Preventive Pros

Razanne Mihtar and Nicole Tang recently traveled to Kenya with the USC GRIT Lab run by Heather Wipfli, PhD. Hear about their experience implementing a youth ambassador training program with local youth. Mihtar is a sophomore in the BS in Global Health program, with minors in natural science and cinema-television for health professions. Tang is a junior in the BS in Global Health program with a min...

Lida Chatzi, MD, PhD is professor of population and public health sciences in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC. She has more than 20 years of experience in environmental health research and a track record of research productivity in multi-disciplinary translational settings (R01s, R21s and U01) focusing on the influence of environmental chem...

Ans Irfan, MD, EdD, DrPH, ScD MPH, MRPL , associate professor of population and public health sciences in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC, examines the role society and policies play in climate change, the need to confront the big questions, and how we might adjust our approach to improve humanity's outcome. Irfan’s research questions...

Shohreh Farzan, PhD is an environmental epidemiologist, with a background in molecular biology and toxicology. Farzan’s research focuses on the impact of environmental contaminants on maternal-child health, with a special interest in cardiometabolic health. Much of Farzan’s work focuses on the role of environmental exposures in altering preclinical indicators of cardiovascular and metabolic diseas...

Jane K. Steinberg, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Sciences and Public Health in the Keck School of Medicine at USC. Trained as a behavioral scientist, her research focuses on determinants of multiple risk behaviors (alcohol/drug use, tobacco and cannabis use) among youth, and the development of effective programs and policy responses to reduce health risks and a...

Jesse Goodrich, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Environmental Health at the University of Southern California. His research combines data on environmental exposures with information on molecular-level biological processes to understand the effects of environmental pollutants on the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. He is particularly interested in examining these quest...

Zhanghua Chen, PhD is an environmental epidemiologist and biostatistician with multidisciplinary expertise in environmental health, biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical medicine, obesity and diabetes pathophysiology, genomics, metabolomics, and data science. She has a strong track record in environmental health research with particular interests in the health effects of early-life environmental e...

Mariana Stern, PhD is a professor of clinical population and public health sciences and urology, and the Ira Goodman Chair in Cancer Research. Stern is co-lead of the CoGENES program along with Lourdes Baezconde Garbanati, and associate director for population science at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.  Stern obtained her undergraduate training in Biology at the University of Buenos Aires,...

Fangqi Guo, PhD is a postdoc in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences. Guo's current research focuses on environmental determinants of cardiovascular diseases and the individual-level behavioral and physiological processes that partially explain these environmental-health links. Her PhD research focused on the promotion of early detection of congenital heart disease among in...

Marlena Schoenberg Fejzo, PhD is a medical scientist whose research focuses on conditions and diseases that primarily affect women. As part of a team of researchers from the United States, United Kingdom and Sri Lanka, she has collected extensive evidence showing the cause of pregnancy sickness: a hormone known as GDF15. Fejzo received a PhD in Genetics from Harvard University in 1995. Currently s...

Arbor Quist, PhD is an environmental epidemiologist interested in community-driven research that addresses climate and environmental injustice. Quist recently completed her PhD in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation examined how hurricane flooding and industrial swine operations, separately and jointly, affect acute gastrointestinal illness. Her resear...

Ricky N. Bluthenthal, PhD is the Associate Dean for Social Justice and a professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC. His research has established the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs, tested novel interventions and strategies to reduce HIV risk and improve HIV testing among injection drug users and men who have sex with men, doc...

Jennifer Tsui, PhD, MPH is a health services researcher and cancer population scientist. Her research focuses on disparities in cancer care delivery and cancer outcomes, particularly among racial/ethnic minority and low-income populations. Tsui leads a five year study funded by the American Cancer Society to investigate health care organizational and delivery factors that impact care transitions a...

Roksana Karim, PhD, MBBS is an epidemiologist researching women's health, particularly the impact of menopause and sex hormone concentrations on atherosclerosis/cardiovascular disease and other age-related chronic inflammatory outcomes including bone density and cognition. Karim also has vast interest in HIV-associated endocrine and cardiovascular complications in women and children. Karim ha...

Genevieve Dunton, PhD, MPH is a professor of population and public health sciences and psychology, and chief of the Division of Health Behavior Research in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC. Dunton's research examines health behaviors related to chronic disease risk in children and adults, with a focus on physical activity and nutrition....

Adam de Smith, PhD is an assistant professor of population and public health sciences in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine of USC. He is a member of the USC Center for Genetic Epidemiology and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. de Smith is a genetic epidemiologist with a research focus on identifying the causes of acute lymphoblastic leukem...

Olivier Pernet, PhD is an assistant professor of research pediatrics at Keck School of Medicine of USC. He is a virologist with over 15 years of research experience in the field of emerging zoonotic viruses, with a special attention on bat related diseases such as Nipah Virus, Ebola Virus, SARS-CoV-1, and SARS-CoV-2. Pernet's work focuses on host-virus interactions and how to use them for bio...

Albert Farias, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. His research is devoted to helping eliminate racial/ethnic disparities in cancer outcomes by furthering the understanding of how the provision of medical care contributes to racial/ethnic disparities in cancer incidence and outcomes. Farias has applied his...

Daniel Stram, PhD , is a professor of population and public health sciences. His research is on general biostatistical issues in epidemiology, and he is a long time collaborator on a number of important prospective (cohort) studies of cancer and other diseases. These include the Atomic Bomb Survivors Study, the Multiethnic Cohort Study, and the Children's Health Study. Learn more about this e...

Rachel Carmen Ceasar, PhD is an assistant professor of clinical population and public health sciences and a medical anthropologist. She leads the USC Maternal Cannabis Lab , where qualitative and quantitative research is conducted to document the historic and systematic inequities people face when they use cannabis during pregnancy. The goal in this work is to partner with maternal health provider...

Season 2 coming Fall 2023! Heather Wipfli, PhD , is a Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and International Relation at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at USC. She is also the Director of the Undergraduate Degree programs in Health Promotion and...

Jonathan Cohen, JD, MPhil and Karina Dominguez Gonzalez, DSW(c), MPH discuss the Continuous Learning for Antiracist Curricular Change (CLARCC) Fellowship. The fellowship is one of several efforts organized by the Department’s Race, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion ( REDI ) Council – a dedicated team of faculty, staff, and students – and is part of the national Transforming Academia for Equity (TAE)...

Rita Burke, PhD, MPH returns to discuss pediatric disaster management. Burke is an associate professor of clinical population and public health sciences in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics. Her research focuses on pediatric disaster preparedness and injury prevention. Burke’s work includes evaluating gaps and ide...

Claradina Soto, PhD, MPH (Navajo/Jemez Pueblo) is an associate professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences. She has over 20 years working with American Indian and Alaska Native populations in public health, collaborating with urban and Tribal communities in CA to reduce and prevent mental health disparities, cancer prevalence, commercial tobacco use, and substance use and...

Rita Burke, PhD, MPH is an associate professor of clinical population and public health sciences in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics. Her research focuses on pediatric disaster preparedness and injury prevention. Burke's work includes evaluating gaps and identifying barriers in health and school systems to m...