term expertise in health disparities research and enable me to apply for future research grants to reduce and eliminate health disparities by focusing on community prevention and intervention methods, seeking policy change, and becoming a teacher-scholar involving students in my research.
Back to Top
Hasan Shanawani, MPH, MD
Hasan Shanawani, MPH, MD, is a clinician-investigator in the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. His research interests are physician-patient communication in critically and/ or terminally ill patients from minority ethnic, racial, and religious communities. He completed his undergraduate, masters and medical degrees from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. His pulmonary and critical care training were completed at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina where he was also an ethics and policy fellow working on the ethics of genetics research in diseases where health disparities exist. Currently, Hasan is working on secondary data analysis of video-recorded physician-patient conversations of lung cancer patients at the Karmanos Cancer Institute’s Center for Behavioral Oncology.
Back to Top
Trina R. Shanks, PhD
Trina Shanks is Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan. She completed her Ph.D. and Masters in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis and is also a faculty associate with its Center for Social Development. In 1994 she was awarded the Rhodes scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, where she earned a Masters in Comparative Social Research. In addition to her graduate schooling, Dr. Shanks served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador working in micro-enterprise development and served as executive director of Christian Community Services, a church-affiliated not-for-profit agency she was invited to help form in Nashville, Tennessee. Trina initiated its family mentoring program and introduced Individual Development Accounts to its work with public housing residents. In her current research, funded by the Ford Foundation, she is co-investigator for the SEED Impact Assessment study, which sets up a quasi-experimental research design in Pontiac, Michigan, to test the impact of offering Head Start families 529 college education plans for their enrolled children. Her areas of research/scholarly interest include: asset-building policy and practice across the life cycle; the relationship between wealth, poverty and child well-being; public policy for families; social and economic development, particularly in urban communities. Her MCUAAAR pilot study examines wealth and assets among the elderly Black population.
Here is the link to the Urban Institute website that announces a recent book to which she contributed:
http://www.urban.org/books/assetbuilding/index.cfm
Back to Top
Karen Patricia Williams, PhD
Dr. Williams is an assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics Gynecology & Reproductive Biology in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. Her formal training is in the area of applied sociology and health services research. Her area of expertise is in community-based participatory research and women’s health policy. Dr. Williams has designed a breast and cervical cancer prevention intervention -- Kin KeeperSM. It is a female familial model that incorporates a cancer literacy assessment and most recently has been translated into Spanish and Arabic. In addition, she and a colleague authored the Kin KeeperSM Cancer Prevention Intervention Curriculum Guide and Workbook©. This was funded by the Michigan Department of Community Health to cross train the community health workers who in turn implement the model with their public health clients. Dr. Williams and team were funded by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to implement the Kin KeeperSM model in Grand Rapids, Detroit and Dearborn.
Recently, she designed an undergraduate seminar, Conducting Community Based Research for Underserved Women, to teach students how to conduct community participatory research.
Dr. Williams has been the recipient of State and National peer-reviewed funding. She has authored peer-reviewed papers, reports and a book chapter that empirically illustrates the intersection of family and community as strong influences on a woman’s preventive health decisions. She serves on the Michigan Cancer Consortium Breast Cancer Committee and was a former co-chair of the Minority Women’s Health Panel of Experts with the United States Public Health Service’s Office on Women’s Health. She is a graduate of Temple University (Philadelphia, PA) and Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI).
Back to Top
Requests for MCUAAAR Pilot Grant Proposals
For information on the annual summer training workshop
For more information contact: Karen L. Daniels @ 313-871-0735 or kldaniels@wayne.edu
MCUAAAR is a collaboration between the University of Michigan and Wayne State University
