Center for Health Equity Transformation Our People Core Faculty CHET Core Faculty Image Matthew L. Bush , MD, PhD, MBA Professor and vice chair for research in the department of otolaryngology – head and neck surgery, in the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Bush is a surgeon scientist who has a research focus on increasing access to and timely delivery of specialty healthcare in underserved populations. His current work is NIH funded and involves clinical trial design and execution among vulnerable populations which incorporates mixed methodology along with dissemination and implementation research approaches. View Profile View CV NCBI MyBibliography Page Image Lisa Cliggett, PhD Professor of anthropology in the department of anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Cliggett’s research examines the socio-political, economic and ecological dynamics of development and change, including health, in Zambia, Southern Africa. Her current and past research is supported by the National Science Foundation and Fulbright. View Profile View CV Image Laneshia Conner, PhD, MSW, CSW Assistant professor of social work in the College of Social Work. Dr. Conner’s research expertise is in the areas of HIV and aging (cultural adaption of prevention interventions), adult learning principles in higher education, and anti-racism in social work education. Her current projects include one related to faculty perceptions of self-plagiarism among students and another using the ADAPT-ITT framework to modify a web-based HIV Intervention for older Black women. View Profile View CV Image Mark Dignan, PhD, MPH Professor in the department of internal medicine of the College of Medicine. Dr. Dignan’s research is focused on cancer prevention and control for rural and medically underserved populations. His projects have developed and evaluated the effectiveness of interventions to increase screening and follow-up for abnormal screening test results and have included partnerships with community members, healthcare providers and healthcare delivery systems. His current NIH-funded projects include development and assessment of multiple level interventions to increase colorectal and cervical cancer screening in Appalachian populations. View Profile View CV Image Rachel H. Farr, PhD Associate professor, department of psychology, College of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Farr’s research in developmental psychology focuses on diverse families, particularly those parented by LGBTQ+ adults and formed through adoption. For over 14 years, she has conducted a large longitudinal study about how parental sexual orientation relates to child, parent, and family outcomes among diverse adoptive families across the U.S. Funded by the William T. Grant Foundation, Dr. Farr is currently studying racially, socioeconomically, and geographically diverse adolescents with LGBTQ+ parents. View Profile View CV Google Scholar Profile Image Diane Francis, PhD Associate professor in the department of communication at the University of Kentucky. She is also a fellow with the Obesity Health Disparities PRIDE Program funded by the National Heart, Lunch and Blood Institute. Dr. Francis is a social scientist whose research at the intersection of communication science and public health focuses on communication in the service of health equity among Black populations. Her program of research examines the role of communication in health disparities and knowledge translation to advance health equity and focuses on the mechanisms and effects of health campaigns and culturally appropriate interventions, mediated health messages, and interpersonal communication in shaping health behaviors and health disparities. She has conducted research to advance understanding of how to harness traditional and new media to promote healthy behavioral changes in young adult Black men and women; the impact of celebrity illness disclosures on communication and health outcomes; and how people communicate about health across various contexts (e.g., interpersonal and family networks, social media). She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles in communication, public health, and medicine journals. Her work has been funded by intramural and extramural sources, including the National Institutes of Health. View Profile View CV Image Candice Hargons, PhD Dr. Candice Hargons (she/her) is an award-winning associate professor and interim chair of the department of educational, school, and counseling psychology at the University of Kentucky, where she studies sexual wellness and healing racial trauma – all with a love ethic. She is PI of the SAMHSA funded Neighborhood Healers Project, which uses a community-based participatory action research approach to advance mental health literacy and utilization among Black Lexingtonians by training Black community members in Mental Health First Aid. Dr. Hargons is also a co-I on projects funded by NIDA, HRSA, and NIMHD examining substance use outcomes, treatment, and sexual health disparities. Additionally, she leads the Big Sex Study, a national tri-phasic, mixed-methods, community-based participatory action research project investigating Black sexual wellness through the #HotGirlScience paradigm. She is a faculty affiliate of African American and Africana Studies and the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies. Dr. Hargons has published over 55 peer-reviewed articles (n= 48) and book chapters (n=8), and is a PI/co-I on over $6 million in federally funded research. Dr. Hargons' commitment is to translating science in a way that makes it accessible and meaningful to her grandma and people who don't have access to information locked behind academic paywalls. Thus, she has been featured in popular media, including the Huffington Post, Blavity, Women's Health, Cosmopolitan, and the New York Times. She has also been featured on several leading podcasts, such as