Our People
Deborah Bowen, PhD, is the Director and Principal Investigator of the Partners in Health and Housing Prevention Research Center (PHH-PRC), heading up a diverse roster of public health researchers and program managers. She is also Professor in, and Chair of, the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, one of four partners in the PHH-PRC. Dr. Bowen is an investigator in the regional Cancer Prevention Network, and a co-investigator in the regional Native American Community Health Network. She has been the principal investigator of several NIH-funded grants involving breast cancer risk communications, including the Breast Cancer Risk Counseling Studies, the RISK study, and the WIRES study. Dr. Bowen has been an investigator in the coordinating centers of three large multi-center prevention trials: the Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET), the Women’s Health Trial: Feasibility Study in Minority Populations (WHT: FSMP), and the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). In addition, she has led or participated in numerous community intervention studies that have successfully recruited and maintained advisory committees, including members of the community representing the target audience. She was a co-investigator and member of the steering committee for a large R25T training grant for pre- and postdoctoral fellows at the University of Washington, focused on health communications and bio-behavioral cancer prevention. She was the principal investigator for a church-based dietary intervention trial and in that role chaired an advisory committee of local church leaders representing a broad variety of denominations.
Lee Strunin, PhD, Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, has been Deputy Director of the PHH-PRC since 2001. She has more than 20 years’ experience in community-based research and evaluation. As a medical anthropologist, she has used both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Her research has focused on substance abuse and includes studies of alcohol-related risk behaviors among adolescents and young adults from various racial and/or ethnic backgrounds, including black, white, and Hispanic young people in Boston and elsewhere in the United States, as well as cross-cultural studies of alcohol use in Mexico and Italy. Dr. Strunin was Principal Investigator of the PRC core research project, The GirlStars Program, which enrolled 9- to 13-year-old girls living in public housing into a structured program of health education and physical activity. Dr. Strunin has worked with inner-city communities in Boston to develop research protocols, has evaluated programs in communities and community health centers, has provided consultation for community projects, and has been a member of a number of community and health center advisory boards. She has been a member of the Institutional Review Board of the Boston Medical Center (now Boston University Medical Campus) for 20 years and also advises the IRB of a neighborhood health center. She has played a leadership role on the national PRC, serving on its Research Committee from 2004–05 through 2006–07, and as chair in 2005–06. Dr. Strunin teaches a course on Qualitative Research Methods at BUSPH. Her recent studies include the identification and comparison of risk and protective factors for alcohol-related problems among young people in the United States, Italy, and Mexico.
Jo-Anna L. Rorie, CNM, MSN, MPH, is Director of the PHH-PRC’s Training and Education Core and co-Principal Investigator on the Center’s core research project, Navigating Public Housing Residents into Prevention Programs. She was also co-PI on a prior core research project that assessed the effectiveness of public housing residents, trained as health advocates, in increasing rates of health screening among residents. At Boston University School of Public Health, Ms. Rorie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, and she is completing a PhD in Health Policy from the Heller School at Brandeis University. Her MSN, from Yale University, is in maternal and child health nursing and nurse-midwifery; her MPH, from Harvard University, is in maternal and child health and community development. As is a practicing nurse-midwife, Ms. Rorie is a leader in promoting culturally competent systems of care; as a researcher, her interest lies in the role of racial disparities as barriers to care for public housing residents, and she has developed a graduate course on health disparities among mothers and children. She previously served as Director of women’s health and OB/GYN services at Boston’s Dimock Community Health Center. Ms. Rorie is a well-known leader in the American College of Nurse-Midwives, in the maternal and child health section of the American Public Health Association, and among policy makers in the US Maternal and Child Health Bureau. Ms. Rorie developed and instituted a Cultural Competence Module for the Nurse-Midwifery Education Program that was disseminated nationally to MCH Nurse-Leadership centers.
