Fellows

Current Trainees

Sandra Echeverria, PhD

Sandra Echeverria, PhD started her fellowship with the Department on September 18, 2006. Dr. Echeverría received her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Columbia University , Mailman School of Public Health, in 2006. As a social epidemiologist, Dr. Echeverría is interested in examining the effect of neighborhood conditions on health and how social conditions contribute to and modify racial/ethnic disparities.

For her dissertation, Dr. Echeverría sought to identify the specific neighborhood attributes implicated in previously reported neighborhood-health associations. Her dissertation research indicated that measures of neighborhood problems and neighborhood social cohesion were significantly associated with poor mental health and health-related behaviors, after adjusting for both individual and area-level covariates. These findings suggest that both material conditions and features of collective social functioning may be implicated in neighborhood-health associations. Dr. Echeverría's career goal is to conduct empirical investigations that elucidate the complex ways in which social conditions shape health and to link research findings to interventions and policy initiatives that can directly improve the public's health.

During her postdoctoral fellowship training she will participate in the fellows group project, submit manuscripts for publication based on her dissertation work, develop new research proposals that examine neighborhood-health effects, and strengthen her skills in qualitative methodologies to support the epidemiological investigations she will conduct.

Rebecca Etz, PhD

Rebecca Etz, PhD joined the Department of Family Medicine on September 12, 2006. As a cultural anthropologist, Dr. Etz engaged in interdisciplinary research both in New Zealand and the US with a focus on community studies, race, gender, sexuality, historical narratives, social inequalities and identity construction. Dr. Etz received her PhD from Rutgers University . She has taught both graduate and undergraduate courses and additionally have developed a number of academically-based workshops for political and community outreach groups. She is fundamentally motivated by feminist theory and the belief that anthropology is a powerful research model able to inform social policies and promote social change in an ethical and informed manner.

As a postdoctoral fellow, she will participate in a fellows group project that focuses on “social capital” in the primary care practice setting, including issues of access to, and delivery of, primary care. As a qualitative analyst with the “Prescription for Health” project, she is committed to promoting and supporting the redesign of family medicine through innovative research and interventions.

Sabrina Chase, PhD

Sabrina Chase, PhD joined the fellowship program on January 3, 2006. Dr. Chase received her Ph.D. in medical anthropology at Rutgers University in January 2005. Her dissertation, “Mujeres Ingeniosas [Resourceful Women]: HIV+ Puerto Rican Women and the Urban Health Care System,” traced the help-seeking pathways of urban HIV+ Puerto Rican women living in the greater Newark, New Jersey metropolitan area. In her three years of ethnographic fieldwork, Sabrina accompanied a core group of key informants to their medical and mental health care appointments and documented their use of both biomedical and CAM modalities as they utilized the health care safety net to manage their illnesses.

During this time, Sabrina also served as a consultant to the Rutgers ‘Shaping A Life' program at Douglass College , designing classroom strategies to teach ethnographic interviewing techniques and presenting an annual keynote lecture on anthropological fieldwork.

As a fellow, Sabrina will be working with the project SCOPE (Supporting Colorectal Cancer Outcomes through Participatory Enhancements) as a facilitator. She will be collecting qualitative data in several practices and leading quality improvement teams. Sabrina also plans to revise her dissertation for publication as a book.

Oliver Lontok, MD

Oliver Lontok, MD joined the Fellowship program on March 20, 2006. He earned his medical degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara in Mexico . He is currently a student in the MPH program at the UMDNJ School of Public Health and will complete all course requirements for his degree in Epidemiology in May 2006.

Dr. Lontok's research interests include Preventive Medicine with a focus on cardiovascular and cancer care. He is currently completing his fieldwork project which is part of a Complementary and Alternative Medicine study at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. In collaboration with Tefera Gezmu, MPH, Dr. Lontok is also completing a project which examines survival differences between African-American and White women diagnosed with breast cancer. He is using the SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) database for this project and his advisor is Dr. Kitaw Demissie.

At the RWJMS Department of Family Medicine, Dr. Lontok is transitioning into his role as a postdoctoral fellow and will be mentored by Benjamin Crabtree, PhD and Barbara DiCicco-Bloom, RN, PhD. His education includes preparation as a field researcher for the SCOPE (Supporting Colorectal Cancer Outcomes through Participatory Enhancements) project. Dr. Lontok's education will focus on qualitative and quantitative methodologies as well as experiences working with a diverse research team. He plans to utilize his clinical skills and expertise in research methodologies to decrease disparities in access and treatment outcomes related to Primary Care.

