Public Health Experts

Sarah Anderson
Assistant Professor, Division of Epidemiology
Dr. Anderson's expertise focuses on psychosocial risk factors for obesity, particularly among children and adolescents. She also has expertise in analysis and interpretation of data from large surveys such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Anderson currently teaches a course called Epidemiology of Obesity.
Rajesh Balkrishnan
Merrell Dow Professor of Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research
Dr. Balkrishnan's research focuses on the effectiveness of prescription drugs and health outcomes in chronic disease. He can comment on the economic evaluation of prescription drugs, quality of primary care, and medication and patient safety. In particular, he can comment on drug therapies related to diabetes, psoriasis and asthma.
Tim Buckley
Associate Professor and Division Chair
Dr. Buckley's expertise is on exposure and risk assessment in the field of environmental science as well as the effects of ozone on community health. His studies of Baltimore City children's exposure to air pollution and allergens established two ambient monitoring stations for the purpose of investigating the impact of urban air pollution to city residents.
Robert J. Caswell
Associate Professor Emeritus Division of Health Services Management and Policy, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Dr. Caswell's expertise is in the applications of economics to health and medical care. His interest is in how markets do or don't work in health, and ways of improving efficiency and equity in health services delivery.
John "Mac" Crawford
Assistant Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Crawford's expertise is in environmental and occupational epidemiology, with a strong background in agricultural health and safety.
Allard E. Dembe
Chair and Associate Professor, Division of Health Services Management and Policy
Dr. Dembe's expertise is health care policy and management, health services research, outcomes evaluation, occupational health, and social aspects of health.
Janet S. de Moor
Assistant Professor, Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Dr. de Moor's expertise is cancer survivorship including health behaviors and health care utilization following a cancer diagnosis. She focuses much of her work on the intersection of social issues (e.g., employment, financial status, social resources) and health outcomes as well as the impact of social issues on psychological adjustment among cancer survivors.
Amy Ferketich
Associate Professor, Division of Epidemiology
Dr. Ferketich can comment on tobacco-related issues among segments of the population, such as Appalachian men and women, Amish men and women, and Chinese-Americans. For instance, her research suggests that the Amish have low cancer incidence rates, particularly for tobacco-related cancers, compared to the population in Ohio.
Soledad Fernandez
Research Assistant Professor, Division of Biostatistics
Dr. Fernandez serves as the senior consulting research statistician for the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her areas of interest include mammary tumor stroma cells as they relate to breast cancer; the treatment of ADHD with zinc; creating a virtual environment for bone dissection; and researching correlations between menthol preference and ethnicity as they relate to nicotine dependence.
Randall Harris
Professor, Division of Epidemiology, and Co-Director of the Center of Molecular Epidemiology and Environmental Health
Dr. Harris can comment on common drugs such as aspirin or ibuprofen reducing the risk of developing breast cancer, prostate cancer and lung cancer. His research has also shown that certain advanced anti-inflammatory drugs (COX-2 inhibitors) reduce the development of some breast cancers. He is also the Co-Principal Investigator of the Women's Health Initiative at OSU.
Armando Hoet
Joint Assistant Professor, Division of Epidemiology and Veterinary Preventive Medicine
Dr. Hoet's research focuses on zoonotic diseases, which can be passed from animals to humans and vice versa. One area of his research examines how methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) spreads between animals and humans. Other subjects include the spread of E. coli and salmonella from meat-producing animals.
Frank Holtzhauer
Clinical Assistant Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Holtzhauer can comment on training the public health workforce to be ready for bioterrorism, natural disasters and disease outbreaks. He also has expertise in violence as a public health issue. Doctor Holtzhauer also spent 32 years as a practicing public health professional and can address questions of public health put in practice.
Mira Katz
Associate Professor, Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Dr. Katz' interests are in communication issues associated with cancer prevention, early detection and survivorship. Her research focuses on the design and implementation of behavioral intervention programs that will increase cancer screening in minority populations.
Liz Klein
Assistant Professor, Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Dr. Klein's research interests include the social and ecological predictors of behavior change around obesity and tobacco use among children and adolescents.
Jiyoung Lee
Assistant Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Lee's specialization is environmental microbiology. Her research interests include the rapid detection of water-borne and food-borne diseases, and how to prepare the public for an outbreak. Lee is also interested in the detection and decontamination of bioterrorism agents, which are pathogens deliberately released into the environment to cause illness or death.
Stanley Lemeshow
Dean and Professor, Division of Biostatistics
Dean Lemeshow can speak on a variety of topics in education, public health and health statistics. He is very knowledgeable about the big picture of public health. His specific areas of research are in statistical design and evaluation as well as analysis of intensive care units' results. He also has expertise on the factors related to developing dementia.
Deborah Levine
Joint Assistant Professor, Division of Health Services Management and Policy and Internal Medicine, College of Medicine
Dr. Levine's primary research interests are secondary stroke prevention, access to care of stroke survivors and health care disparities. Her interests include the association between access to care and health care disparities on clinical health outcomes, as well as health policy solutions.
Jianrong Li
Assistant Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Li's research interests include the viral sources of food- and water-borne diseases and the development of new strategies, such as vaccines, to prevent such illnesses.
Song Liang
Assistant Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Liang's primary areas of research are risk assessment of waterborne pathogens, the environmental determinants of infectious disease, and environment-orientated interventions. Specifically, he studies schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease transmitted to humans via water. Much of Dr. Liang's work also focuses on mathematical modeling and the epidemiology of infectious diseases; the public health applications of Geographical Information Systems (GISs); and international environmental health issues.