Sarah Gees Bhosrekar, MPH, is the Project Manager for PHH-PRC’s Training and Education Core and also for the Core Research Project. After earning her BA in Sociology and American Studies from Brandeis University, Ms. Bhosrekar began working to promote civic engagement among youth in Boston. She entered the field of public health working for Initiatives, Inc., a small USAID-funded health care consulting organization for which she served on projects in Guyana, Zambia, and Ethiopia. She went on to earn her MPH from the Boston University School of Public Health, where she concentrated in maternal and child health and was awarded a fellowship that allowed her to focus on issues of cultural competence. Ms. Bhosrekar has designed and implemented research for NARAL of Massachusetts on services offered to teens in Boston’s school-based health centers; and she was a member of the research team on the Making Employment Needs Count (“MEN Count”) project, a structural HIV intervention for heterosexual African-American men getting care at the Whittier Street Health Center in Boston. As a member of the PHH-PRC’s Training and Education Core, Ms. Bhosrekar develops and implements curricula and training programs for residents of public housing and is the on-site manager for the Core Research Project.
Madeleine Kangsen Scammell, DSc, is Director of the PHH-PRC’s Collaborations and Partnerships Core. An Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health, she also directs the Community Engagement and Research Translation Cores of the Boston University Superfund Research Program. In these capacities her work includes developing long-term mechanisms to support research relationships between community groups and scientists, and responding to community requests for assistance. Dr. Scammell’s research includes the use of qualitative methods in the area of community-driven environmental health and epidemiologic studies, mapping and monitoring community-identified environmental health hazards, and analyzing cumulative exposures to chemical and non-chemical stressors. Dr. Scammell serves on the Board of Health in the city of Chelsea, Massachusetts, and is a member of the board of directors of the Science and Environmental Health Network. Her research interests include environmental justice, health inequalities, community mapping, community health indicators, community-based participatory research, human biomonitoring, and ethics.
Nancy Irwin Maxwell, DSc, is Director of the Communications and Dissemination Core of the PHH-PRC. In joining the PHH-PRC, she has moved to the research faculty in the Department of Epidemiology, after nine years on the faculty of the Department of Environmental Health, where she taught introductory environmental health many times. She also developed and taught, with a colleague, a course in surveillance methods and applications in environmental health; and developed and taught solo a course in professional writing skills for public health students. Dr. Maxwell is the author of an introductory environmental health textbook tailored for students who are not concentrating in the field, including those with little or no science background (Understanding Environmental Health: How We Live in the World, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2009; 2nd edition underway). In writing this textbook—and in her communications work in the Prevention Research Center—she draws not only on her fund of public health knowledge and her teaching experience, but also on her earlier work as a writer and editor, for which she often wrote educational materials on technical topics. As a staff scientist at the nonprofit Silent Spring Institute from 1996 through 2000, she directed an intensive breast cancer surveillance effort on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Rachel Goodman, MA, is Director of the Boston Housing Authority’s Community Services Department and oversees BHA’s participation in the PHH-PRC partnership. She also directs workforce development initiatives at BHA, as well as a broad range of education, health and wellness, and support services for public housing residents. Her master’s degree is in linguistics with a concentration in teaching English as a second language, and she taught for 10 years at Boston University’s Center for English Language and Orientation Programs. Ms. Goodman has represented the BHA as a member of the Boston Workforce Investment Board since 2002, and she has worked in job placement and training programs in the Boston area since 1990. Along with other members of the PHH-PRC, she has presented at national conferences on the Resident Health Advocate training program and the benefits of public housing residents as community health workers. She seeks to expand opportunities to involve both public health and social work students in the work of the PHH-PRC at the Boston Housing Authority.
John Kane, MPP, has been a representative for the Boston Housing Authority with the Prevention Research Center Steering Committee since 2002. As Senior Project Coordinator at the BHA, he acts as a liaison between the BHA and the Resident Advisory Board and facilitates BHA’s efforts to develop policies to enhance tenant participation. Mr. Kane also assesses the quality of BHA’s property management, and coordinates the Authority’s implementation of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in developments—disseminating information, conducting training sessions, and evaluating the effectiveness of the programs. He has led BHA’s participation in collaborations totalling more than $4.9 million in federal and foundation grant funds related to IPM and green housing. Mr. Kane directs the BHA’s interdepartmental effort to develop its annual plan and facilitate public participation in the process and provides technical assistance to various BHA departments in their grant submissions. Mr. Kane’s Master of Public Policy degree is from Georgetown University.
