Dr. Meredith, a former front-line public health worker, is a renowned community-engaged applied researcher in public health workforce development and strengthening health systems. Dr. Meredith uses action learning and implementation science (IS) methods to drive collaborative exploratory and evaluative research projects and integrates best-practice adult learning approaches to build collective capacities to sustain impact-focused systems change. Dr. Meredith is actively leading paraprofessional workforce development IS projects and evaluations with Cooperative Extension offices (nationally, locally), the Public Health AmeriCorps program (nationally, locally), and the New York State public health workforce (state and county levels). Projects support staff involved in myriad public health initiatives, including WIC, EFNEP, SNAP-ed, and PRx. Over the last 3 years, Dr. Meredith has helped co-design seven paraprofessional workforce development and evaluation initiatives, reaching over 2,000 workers in more than 500 organizations and 36 states. This work has resulted in capacity-enhancing models, training curricula, tabletop exercises, evaluation tools, online courses, and an accessible certificate program. Dr. Meredith has a record of success conducting mixed-methods exploratory research in partnership with national organizations.

Danielle Eiseman, PhD., the Health Impacts Partnership Lead at Cornell University in the Department of Public & Ecosystem Health. She is a communications expert who centers her expertise on helping communities design and implement interventions to increase health equity. In her current role, Danielle is focused on climate change impacts and action at the intersection of human health, nutritional food access, and policy, as well as reducing climate-induced health and well-being risks for vulnerable populations. She has projects focused on professional skills building in risk and crisis communication, resilience and health equity among residents of manufactured housing communities in Tompkins County, and developing decision-support tools for extreme heat. She is co-author of Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need.

As the Manager of Strategic Initiatives, Donna helps strengthen several public health workforce development programs using her programmatic and evaluation background. She is passionate about multi-sector partnerships and overcoming geographic access issues in health equity work. Donna received her dual bachelor’s degrees in Ethnic Studies and Political Science at Brown University and received dual master’s degrees in Public Health and City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. 

Sabine, a UK National Health Service-trained emergency medicine physician, is experienced in both public health consultancy, advocacy, research, and education. Her areas of expertise include education, curriculum design, and workforce development with a strong focus on public health emergencies and emergency preparedness. Sabine’s approach to public health issues is evidence-based and solutions-focused, emphasizing health equity throughout all her projects.

Dr Lorraine Francis is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University. She also leads the Emergency Preparedness and Management concentration area of the Master of Public Health Program. Dr Francis is a public health specialist with over twenty-four years’ experience in several public health areas including epidemiology, surveillance, emergency and outbreak response, laboratory systems, and environmental health in the US and Pan-American region. Over her career she has implemented technical cooperation projects in Caribbean countries, developed and facilitated several training and capacity building opportunities, and participated in multidisciplinary teams to assess and strengthen country capacities for the International Health Regulations (IHR), communicable disease surveillance and emergency preparedness and response to public health incidents. Additional areas of expertise include project management, strategic planning, and monitoring and evaluation.

Cheyanna graduated from the MPH program at Cornell University in 2021. As part of the program’s capstone project, Cheyanna worked with Dr. Meredith to write and submit a grant proposal outlining the use of the Public Health Essentials (PHE) course as a training tool for Cornell Cooperative Extension. This training program has since been implemented at the state and national level for Cooperative Extension (CE) educators and their community partners. Cheyanna currently works as a Program Manager for Public Health Workforce Development and facilitates the PHE course and its corresponding community projects with CE.

Audrey, an instructor and program manager with Cornell Public Health, is focused on integrating engaged student learning with community and public health workforce needs, including through students’ MPH internships (a.k.a. ‘applied practice experiences‘). Audrey’s background is in community food system program development, especially school gardens, farm-to-school programs, and prison-based hands-on food and horticulture education, and she has hosted student interns. Audrey has a BS in Biology and Society and an MPA from Cornell. She is also an employee degree PhD student in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, with research centers on how value systems and institutional, political, technological, and ecological structures mediate emerging food production strategies such as cellular agriculture and cultivated meat.

Dr. Kathryn Fiorella is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University. She leads the Food Systems and Health Concentration area of the Master of Public Health Program. She is the faculty director for the Migrations Program at the Einaudi Center; a faculty fellow of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health, Cornell Atkinson Center, and the Center for Health Equity; and a core faculty member of the Southeast Asia Program. Dr. Fiorella holds a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy and Management and Masters in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley, and an AB from Princeton University in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Dr. Fiorella was an Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University and a Postdoctoral Immersion Fellow at the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC).

