Matt Sparke
My work on population health is principally focused on the impact of globalization on populations and their health, including the ways in which ‘populations’ are increasingly surveilled, visualized and analyzed at global and sub-national scales rather than just at the national scale.
I have published in both books and peer reviews articles on the ways in which population health embodies processes of market-led global integration, both as a result of the damage done by structural adjustment and austerity programs on health systems and through the ways in which the health of different populations globally becomes interconnected through the market-mediated ties of health-worker migration, organ transplants and health data transfers.
Global
Dr. Susan Heckbert is an epidemiologist and general internist who teaches and conducts research focused on the population health impacts of cardiovascular risk factors and disease. She is a lead investigator in large studies of cardiovascular health in diverse American populations, including the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), the Women’s Health Initiative, the Jackson Heart Study, and the Cardiovascular Health Study. These studies focus on the health of diverse race/ethnic groups, women, and elderly individuals. Her current funded research in MESA uses novel wearable devices to assess the burden and impact of heart rhythm disturbances in a large multi-ethnic population.
She is an investigator on the Center for AIDS Research Network of Integrated Clinical Systems (CNICS) study, a project that makes use of electronic medical record data combined with data collection from participants to learn about cardiovascular complications in Americans living with HIV infection. She has collaborated on several projects in the US Food and Drug Administration’s Mini-Sentinel and Sentinel Projects, designed to develop analytic methods for studying medication safety nationwide using de-identified data from over 100 million Americans.
Dr. Heckbert has been a mentor for scores of master’s and doctoral students at the University of Washington over the past 25 years. Student research conducted under her supervision has ranged from investigation of lung symptoms in Native Alaskans, to a survey of dietary salt intake and health outcomes across the population of Vietnam, to ethnic differences in the occurrence and treatment of cardiovascular risk factors and disease in Americans.
Dr. Ho studies the relationships between drug target distribution and its relationship to disease development in cancer, AIDS, and neurological disorders. Building on this understanding, he has developed a systems Approach to Drug Delivery and Targeting.
He is known for his expertise in bio-therapeutics, lipid-drug and -protein interactions, liposomes, lipid nanoparticles, pharmacokinetics, and the interplay between tissue targets and drug penetration. His research has led to enhanced HIV, cancer, and pain medication potency and safety.
In addition, he is an editor of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and author of “Biotechnology and Biopharmaceuticals: Transforming Proteins and Gene into Drugs.”
Dr. Carlson’s current research interests and work to date has primarily focused on the intersection of three areas:
1) genomics and emerging technologies in the field of personalized medicine,
2) uncertainty both in our decision-making processes and as the concept applies to the application of medical technologies in “real world” settings (i.e. outside of clinical trials) including comparative effectiveness research, and
3) economic and policy options to address these uncertainties as we seek to improve our healthcare system and the health of our population.
My work has focused on population health – in terms of research, community, and policy initiatives – for the last 25 years. My research, specifically, has addressed questions about older women’s health promotion and disease prevention. The large, landmark Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Clinical Trial and Observational Study began data collection in 1993 and continues in a long-term follow-up today, although its main clinical trial closed out in 2005. As a co-investigator at the NIH/NHLBI-funded Clinical Coordinating Center for the WHI (Prentice/Anderson, PI), I have been involved in developing scientific protocols and collaborative analyses with scientists nationally and internationally, coordinating a wide range of procedures and communications with clinical sites and their participants across the United States, and encouraging the engagement of established and early-career scientists in our ongoing work. The WHI has had a major impact on the health of women globally, particularly in terms of the ground-breaking findings about the risk-benefit balance of postmenopausal hormones, but its reach has extended to diverse aspects of women’s health (e.g., diet, use of supplements, quality of life, racial/ethnic considerations, environmental exposures, genomics) and establishing an effective infrastructure for coordinating large population initiatives with appropriate scientific rigor.
My experience with the WHI supported my work in the collaborative development and implementation of the original protocols for the NIA-funded MsFLASH (Menopausal Strategies: Finding Lasting Answers for Symptoms & Health) — a study of short-term treatments for menopausal systems in women at five study centers across the United States (LaCroix, PI), as well as scientific analyses, implementation protocols, and performance-monitoring for the Enhancing Connections Program (Helping the Mother with Breast Cancer Support her Child; Lewis, PI) – an intervention study across six states.