Randi Love
Clinical Associate Professor, Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Dr. Love can comment on evaluating prevention programs. She also has expertise in designing and implementing model health and wellness programs. Dr. Love can also comment on adolescent health, HIV/AIDS, and substance abuse prevention.
Bo Lu
Assistant Professor, Division of Biostatistics
His research interests include observational study, causal interference, missing data, statistical analysis for cancer diagnostic methodology, and health economics.
Courtney Lynch
Assistant Professor, Division of Epidemiology
Dr. Lynch is a specialist in reproductive and perinatal epidemiology. Her work focuses on the identification of modifiable risk factors for fertility problems, pregnancy loss, and other adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Ann McAlearney
Associate Professor, Division of Health Services Management and Policy
Dr. McAlearney can comment on population health management, access to care, disease management, information technology in the doctor's office, quality measurement and using health assessments. She is also knowledgeable on topics related to leadership in health care, including leadership development and succession planning.
Melvin Moeschberger
Professor, Division of Biostatistics
Dr. Moeschberger is a well-known statistics expert who has worked on such high-profile projects as the Buckeye Egg Farm case by compiling statistics on the number of flies near the egg farm. He is currently working on a project that compares the health risks of smoking to the health risks of body mass.
David M. Murray
Chair and Professor, Division of Epidemiology
Dr. Murray has spent his career evaluating intervention programs designed to improve the public health. He has worked with all age groups, in a variety of settings, and with a variety of health behaviors and disease outcomes. In particular, Dr. Murray has focused on the design and analysis of group-randomized trials in which identifiable social groups are randomized to conditions and members of those groups are observed to assess the effect of an intervention. Dr. Murray wrote the first textbook on that material, published by Oxford University Press in 1998. A few of his many recent research projects include decreasing weight gain in African American preadolescent girls; trial of activity for adolescent girls; and multi-ethnic drug abuse prevention center.
Electra Paskett
Marion N. Rowley Professor of Cancer Research
Dr. Paskett is nationally known for her expertise in cancer control research including early detection and prevention. She can also comment on maternal and child health issues, women's health and cancer survivorship.
Michael L. Pennell
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics
Professor Pennell's interests include Bayesian semiparametric methods motivated by environmental health data. He also focuses his research on random effects models and their applications to environmental health and epidemiology.
Phyllis Pirie
Professor and Chair, Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Dr. Pirie is an expert in the evaluation of community health programs. Her research includes programs that prevent smoking by youth and curb smoking by pregnant women including the effects of second-hand smoke on infants and children. She can also comment on the study of lifestyle factors as they relate to health and disease.
Michael Pompili
Clinical Assistant Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences
Mr. Pompili's expertise is in environmental mandates and the impact on local government. He is knowledgeable about the qualifications of environmental health personnel that are employed in Ohio's local health departments as well as the services that are offered in local communities. He can also comment on various public participation methods utilized in local health department environmental health programs.
Judith Schwartzbaum
Associate Professor, Division of Epidemiology
Dr. Schwartzbaum is an expert on using patterns to predict brain cancer. She can comment on how allergies may protect against brain cancer and how previous illnesses may predict brain cancer. She has also studied the effects of Depo-Provera on adolescent bone density.
Sharon Schweikhart
Associate Professor, Division of Health Services Management and Policy
Dr. Schweikhart can comment on health care management issues such as quality control, redesign of caregiver work roles and operations innovations from manufacturing to health care settings. Her research focuses on strategies for patient care in hospitals.
Eric Seiber
Assistant Professor, Division of Health Services Management and Policy
Eric Seiber's health policy research focus on the sustainability of safety net programs, access to care through employer-sponsored insurance, and individuals' responses to public health policies.
Paula Song
Assistant Professor, Division of Health Services Management and Policy
Dr. Song's areas of expertise include health care financial management; hospital investment strategies; and community-based health initiatives for the uninsured.
Kenneth Steinman
Clinical Assistant Professor, Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Dr. Steinman's expertise is in religion as a factor in adolescent risk behavior. He also can comment on adolescent health promotion programs in the areas of substance use, violence and risky sexual behavior as well as family violence as a public health issue.
Kurt Stevenson
Associate Professor, Division of Epidemiology
Dr. Stevenson's interests include healthcare epidemiology in rural communities, antimicrobialresistance, and clinical infectious diseases.
Qinghua Sun
Assistant Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Sun's areas of expertise include effects of particulate air pollution on human health; mechanisms of air pollution induced cardiovascular diseases; diesel exhaust in angiogenesis and cancer; systemic effects of environmental tobacco smoking; and mechanism of hypoxia and growth factors in angiogenesis.
Sandra Tanenbaum
Associate Professor, Division of Health Services Management and Policy
Dr. Tanenbaum can comment on health policy and politics, disability, mental health services, and Medicaid. Her expertise in Medicaid includes benefits, eligibility and disability policies.
Christopher Weghorst
Associate Professor, Division of Environmental Health Sciences
Dr. Weghorst's expertise focuses on the development of cancer at the molecular level, with an emphasis on preventive approaches aimed at specific genes. His work showing that black raspberries may prevent certain cancers is well known.
Mary Ellen Wewers
Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor, Division of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Her research specialty is tobacco cessation with special interests in underserved populations. She has conducted tobacco-related research since the mid-1980's. She served as the only nurse scientist on both the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Expert Panels that developed Clinical Practice Tobacco Cessation Guidelines.
John Wilkins
Professor, Division of Epidemiology
Dr. Wilkins' area of expertise is agricultural safety and health, particularly among children. He is currently evaluating the effectiveness of national guidelines that are supposed to instruct farm families on protecting children from injury while working on the farm.