Therapy for Black Girls and Science Vs. View Profile View CV Google Scholar Profile Image Nancy Grant Harrington, PhD University research professor of communication, director of the Health Communication Research Collaborative, and director of the Kentucky Conference on Health Communication in the College of Communication and Information; she also holds an academic appointment in the School of Public Health and is a faculty associate of the Multidisciplinary Center on Drug and Alcohol Research. Dr. Harrington’s research focuses on persuasive message design in the health behavior change context. Her current work focuses on developing training materials to improve patient-provider communication in contexts such as cost-of-care conversations, rheumatoid arthritis treatment, tobacco cessation, and substance use treatment referral. View Profile View CV NCBI MyBibliography Page Image Pamela Hull, PhD Associate professor of behavioral science in the UK College of Medicine, is a medical sociologist with over 15 years of experience in conducting community-engaged research with a focus on reducing health disparities among African American, Hispanic, and low-income populations, in collaboration with community partners. Her research focuses on the implementation of evidence-based practices for cancer prevention and control, including HPV vaccination and obesity prevention, using implementation science and technology-based applications. Dr. Hull serves as associate director of Population Science and Community Impact for the UK Markey Cancer Center, where she leads Markey’s community outreach and engagement efforts through the Community Impact Office functions, and she oversees MCC’s population science research agenda and resources. View Profile Image Patrick Kitzman, PhD, MSPT Professor and associate dean for research in the College of Health Sciences. Dr. Kitzman’s research focus is on care transitions and community resource development for individuals with neurological conditions such as stroke, brain injury, and spinal cord injury living in under-resourced rural communities. He is also involved with examining health disparities related to these at-risk populations. View Profile View CV Image Aaron J. Kruse-Diehr, PhD Assistant professor in the department of health, behavior and society in the University of Kentucky College of Public Health. Dr. Kruse-Diehr is also director of the Community Leadership Institute of Kentucky (CLIK) through the UK Center for Clinical and Translational Science. His research centers on reducing cancer disparities, with primary focus on increasing colorectal cancer screening rates in clinic and community-based settings using approaches guided by implementation science theories and frameworks. View Profile View CV Image Ana Maria Linares, DNS, RN, IBCLC Associate professor in the College of Nursing, Dr. Linares is a national and international expert in human lactation and has worked in maternal-child and women's health for 40 years in Chile and the U.S. She has a program of research to improve health and achieve health equity through the development of a culturally appropriate exclusive breastfeeding intervention among Hispanic women. Dr. Linares coordinates three international studies sponsored by the International Child Health Nursing Network to determine cultural factors influencing breastfeeding. Additionally, Dr. Linares’s contributions to lactation research are vast and include: 1) advancing the science of cytokine measurement in breastmilk and levels of heavy metal in breastmilk; 2) identification of predictors of EBF initiation and duration in Hispanic women, and 3) identification of predictors of EBF using a mother/infant dyad approach. Currently, she is the PI of a study to evaluate Familism and SDOH as critical components of exclusive breastfeeding in Hispanic mothers funded by UNITE. View Profile View CV My NCBI Bibliography Page Image Kathy Sheppard-Jones, PhD, CRC Dr. Kathy Sheppard-Jones is the executive director of the Human Development Institute (HDI), one of UK’s Centers and Institutes administered under the Office of the Vice President for Research. The HDI serves as Kentucky’s University Center on Disability and is home to the state’s University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities and Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities grants. She leads over 300 interdisciplinary staff around research priority areas that include employment, education, health, leadership, advocacy, assistive technology and universal design. Dr. Sheppard-Jones serves as implementation lead for the University on the Retaining Talent after Injury/Illness Network grant, funded by the US Department of Labor. This study seeks examines early intervention strategies for workers at risk of leaving the workforce due to injury, illness or impairment. She holds a doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Kentucky. Dr Sheppard-Jones also serves as adjunct assistant faculty in the counselor education program in the College of Education. An active researcher with over $60 million in lifetime externally funded awards, her interests include return to work, transition to employment inclusive higher education for students and workforce, universal design, and systems change. She is guided by a vision of a workforce that is inclusive of all people. She is also a certified rehabilitation counselor. View Profile View CV Image Brittany Smalls, PhD, MHSA Associate professor, in the department of family and community medicine in the College of Medicine. Dr. Smalls’ research focus is addressing social determinants of health and its influence on self-care in those with complex chronic disease, especially older adults. Her research includes serving as co-investigator on 2 NIH R01 grants: (1) reducing cardiovascular risk in caregivers in rural Appalachia (1R01NR016824) and (2) improving self-care and access to care in those with type 2 