In terms of community and policy initiatives, I recently completed a Global Innovation Fund project with Dr. Nancy Hooyman (PI, from Social Work), “Promoting Community-based Eldercare in Chongqing China.” In addition, the de Tornyay Center for Healthy Aging (which I direct) is currently launching a “Wellness Network” – an initiative that will support partnerships with communities, facilities, and agencies to create a data repository of information about the health of older adults in our region that serves research, student experiences, and data-driven services for older adults. have served on Washington State boards and task forces in support of the health of our vulnerable populations (e.g., Certified Professional Guardianship Board, Adult Family Home Quality Assurance Panel, Older Adult Falls Prevention Action Plan Advisory Group), as well as the community development steering committee, Imagine Lake City — a planning grant funded by Wells Fargo Foundation to support community development.
Basia Belza, PhD, RN, FAAN is The Aljoya Endowed Professor in Aging in the School of Nursing and an investigator with the Health Promotion Research Center at University of Washington. She is the lead of the CDC-funded Coordinating Center for the Healthy Brain Research Network. Her scholarship focuses on improving the health of older adults through dissemination initiatives with a focus on physical activity interventions.
Program of research is focused on both preventing injury as well as improving outcomes from injury in older adults.
I am a nurse epidemiologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Child Nursing with adjunct appointment in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington, and am co-Director of the School of Nursing’s Center for Global Health Nursing. I also serve as a senior technical advisor at Health Alliance International where I specialize in implementation research focusing on intervention development and testing for strengthening health systems (including quality improvement, process flow mapping, cascade analysis, improving quality and use of routine data), and the evaluation of implementation processes to identify drivers of success.
I have spent over 15 years working overseas in resource limited settings in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, most extensively in Mozambique where I was seconded into the Ministry of Health as an advisor in HIV/AIDS care and treatment where I supported the scale-up of both antiretroviral (ART) and pMTCT programs nationally.
Finally, I am a globally recognized expert in the application of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR)in resource limited settings as part of formative and summative evaluation efforts for complex interventions in multi-country implementation research trials.
My research falls within two main schema: promoting healthy communities and explaining racial disparities in clinical outcomes. Currently, the focus of my research is to evaluate to what degree social position, structures, and systems perpetuate cancer disparities via stress, obesity, and related behaviors. I am using advanced methods including multilevel modeling as well as advanced time-to-event and causal mediation analyses to explicate these relationships while engaging with vulnerable communities to promote health. Specifically, I am evaluating the role of obesity in survival disparities among African-American versus White women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.
I have also been working with a local African-American faith community to promote breast cancer screening as an early detection strategy. We have worked to adapt and implement The Witness Project®, a research-tested intervention program to promote breast and cervical screening using trained cancer survivors that was developed among rural African-American faith communities in the South. We chose to focus our iteration on breast cancer screening only in order to leverage the survivorship experience of community partners, feasibly build community capacity within the church, as well as determine whether the program was a good fit before possible scale-up. Our program demonstrated statistically significant increases in breast cancer knowledge among female attendees and we are currently discussing further implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of our work together.
My program of research is focused on promoting parent-child shared management of chronic conditions, with a special focus on sleep and asthma.
In particular, I am interested in improving health trajectories through innovative sleep or medication adherence interventions aimed at improving daytime function (executive function, symptoms) as well as patient- and family-reported outcomes.
Currently, I am testing a web-based, tailored, dyadic intervention promoting sleep shared management in school-age children with asthma and their parents.
I have over 30 years of experience conducting health behavior and primary care research, investigating factors affecting health behaviors and evaluating behavior change interventions. Much of my work has been in implementation science to identify and intervene on factors affecting adoption of proven methods for early detection of disease or to prevent disease. This work has been population-based or in primary care practice.
I have led and collaborated on studies to increase breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening. In the US and Zimbabwe, I have conducted studies to increase HIV prevention behaviors. Most recently I have conducted research on factors affecting uptake of male circumcision (MC) to prevent HIV infection, and collaborated to develop evidence-based communication messaging to increase MC uptake among men in Zimbabwe. I also collaborated on research to improve surveillance, disease reporting and tracing of anthrax and brucellosis in Georgia (the country). I am beginning work on non-communicable disease prevention and early detection in Zimbabwe. I am internationally recognized in attitude measurement, behavioral theory, and research to design communication for behavior change. I co-developed the Integrated Behavioral Model and its use in behavior change research and evaluation.
