Olivia Affuso, PhD

Dr. Olivia Affuso is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and an Associate Scientist in the UAB Nutrition Obesity Research Center and the Center for Exercise Medicine. Her research focuses
on the prevention of obesity and chronic disease through physical activity, body composition methods development, and the design of obesity randomized controlled trials. She has received research funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Connections Program, the National Institutes of Health, and several UAB center grants. Her current research projects include a meta-analysis of academic performance intervention for use in the development of effective childhood obesity interventions, design issues in obesity randomized trials, and the development of a novel method for measuring body composition. She has also conducted several community-based pediatric obesity intervention trials.

Dr. Affuso obtained her PhD in Nutrition Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Exercise and Sport Sciences at the University of Miami.

 

 

 

Brian Lawton, PhD

Dr. Brian Lawton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. He received his B.A. from Rhode Island College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Temple University. Dr. Lawton's research interests include crime and place as well as police discretion and accountability. His current research projects have included evaluations of targeted policing efforts in Dallas and Houston, as well as an examination of citizens' perceptions of police efforts and fear of crime in Houston, TX. He is co-director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy Research Program on Crime and Place.

 

Tamara Leech, PhD

Dr. Tamara Leech, Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), conducts research on health risk behavior among Black urban adolescents. Her work examines these health risk behaviors as part of a multi-level process, including the consideration of individuals' gender role attitudes and neighborhoods' community ties.

Dr. Leech's work has been recognized and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Indiana State Department of Health. Her results are published in various outlets, including the Journal of African American Studies, Journal of Adolescent Health, and Youth & Society. Currently, Dr. Leech serves as a Principal Researcher in the Institute for Research on Social Issues (IRSI) and as a member of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute's Community & Urban Health Protocol Development Team. Her active research presently focuses on conducting Community Conversations on Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenting in local urban neighborhoods.

 

 

Naima T. Wong, PhD, MPH

Naima is a Research Associate with the Georgia Health Policy Center in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Her work at the Center consists of a diverse portfolio of projects including providing local evaluation for a national cross-site initiative on environment and policy change to promote healthy eating and active living funded by Kaiser Permanente and serving as a technical assistance consultant to grantees of the US Health Resources and Services Administration’s Office of Rural Health Policy. She is also part of a team working with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to design a national framework for implementing health in all policies. Several of her projects also include strategic planning, needs assessment, designing research protocol, implementation, and program design for clients that range from community based organizations to private industry to federal, state and local governmental public health. In 2010, Naima was awarded the Kaiser Permanente Burch Leadership Award. She earned her PhD in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan-School of Public Health in 2008, her Master’s in Public Health from the same department in 2002 and she also holds a BA in Psychology from Spelman College.