More than 150 experienced faculty from diverse backgrounds.
More than 150 faculty members work within the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. They have a wide range of expertise, from monitoring and assessing health risks and opportunities in populations, to helping build health-supporting social environments through policy, advocacy, and programs. They are educators, advisors, researchers, practitioners and community leaders. They come from backgrounds in quantitative, behavioral, environmental and social sciences, policy and government, exercise and health sciences and anthropology, among many other areas. They all work in collaboration with each other and with community partners, and are especially focused on the training and education of future leaders and practitioners in the public health fields.
Faculty Directory
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- Faculty by Program
Michelle Berlin MPH, MD
Professor
Michelle Berlin is co-director of the OHSU Center for Women’s Health and vice chair of Public Health and Faculty Development in Obstetrics and Gynecology at OHSU. She is also a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at the OHSU School of Medicine, and a professor at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health.…
Paula Carder MA, PhD
Professor
Paula Carder is a professor with the School of Public Health and a researcher with PSU Institute on Aging.
Her research focuses on socio-cultural aspects of housing and long-term care for older persons and adults with disabilities. Her research also explores the relationship between state regulatory requirements and daily practices associated with medication administration and staffing in assisted living and dementia care facilities.…
Alexis Dinno MPH, MEM, ScD
Associate Professor, Program Director for PhD Community Health
Alexis Dinno is an associate professor of Community Health at the School of Public Health, and the program director for the PhD Community Health program. She teaches graduate courses in epidemiology, social epidemiology, environmental health and biostatistics, among others. Her broad areas of interest include social epidemiology, social ecology and quantitative modeling.
Dinno’s doctoral dissertation research unpacked relationships between urban residential property abandonment and elderly experiences of depression in New Haven, Conn., using both multilevel modeling techniques and loop analyses of causal feedback.…
Cara Eckhardt MPH, PhD
Associate Professor
Cara L. Eckhardt is an associate professor in the School of Public Health. Eckhardt teaches the doctoral seminar in the Community Health Ph.D. program as well as two undergraduate courses – Introduction to Epidemiology and Global Health.
Eckhardt’s research focus is the prevention of childhood obesity. Her research has included projects investigating the impact of maternal nutrition during pregnancy on childhood obesity risk, elucidating how maternal nutrition during pregnancy might affect infant growth patterns and subsequent obesity risk, linking infant feeding practices to infant growth patterns, improving early screening methods for identifying children at risk for obesity and evaluating interventions to improve the diets of young children.…
Betty Izumi PhD, MPH, RD
Associate Professor & Program Director for MPH Health Promotion
Betty Izumi is a registered dietitian and associate professor in the School of Public Health. Her research focuses on issues at the intersection of nutrition, sustainability and health equity. She uses a community-based participatory research approach to explore the question: Can diet quality and health be improved among underserved individuals in such a way that promotes vibrant and resilient local food systems?…
Lisa Marriott PhD
Associate Professor
Lisa Marriott is a learning and memory researcher and Associate Director of Let’s Get Healthy!, an education and research exhibit that uses health information technology to assess health behaviors and provide immediate, tailored feedback to individuals. The program earned the 2015 Technology Award from the Society of Public Health Education.
Marriott leads teacher professional development programs, most recently on epigenetics, with accompanying published articles in teaching journals that describe lessons and activities for teaching new areas of science to middle and high school students.…
Lynne Messer MPH, PhD
Associate Professor
Lynne Messer teaches across the educational spectrum, from undergraduate epidemiology, master’s level women’s health, masters and doctoral health and social inequalities, and doctoral research methods.
Her research explores the intersection of social-environmental justice and residential segregation in exacerbating maternal and child health disparities among vulnerable populations. Her early work focused on better characterizing the built and social environments for population-based epidemiologic disparities research.…
Ryan Petteway MPH, DrPH
Assistant Professor
Ryan Petteway is an assistant professor in the School of Public Health. He conducts participatory research at the nexus of public health, public housing, and “placemaking,” making use of information and communication technologies to democratize and enhance research and practice processes.