All of my work has taken a population health approach, to develop interventions to increase uptake of early disease detection or prevention behaviors in communities or among primary care clinicians serving those communities. I have been PI or Co-I on multiple NIH and CDC grants. I began work in Zimbabwe in 1991, and have worked continuously in Zimbabwe since 2000.
Technology_based interventions to support aging; design, implementation and evaluation of informatics tools to support older adults and their families in home and hospice care.
The overall goal of our research programs in cardiovascular disease are to enhance physical and psychosocial health and to reduce health care costs in patients and their family members. Within the program of research are 4 foci: intervention models to enhance adjustment, exercise interventions to improve function, cardiovascular disease management interventions, and interventions in end stage or advanced heart disease.
Health promotion research, including multi-level interventions in underserved communities, and cancer prevention and survivorship with a focus on health disparities
Rebecca O’Connor is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Child Nursing and an Innovative Educator Fellow in the School of Nursing. Her early research identified a novel disease trend previously hidden by widely-used, but limited classifications of race and ethnicity: specifically that the prevalence rate of type 1 diabetes is 4 times higher in East African immigrant youth than in non-immigrant Black youth in King County. To explore why this might be, further research is needed but it became clear that these populations were not participating in ongoing low-risk type 1 diabetes research being conducted at the same location they were receiving their diabetes care.
Due in part to this observation, Dr. O’Connor’s interest in issues of health equity have evolved and her teaching, research, and service efforts are now focused on 1) increasing the diversity of pediatric clinical research participants so that all populations may benefit from research advances, and 2) exploring how implicit bias among health care providers might play a role in persistent health disparities, especially among youth with diabetes. She has received funding from the ITHS Rising Stars program to explore the former, and her Innovative Educator Fellowship supports her work in addressing implicit bias among future health practitioners.
Pamela Kohler is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Community Health and the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. She is also Co-director of the UW Center for Global Health Nursing. She completed her nursing training at Johns Hopkins University, and she has worked clinically in HIV Care and Emergency Department settings. She received her PhD in Nursing and MPH in Health Services from the University of Washington.
Dr. Kohler’s research explores social and programmatic barriers to uptake of services along the HIV care continuum, including prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT), referral to and retention in HIV care programs, and access to HIV and STD prevention services. She currently leads studies aimed at improving HIV testing and treatment services for adolescents in Kenya. She also conducts programmatic research to improve public health services. Through the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH), she leads a field epidemiology training program in Tanzania and works with government ministries throughout sub-Saharan Africa to evaluate quality of HIV and STD care.
Monica Oxford, Ph.D. is a Research Professor in the Department of Family and Child Nursing and the Executive Director of NCAST Programs and interim director of the Barnard Center of Infant Mental Health and Development.
Dr. Oxford’s research focuses on early parenting and child developmental outcomes for vulnerable families living in challenging environments.
Dr. Oxford’s interest is in how context, parenting, and child characteristics combine to inform particular patterns of child outcomes and how intervention services promote both parent and child wellbeing.
My interests lie in public health, with an especial focus on primary prevention of infectious diseases or early detection of non-communicable diseases to improve population health. I have been PI or Co-I on multiple NIH, CDC, and other funded grants. My research focus has been on primary prevention of infectious diseases or early detection of non-communicable diseases.
My recent work has immersed me in detailing the drivers of health behavior and puzzling out how we can improve behavior change strategies. I co-developed the Integrated Behavioral Model and its use in research to explore behavior change. Via this focus, I have designed implemented and evaluated intervention programs that motivate healthy behavior to prevent disease. I have worked on locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, with specific experience in global health in Africa. I also have experience in One Health (the intersection of animal to human diseases).
I have broad and in-depth experience in evaluating disease reporting and surveillance programs, clinical and public health services programs, health education strategies/programs, health behavior change interventions, and training programs. My evaluation approach is to determine how programs can be improved or strengthened to have higher positive impacts on improving health of individuals and communities. I have worked in Zimbabwe (16 years), Tanzania, and Georgia (Eastern Europe).