Dr Fiorella is an environmental scientist and epidemiologist, and her research aims to understand the interactions among environmental change and livelihood, food, and nutrition security. Her work focuses on global fisheries and the households that rely on them to access food and income. She uses interdisciplinary methods, and her work aims to foster a deeper understanding of how ecological and social systems interact, the ways communities and households adapt to and mitigate environmental change, and the links between human well-being and ecological sustainability.

Elizabeth Fox is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell and is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RD/RDN). Her applied research, both in the U.S. and internationally, has focused on the social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors that influence nutrition decisions, including how those factors impact the implementation of nutrition policies and programs. She uses ethnographic methods, including semi-structured interviews, photo elicitation, and concept mapping, to assess and inform community-informed interventions. Her current work includes supporting the local community health assessment, addressing the needs of the paraprofessional WIC workforce in New York State, and identifying relevant food-systems interventions to improve nutrition outcomes of adolescents in Kenya.

Prior to joining Cornell’s faculty, Elizabeth was a Hecht-Levi Postdoctoral Fellow with the Berman Institute of Bioethics. She received her PhD in International Nutrition from Cornell University’s Division of Nutritional Sciences in 2016. She has also worked as a Degreed Nutritionist at the Women, Infants and Children program in San Diego, California and as the Nutrition Program Coordinator for a pediatric nutrition program at Les Centres GHESKIO, an HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis clinic in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Karla Hanson is a Professor of Practice in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University. Her work is informed by a socio-ecological perspective and done in collaboration with professionals from cooperative extension, health systems, and community-based organizations. She has expertise in program evaluation, quantitative and qualitative data methods, and over 25 years of community-based research experience. Dr. Hanson works collaboratively to implement and test programs and interventions to improve health outcomes. Recent projects explore food security and access to healthy food through farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture, home and community gardening, civic engagement, and systems of mutual aid; and developing a local network to integrate health and social care for community residents through shared systems and data exchange.

Katie Lesser, MPH, CPH is the Student Services Coordinator for the Cornell University Public Health Program. She received her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Communicable Disease and Graduate Certificate in Infection Control from the University of South Florida. She has been a Shot@Life Champion since 2018 and is also currently a Shot@Life Advocacy Lead for New York State.

Lara is a Visiting Lecturer in Cornell Public Health and serves as the Community & Academic Partnership Manager for Cayuga Health Partners. She is also Co-Associate Director of Community & Student Engagement for the Cornell Center for Health Equity. Lara works at the exciting nexus of academia, community health, and health care.  By fostering and maintaining relationships with community-based organizations and health departments in New York State’s Southern Tier and Finger Lakes region, with Cornell students and faculty, and with Cayuga Health clinicians and population health leadership, Lara identifies opportunities for synergistic collaboration to drive action and advance health equity.  With 16 years of experience in successful grant writing, project management, student engagement, community-driven strategic planning, and policy, systems, and environmental change implementation, Lara continues to be energized by the prospect of eliminating health inequities through evidence-based, data-driven solutions and alignment of resources across sectors.

Laura Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University. She is also a faculty fellow of the Cornell Atkinson Center and the Cornell Center for Social Sciences. Dr. Smith is also the Associate Director for Nutrition at Zvitambo Institute for Maternal and Child Health Research in Zimbabwe, where she conducts the majority of her research. She holds a PhD in International Nutrition (2016) and a BS (2007) in Nutritional Sciences from Cornell University.

Dr. Smith is a nutritional scientist and epidemiologist, and her research program focuses on the health-agriculture nexus, examining interactions of environmental and nutritional exposures on birth outcomes and child growth in sub-Saharan Africa. She conducts applied studies focusing on the connections between the food system and maternal and child health and, more recently, has focused on intervention studies. Dr. Smith uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies in her work and has experience in human-centered design and other co-design methodologies to design interventions to enhance the health and well-being of mothers and their children.

Dr. Whittaker studied Microbiology and Biochemistry at the University of Leeds (UK). He was awarded a PhD degree in 1991, with a focus on the glycoproteins of herpesviruses. He then did post-doctoral studies on influenza virus at Yale Medical School before moving to Cornell in 1996, where his research is focused on coronaviruses of humans and animals. He is currently a Professor in the Departments of Microbiology & Immunology and Public & Ecosystem Health.

Charley E. Willison (PhD, University of Michigan) is an assistant professor of public health at Cornell University. She is a political scientist studying the relationships between local politics and public health political decision-making, with a focus on homelessness and disasters. Her research works to explain public health policy outcomes for the most disadvantaged – persons in deep poverty, often with complex social and medical needs, who rely on public programs to address these needs – yet in many cases, such policies are in short supply or absent.