Petteway’s current work examines place, health, and embodiment among public housing residents — with the aim of facilitating permanent mechanisms for including the voice of residents within local placemaking decisions and processes.…
Dawn Richardson MPH, DrPH
Associate Professor
Dawn Richardson is an Associate Professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, where she teaches Foundations of Public Health, Urban and Community Health, and Global Health. Richardson also serves as the Faculty lead for the Practice Experience.
Richardson is a social epidemiologist trained in Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR). Her research advances health equity by integrating and building on new knowledge, combining social determinants of health with the science of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), with the aim of developing policies and programs in response.…
Jackilen Shannon MPH, PhD
Professor
Jackilen Shannon is a nutritional epidemiologist who works to understand the distribution and determinants of disease at the population level. Much of her early research focused on translating scientific findings to the medical clinic. In recent years, she has shifted some time toward working to translate medical research to the population at large through community engagement.…
Kenneth Still MS, PhD, MBA
Adjunct Assistant Professor & Lecturer
Kenneth R. Still is an adjunct assistant professor for environmental health at PSU and an adjunct assistant professor for the School of Public Health.
Still’s research, detailed in more than 250 published articles, addresses multiple areas of industrial hygiene and toxicology. His primary research interests include human health risk assessment, exposure assessment, and occupational exposure guideline development.…
Christina Sun MS, PhD
Assistant Professor
Christina J. Sun is an assistant professor at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health.
Her research seeks to improve the lives of communities disproportionately affected by HIV and sexual and reproductive health disparities, including Latino, black, and LGBTQ communities.
Sun’s recent work includes developing and testing behavior change interventions and examining the dissemination and implementation of effective behavioral and biomedical interventions.…
Claire Wheeler MD, PhD
Senior Instructor II
Claire Wheeler teaches several courses for undergraduate and graduate students within the School of Public Health, including the core course, Principles of Health Behavior.
In 2001, Wheeler completed a year-long associate fellowship in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. Since then, her writing, speaking and scholarly work has been centered on the science and practice of mind-body medicine/psychoneuroimmunology as it informs healthcare at the clinical and community levels.…
Noelle Wiggins MS, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Noelle Wiggins is an adjunct assistant professor of Community Health at PSU, where she teaches Community Organizing for Health, conducts reading and conference courses with master’s and doctoral level students, and mentors Master of Public Health field experience students. Wiggins is also founder and director of the Community Capacitation Center at the Multnomah County Health Department.…
Liana Winett DrPH, MPH, MCHES
Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Student Affairs & Community Engagement
Liana Winett is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Student Affairs & Community Engagement at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, where she teaches graduate level courses in media advocacy and mass communication for public health. Dr. Winett has served on faculty and as an administrator since 2000. Prior to joining PSU, she was Research Coordinator for the Berkeley Media Studies Group.…
Brad Wipfli PhD
Assistant Professor
Brad Wipfli’s research concentrates on health promotion and health behavior change. He is interested in identifying effective behavioral and environmental change strategies that impact physical and mental health. He also investigates the ways in which changes in health behaviors impact physiological processes and clinical indicators of illness and disease.
Wipfli won the 2009 Dissertation of the Year award from the National Association of Sport and Physical Education for his work discovering that post-exercise improvements in depressive symptoms are mediated by reductions in serum serotonin.…
Jennifer Young MPH
Professor
Jennifer Young’s expertise lies in public health nutrition with maternal, child and adolescent populations. Her areas of focus include: food insecurity; school health; unhealthy food marketing; obesity stigma; and healthy weight and development. She has worked on nutrition programs, projects and policy at the state and local level.
Young enjoys bringing her work experiences into the classroom as students explore the latest data, research, policy and legislation in action.…