Betty Bekemeier is associate professor at the University of Washington (UW) School of Nursing and Director of the UW School of Public Health’s Northwest Center for Public Health Practice. She is a distinguished public health systems researcher and has worked extensively toward improving the effectiveness of our prevention systems and the related public health workforce.
She has led numerous studies regarding local health department (LHD) services and their impact on population-level health outcomes and health disparities. Dr. Bekemeier is PI of the Public Health Activities and Services Tracking (PHAST) Study, a highly regarded, growing database of uniquely detailed and linked data regarding LHD services. Her PHAST research has supported several important studies, and involves an interdisciplinary team of investigators.
Dr. Bekemeier’s studies on change, variation, and outcomes regarding public health systems have been conducted in partnership with public health practice leaders and have been immediately relevant to addressing current policy issues that relate to population health. Her recent study on relationships between LHD expenditures and local rates of low birth weight was awarded AcademyHealth’s 2014 Public Health System Research Article of the Year.
Dr. Bekemeier is a national public health and nursing leader, having served in significant leadership positions in organizations that include the American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Nursing.
We conduct research on interventions to promote nurturing early parent child relationships in families with infants birth to five that are living in adverse circumstances. Families may be experiencing adult mental health and substance use, poverty, immigration and refuge status, and/or child maltreatment and neglect.
My program of research focuses on stress during pregnancy and postpartum and mindfulness interventions to improve maternal-newborn outcomes and parenting.
This research has focused on vulnerable populations including women with histories of sexual trauma or low income.
My program of research is focused on improving sleep health and health outcomes (quality of life, patient reported outcomes) in children with and without chronic conditions and their families. Our team is interested in the effect of poor sleep health on the trajectories of health outcomes in children and their families. We also investigate the utility of noninvasive urine biomarkers that might predispose children with chronic conditions to develop sleep disorders (obstructive sleep apnea) which could provide unique and essential information for clinical practice and enable early detection of sleep disorders.
My program of research is primarily focused on improving health outcomes through team-based healthcare practice transformation. I am interested in improving the Quadruple Aim outcomes of 1) patient experience, 2) population health, 3) reducing costs, 4) care team well-being.
Most of my work focuses on the interprofessional health professions learning continuum from education into practice settings using a variety of mixed methods–ranging from surveys, to observations, to analysis of patient outcomes from medical records. I am also very interested in the role of the built environment in health, particularly in walkable communities and parks/open spaces as social determinants of health.
Dr. Carey Farquhar, MD, MPH, is a professor at the University of Washington in the Departments of Global Health, Medicine, and Epidemiology. Dr. Farquhar is also the Associate Chair for Academic Programs in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. She received her MD at Harvard Medical School. She completed a residency and chief residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in infectious disease at the University of Washington, where she also earned a Masters in Public Health. She mentors US and Kenyan trainees and conducts research on HIV-discordant couples, HIV partner services, correlates of immunity against HIV-1, and mother-to-child HIV-1 transmission.
She has published more than 145 peer-reviewed papers and is the Director of the UW Kenya Research and Training Center and two international training programs, the International AIDS Research and Training Program and the Afya Bora Consortium Fellowship in African Global Health Leadership, as well as the UW Internal Medicine Global Health Pathway. Dr. Farquhar teaches 3 courses in the School of Public Health — AIDS: A Multidisciplinary Approach, the Responsible Conduct of Research, and the Integrated Residency Global Health Leadership course. In addition, she sees HIV-infected patients one half-day per week at Madison Clinic and attends on the wards at Harborview Medical Center.
Herbie Duber, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington. He works clinically at the University of Washington Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center, both in Seattle, WA. In addition, he has worked clinically, in public health roles, and conducted research in numerous countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Herbie’s research interests focus on evaluating health systems and health programs in low- and middle-income countries. Currently, he is involved in several studies evaluating interventions to improve care for non-communicable diseases, both acute and chronic, in India, South Africa, Brazil, China and the United States. In addition, Herbie is a co-investigator on an NIH grant to evaluate the impact of social determinants on the HIV epidemic. He also continues to work as a reviewer for various emergency medicine and public health publications and he has lectured internationally on a variety of emergency medicine and public health topics.