diabetes living in rural Appalachia (1R01DK112136). As a health services researcher with a background in anthropology and health psychology, Dr. Smalls' research also focuses on the intersection of health behavior, social environmental determinants of health, and chronic disease management. She has leveraged her transdisciplinary background and experience to assess how the social environment affects health outcomes for vulnerable populations with complex chronic conditions. Her research is currently focused on rural health, aging, and intergenerational influences on health and wellbeing, specially cardiometabolic disorders. She is also a current NIDDK K01 awardee where she has focused her research on improving diabetes self-care activities among older adults living in rural Appalachia communities in Kentucky. View Profile View CV Google Scholar Profile Image Danelle Stevens-Watkins, PhD Professor and associate vice president for research (diversity and inclusion). Dr. Stevens-Watkins leads the UNited In True racial Equity (UNITE) Research Priority Area. Broadly, her research focuses on health disparities and barriers to service utilization among Black adult populations. She completed an NIH (K08DA-032296) Mentored Career Development Award in 2017 with a research emphasis on the dynamic interaction between anxiety, depression, drug abuse, and HIV risk behaviors among African American male prisoners. Currently, she is completing one of the first known studies funded by NIDA (R01DA-094333) to examine structural, social, and cultural factors impacting the opioid epidemic among Black Americans by gender and age. Further, in collaboration with Morehouse School of Medicine, she leads a project funded by NIH, National Institute on Minority Health Disparities focused on increasing PrEP uptake among Black women at high risk for HIV. In addition, she has current projects focused on breastfeeding and maternal morbidity among Black women. Recently, she received funding from NIH, National Institute on General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to co-lead a mentoring program to foster success among racial/ethnic underrepresented faculty. View Profile View CV NCBI MyBibliography Page Image Lauren Whitehurst, PhD Assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Whitehurst’s research seeks to define “good” sleep and how we can leverage it to support healthy cognition and combat disease and cognitive decline. The major themes of her work are centered around investigations of both central (e.g., electroencephalographic) and autonomic (e.g., electrocardiographic) indicators of sleep and their contributions to cognition. She also examines how stress-sleep interactions impact cognitive function and the importance of sleep to the development of accelerated or pathological cognitive decline (e.g., dementia/Alzheimer’s disease). She is particularly interested in how the lack of access to restorative sleep can play a role in creating or exacerbating disparities in cognitive health for communities historically underserved by science and medicine in the US. Lauren Whitehurst received her. B.S. in psychology and an M.A. in experimental psychology from James Madison University in 2011 and 2013, respectively. She completed her PhD in psychology from the University of California, Riverside in 2018 and completed her training as a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Center for Health and Community and the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco in 2020. View Profile View CV My NCBI Bibliography Page Image Corrine Williams, ScD Associate professor in the department of health, behavior and society, College of Public Health, with a joint appointment in the department of obstetrics and gynecology, College of Medicine, at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Williams has conducted research on various women’s health and maternal and child health topics, and generally focuses program evaluation and quality improvement. She was part of the research team for the project, “Green Dot across the Bluegrass: Evaluation of a primary prevention intervention,” a CDC-funded collaborative agreement to evaluate the effectiveness of a violence prevention program targeted to high school students. Related to the Green Dot intervention, she also received funding to evaluate this program among college students. In addition, she served as the evaluator of the Kentucky Health Access Nurturing Development Services (HANDS) program, a statewide voluntary intensive home visitation program for high-risk (including young maternal age), primarily low-income, first-time parents that provides services from the prenatal period to the child's third birthday. This work ultimately led to the HANDS program being declared an evidence-based home visiting approach. Dr. Williams is also the acting associate vice president for Student Well-being in the Office for Student Success. As acting AVP she oversees the UK Counseling Center, the VIP Center, the Disability Resource Center, Campus Recreation and the office of Student Financial Wellness. She also leads a strategic initiative dedicated to a holistic approach to student wellness. View Profile View CV My NCBI Bibliography Page Image Lovoria B. Williams, PhD, FNP-BC, FAANP Associate professor in the College of Nursing. Her research focuses on implementing multi-level interventions to reduce obesity and lung cancer disparities among African Americans and medically underserved population through community based participatory methods. Her work is funded by grants from the NIH, State, and Foundations. Dr. Williams is also the associate director and endowed research professor of cancer health equity in the Markey Cancer Center, where she provides leadership for the health equity aspects of Markey’s community outreach and engagement functions View Profile View CV NCBI MyBibliography Page
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