Gerry Thomas, MPH, serves as the Acting Director of the Community Initiatives Bureau for the Boston Public Health Commission. Much of her 10-plus-year tenure with the Commission has been spent working on health care access issues. In her current capacity she oversees the Commission’s Environmental Health, Healthy Homes and Community Supports, Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, and Civic Engagement and Advocacy Divisions and is the Commission’s liaison to the PHH-PRC. Prior to joining the Commission, she worked as a community and union organizer and in community health centers. She holds a BA in Legal Studies from the University of Massachusetts Boston and a Master of Public Health degree from the Boston University School of Public Health, with a concentration in health policy and management.
Tracy Battaglia, MD, MPH, is Principal Investigator for the PHH-PRC’s core research project, Navigating Public Housing Residents into Prevention Programs. At Boston University School of Medicine, Dr. Battaglia is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology. She is on the faculty of BUSM’s Women’s Health Unit, which works to improve women’s health through clinical care, medical education, research, and community outreach. She serves as a Principal Investigator on the Patient Navigation Research Program, a community-based cancer control project supported by the Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Battaglia has received Career Development Awards from both NIH and the American Cancer Society. Her interests include breast and cervical cancer screening in minority and underserved women, reducing errors in follow-up to abnormal mammography, risk perception, and screening behaviors in multi-ethnic populations. Her research focuses on community-based approaches to reducing health disparities among underserved women. She is an active volunteer for the American Cancer Society, currently serving as the Cheif Medical Officer for the New England Division.
Sarah Primeau, MSW, is the Research Assistant for the PRC’s core research project, Navigating Public Housing Residents into Prevention Programs, for which she is currently consenting and enrolling participants. After earning her BA in sociology from St. Lawrence University, Ms. Primeau worked with vulnerable children at residential treatment facilities in both San Diego and Boston. After studying health care and HIV/AIDS in Kenya for three months, she went on to earn her MSW from the Boston University School of Social Work, where she concentrated in clinical practice. Throughout 2009 until 2011, Ms. Primeau worked as a social work intern case manager and education specialist with low-income and disadvantaged individuals at Boston’s ABCD. During 2010 and early 2011, Ms. Primeau was a social work intern at Children’s Hospital Boston in the Short Bowel Clinic, serving primarily young parents and their chronically ill children. At the same time, she began her education in public health. Ms. Primeau is currently a part-time MPH student at Boston University School of Public Health, concentrating in international health, while also working with Principal Investigator Dr. Tracy Battaglia, both on the PHH-PRC’s core research project and on projects in BUSM’s Women’s Health Unit.
Eugenia Smith is Chair of the Community Committee for Health Promotion (CCHP)—as the community partner of the PHH-PRC, the CCHP represents the residents of Boston’s public family housing developments. Ms. Smith’s journey with the PHH-PRC began when she became a Resident Health Advocate in the 2007–2008 training-plus-internship cycle, and before long she was hired as a consultant for the Knowledge is Power program. This program not only teaches residents how to respond to proposals, but also teaches the basic skills they will need to implement, manage, and evaluate a grant successfully. Due to Ms. Smith’s knowledge and commitment to working on behalf of residents in various capacities, she was asked to become the part-time Interim Program Coordinator for the CCHP in 2008. She is now the Chairperson of the CCHP. Her work for public housing residents did not begin with the PHH-PRC: she has been involved with Boston Housing Authority residents and their needs since 1978. Ms. Smith has worked with elderly residents in many BHA developments to address their health concerns, both social and physical. She has provided resources to families who were homeless, and to those about to become homeless. She also serves as a Notary Public. As a member of society, Ms. Smith believes that “we are only as strong as our weakest link,” and her goal is to bring self-sufficiency to as many people as she can in her lifetime. Ms. Smith was born and raised in Boston, and is a mother of four. She has a BA in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts–Boston.