Dr. Barnabas is an Infectious Disease Physician-Scientist at the University of Washington and affiliate at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Her research focuses on HIV treatment and prevention, specifically on interventions that reduce HIV viral load and, consequently, disease progression and transmission. Her projects use empiric data and mathematical models to better understand HIV clinical progression and transmission, and estimate the potential impact of HIV interventions at population level. The ultimate aim of her work is to estimate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of HIV treatment and prevention interventions to inform public health policy.
I study social and ethical aspects of visualization, currently focusing on self-representation practices of individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Through participatory research methods, my team seeks to better understand the ways in which the display of self-tracking data influences self-acceptance, empathy, communication, and stigma among those living with bipolar and their support networks.
My program of research focuses on stress during pregnancy and postpartum and mindfulness interventions to improve maternal-newborn outcomes and parenting.
This research has focused on vulnerable populations including women with histories of sexual trauma or low income.
Kim England’s research on population-health focuses on themes of healthcare, migration, difference/identity and home.
In particular, this includes the global migration of care workers (nurses, home care attendants, personal support workers, and domestic workers), health care policy as it relates to recruiting international workers, and the home as a site of long-term health care (for workers, recipients and families).
Sarah Knerr is an Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington. She completed a PhD In Health Services Research, a MPH in Public Health Genetics (both at University of Washington), and a BA in Biochemistry (Vassar College).
Her research interests include clinical implementation of cancer genetic services, health and health care disparities, and stakeholder perspectives on biobanking and precision medicine.
Interested in working with adolescents and emerging adults on ways to reduce emotional distress through providing coping strategies, decision-making, and emotion regulation skills that reduce self-harm and suicidal behavior.
I am a Cardiologist and health services researcher interested in improving the delivery of cardiac rehabilitation. I practice at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System and am an Acting Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Cardiac rehabilitation improves health outcomes and quality of life for patients with heart disease, but is underused, with less than 20% of eligible patients participating. There are disparities in participation nationally, locally, and across racial/ethnic and gender groups. There are many barriers to patients attending, including suboptimal rates of referral, limited understanding of cardiac rehabilitation and its benefits, and limited access to traditional cardiac rehabilitation centers due to costs, transportation, and competing work or family demands.
My research program focuses on:
1) Understanding gaps in the delivery of cardiac rehabilitation
2) Developing interventions to improve the delivery of cardiac rehabilitation using an implementation science approach. Particularly, I am focused on interventions in these two areas:
– home-based cardiac rehabilitation
– technology-facilitated home cardiac rehabilitation (e.g., mobile applications, text messaging)
Please feel free to contact me about potential collaborations. There are many opportunities for novel ideas to help people with heart disease to live healthier and more fulfilling lives!
I have over 20 years of NIH grant experience as PI and co-investigator primarily in the area of adolescent health/mental health/substance use, prevention intervention trials, and transition from adolescent to adulthood studies.
My research interests are generally quite broad but I primarily have worked in the sociology of health over the life course looking at mental health and other health related behaviors of adolescents/young adults, often focusing on the role of family, peer group, and neighborhood context on various outcomes.
More recently, with colleagues in the UW Nursing School, I have begun looking at healthy aging for older adults. Part of my work has and continues to explore health promotion interventions and how the organization of interventions/health service is related to positive outcomes and reduction in disparities. I also have a long-standing interest in the distribution and use of research evidence/evidence based programing.
I am currently funded by WT Grant Foundation to explore how organizational structure and organizational networks in the social and health service sectors influence the use of research evidence regarding adverse childhood experiences on health.
I am historian of twentieth-century Africa and much of my research has focused on issues of health.
My first book Politics of the Womb examined the history of colonial and postcolonial reproductive politics in Kenya and I’m currently completing a book on the history of skin lighteners in southern and eastern Africa.
Along with Johanna Crane and Nora Kenworthy and support from the Simpson Center and the Population Health Initiative, I have also launched a project on “Humanistic Perspectives on Global Health Partnerships in Africa and Beyond.”
Contribution of social determinants, health care and public health systems, and prevention to population health and health inequalities.
My research focuses on the dynamic interactions between sleep, media use, and physical activity in children and adolescents — and the impact they can have on development, health outcomes, and family functioning.
Our team also works to develop and assess tailored and family-centered interventions that can meet families where they are and collaborate for sustainable health behavior change.
I study the performance of buildings, bridges and other infrastructure during construction service and extreme events, such as earthquakes. My research includes the assessment of existing infrastructure and the design of new structural systems.
My students and I conduct research on the integration of renewable energy sources into the grid. The connection to global health is through the benefits that electrification brings to unserved populations.
Tania Busch Isaksen is a lecturer in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) and a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Health Services. In addition to her lecturer responsibilities, she maintains an active, practice-based research portfolio focused on measuring public health outcomes associated with extreme heat; climate change risk communication methods; and climate change-related public health adaptation planning and response.
Tania has over 24 years of environmental public health experience working in local public, private and academic settings. She earned her PhD from the UW in Environmental and Occupational Hygiene, her MPH from the University of Washington’s eMPH Program, her BS in Environmental Health from Colorado State University, and is a long-time Registered Environmental Health Specialist.
Dr. Thomas Burbacher is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) where he teaches classes in basic Environmental and Occupational Health. He is the Head of the Division of Reproductive and Developmental Sciences and Director of the Infant Primate Research Laboratory at the UW National Primate Research Center. He is also the Head of the Developmental Toxicology Research Emphasis Area at the Center on Human Development and Disability (CHDD) and serves as the Director of the Research Translation and Community Engagement Cores for the UW Superfund Research Program.
Dr. Burbacher holds a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Washington. His postdoctoral work included research in Developmental Toxicology in the Environmental Pathology Training Program at the UW. Dr. Burbacher’s research investigates changes in brain development and function caused by prenatal exposure to neuroactive substances. His research reaches across species, including studies with human populations and a variety of animal models, to enhance a fundamental understanding of toxicants and their role in biological and behavioral development. Data from Dr. Burbacher’s research program are used to help formulate policies aimed at the protection of human populations from levels of exposure to environmental contaminants such as methylmercury and methanol that are associated with adverse health effects and developmental disabilities.
The Canadian Studies Center and Arctic and International Relations initiative in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies focuses on the growing effectiveness of Arctic Indigenous internationalism and its impact on local and global governance, and on social and economic equity including educational capacity.
Dr. Neumann leads that hydro-biogeochemistry research group, which works to advance mechanistic understanding of subsurface flow and biogeochemical reaction processes that impact water and food quality and influence global climate change; mechanistic understanding of these processes is required for the development of sound management strategies that protect human and environmental health.
Current research projects include determining how the micro-nutrient (zinc) and toxin (arsenic) content of rice may change in the future with climate change; identifying the source of organic carbon fueling arsenic mobilization in groundwater of South and Southeast Asia; arsenic mobilization, bioaccumulation and eco-toxicity in urban lakes; remediation of arsenic contaminated groundwater; rice field irrigation management to reduce arsenic exposure; and plant controls over methane production and methane oxidation in permafrost wetlands.
Dr. Robert’s research interests include identification of vancomycin resistant enterococci [VRE] and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus [MRSA] in environmental samples, antibiotic resistance and mercury resistance genes in the environment, the mechanisms of resistance, how resistance spreads through bacterial populations in man and the environment and ultimately, how these genes affect therapy.
She is now isolating and characterizing MRSA from primates, personnel and the environment from the Washington National Primate Research Center. Future work is to look for MRSA in primate populations outside North America both in Primate centers and wild populations.
The laboratory is also interested in antibiotic resistance in oral and urogenital bacteria in general. Another focus is on the oral pathogen Streptococcus mutants and how treatments affect the organism’s cariogenic potential, as well as, levels in health and disease.
Dr. Gallagher joined the faculty of the University of Washington in 2004 as Sheldon D. Murphy Associate Professor of Toxicology. Dr. Gallagher was formerly an Associate Professor at the University of Florida were he also served as Director of the Aquatic Toxicology Laboratory in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Dr. Gallagher serves as the Director of the UW Superfund Research Program, a multi-investigator and multi-institutional center funded by NIEHS that addresses the effects of neurotoxic chemicals on ecological and human health. In addition to his Superfund activities, he is also an active member of the UW Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Heath (CEEH) and the UW training grant in Environmental Pathology and Toxicology.
Dr. Gallagher is a member of the Society of Toxicology as well as the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Dr. Gallagher maintains an active research and teaching program focused on chemical injury in aquatic organisms, and using approaches that integrates molecular, biochemical physiological and behavioral endpoints. Accordingly, students and post-docs in Dr. Gallagher’s laboratory potentially have the opportunity to work in the areas of comparative toxicology of aquatic organisms, and also using fish models to address the environmental impacts of chemical exposures on human health.
Professor Marshall studies air pollution and public health. He uses models and measurements to understand human exposure to air pollution, and to estimate the exposure impacts of changes in air pollution emissions.
His work includes cook-stove intervention studies of indoor air pollution in India; modeling health and climate impacts of food, transportation, and electricity systems; satellite-based land-use regression models of air pollution; and, investigations of environmental justice: relationships between air pollution exposures and demographic aspects such as race and income.
I conduct research and teach in expertise areas related to wastewater treatment, fate and transport of pollutants, and remediation of hazardous waste contaminated sites. Much of this work is aimed at reducing the exposure of human populations to environmental contaminants – either through direct human contact, source water protection, or minimizing food impacts.
I have particular expertise in biologic conversion of pollutants that mimic natural processes (such as in wetlands). My work includes extensive use of laboratory reactors to model large-scale systems, monitoring natural systems, and application of advanced statistical data analysis to develop and demonstrate treatment models. I have worked with wastewater treatment facilities in metropolitan areas, small towns, and in refugee camps. I have access to field sites on the Peninsula.
Mr. Gleason worked for Federal OSHA and State WISHA as an inspector for thirteen years. He has been teaching at the University of Washington for the last 15 years. He currently assists the University of Washington OSHA Training center providing services to Region 10 comprising Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska.
Mr. Gleason also assists in third party liability cases as an expert witness in construction, general industry and maritime safety cases. After the cases are settled he uses the information (without the names of the establishments) as real world case histories in his courses.
Associate Professor in History and the Comparative History of Ideas, Thurtle is a historian of biology, medicine, and mental health. He received his PhD in history and the philosophy of science from Stanford University.
He is the author of The Emergence of Genetic Rationality: Space, Time, and Information in American Biology 1870-1920 (University of Washington Press, 2008), the co-author with Robert Mitchell (English, Duke University) and Helen Burgess (English, University of Maryland) of the interactive DVD-ROM BioFutures: Owning Information an Body Parts (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), and the co-editor with Robert Mitchell of the volumes Data Made Flesh: Embodying Information (Routledge, 2003) and Semiotic Flesh: Information and the Human Body (University of Washington Press, 2002).
His research focuses on the material culture of information processing, the affective-phenomenological domains of media, the role of information processing technologies in biomedical research, theories of novelty in the life sciences, and the history of mental health. His most recent work is on the cellular spaces of transformation in evolutionary and developmental biology research and has a manuscript due out from University of Minnesota Press in 2018, entitled, Life In the Grid: Regulating a New Politics of Life.
Research interests: maternal and child health, including reducing maternal mortality and improving breastfeeding and child nutrition, infectious and vaccine-preventable diseases of childhood, and parasitic infections.
Projects: vaccination coverage in Lubumbashi, DRC; perinatal outcomes in Lubumbashi and surrounding areas
My research group broadly seeks to understand: 1) how ecosystems function in terms of energy and nutrient flows, and 2) how these functions generate the resources and services people depend on.
Our goal is to support conservation, resource management, and human health through research, which is rooted in the belief that most effective policies for sustainability are based on sound science.
We study both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, borrowing methods and ideas from studies of each to inform the other. Specific approaches range from using biogeochemical and isotopic tracers to mathematical models of ecosystem processes and human interactions.
Similarly, our research spans from site-based empirical studies to regional- and global-scale analysis using synthetic analysis of large datasets.
I trace the presence, pathways and sources of anthropogenic toxic metals distributed throughout the environment.
My work uses the stable metal isotope composition (as well as concentration) of metals such as Pb, Cu, Zn and potentially others to fingerprint the source and distribution of the anthropogenic component. An example is identifying the source and distribution of Pb emitted from the Teck-Cominco smelter in Canada and distributed by wind and water onto the Colville Indian Reservation.