Recent Graduates

Jennifer Hamilton, MD, PhD

Jennifer Hamilton, MD, PhD is a first year Fellow who joined the Fellowship on July 29, 2004. Dr. Hamilton is a graduate of Princeton University where she majored in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She spent several years as an information systems consultant before pursuing her Doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University and her medical degree at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS). She completed her Family Medicine residency at RWJMS as well, including a year as Chief Resident. Dr. Hamilton occasionally returns to her residency site to coach the current residents as they plan and complete their own research projects. She is interested in investigating how matters of religion and spirituality impact patient care. She is the director of the CAM study about how medical practices have organized to deliver both conventional and complementary care. Her greatest efforts are concentrated on the ULTRA project. She is being educated as a field researcher and participates regularly as a member of the ULTRA Team that is responsible for collecting and analyzing data and conducting a practice improvement intervention.

Mihai Jalba, MD, PhD

Dr. Mihai S. Jalba is a first year Fellows who joined the fellowship on September 1, 2004. He holds a M.D. and a Ph.D. degree from the "Carol Davila" University of Medicine from Bucharest, Romania, where he is certified as a pulmonologist. Dr. Jalba started his career in research in 1991 at the National Institute of Pulmonology from Bucharest. He was an associate scientific researcher in the Division of Research at Brooklyn Hospital, a participating center in the Multicenter Airway Research Collaboration, with a focus on asthma research. He has four publications in asthma and his research won an award in the 95th Annual Scientific Assembly of the Southern Medical Association held in Nashville, Tennessee, between November 8-10, 2001. Dr. Jalba also worked as a public health Epidemiologist at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene/Tuberculosis Control Program, conducting research on large databases of TB contacts from New York City. Currently, his work focuses on the beta-agonist controversy in asthma. He plans to participate in the 100th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society, scheduled in May 2005 in San Diego, California. He is also a member of the research team that is exploring the integration of complementary and alternative medicine in New Jersey Family Medicine practices. The results of this qualitative research will be presented in the 2005 Conference of North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRAG), scheduled in October 2005 in Quebec City, Canada. Dr. Jalba is currently taking courses in Environmental Health, Biocomputing, Principles & Methods of Epidemiology and Introduction to Biostatistics at the UMDNJ-School of Public Health to obtain a MPH degree.

Denise M. Young, MD

Denise M. Young, MD joined the NRSA Fellowship on November 17, 2003. She earned her medical degree at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC., and completed her family medicine residency at the Residency Program in Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York .

During Dr. Young's two year fellowship training, she had three mentors, Benjamin Crabtree, PhD; Barbara DiCicco-Bloom RN, PhD (Qualitative) and Kitaw Demissie , MD , PhD (Quantitative). Dr. Young completed courses from the University of Medicine and Dentistry School of Public Health and she will receive her MPH degree in Epidemiology in May 2006.

While a fellow, Dr. Young worked on the qualitative analysis team for Prescription For Health, a project sponsored by AHRQ and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She presented this work on Practice-based Research Networks at national and international conferences, and was a co-author on 2 manuscripts resulting from this analysis.

Dr. Young's quantitative work was done through the School of Public Health . She was involved in a study that measures outcomes of newly diagnosed HIV patients in New Jersey . During the summer of 2005, she interned at the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Practice and Primary Care in Washington DC . Her work there, evaluating perceptions about HIV in minority communities using a national dataset from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics. Dr. Young completed her fellowship on November 16, 2005.

Beatrix Roemheld- Hamm, MD, PhD

Dr. Beatrix Roemheld-Hamm is a one year Fellow who joined the Fellowship in October 2004. She obtained her MD degree from the University of Heidelberg Medical School in Germany and her PhD from the University of Mannheim . She completed her Family Medicine residency training at UMDNJ-RWJMS in New Brunswick . She is board-certified in Family Medicine and joined the faculty of the department of Family Medicine at UMDNJ- Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in 1993. Dr. Roemheld-Hamm has taken this year to pursue her research interests in the following areas: primary care services delivery, especially minority health disparities, the integration of behavioral and medical health, and various aspects of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). She regularly teaches medical students, physician assistants, residents and other health care professionals about CAM . She served as primary investigator for a study funded through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which focused on the delivery of influenza vaccine to underserved minorities in the primary care setting. During her fellowship, she has continued her analysis of the data from the CDC study and she is also investigating the delivery of ( CAM ) in family medicine practices. She is the co-director of the Fellows' CAM study.

Dr. Roemheld-Hamm completed her fellowship program on September 31, 2005.

Darios Getahun, MD, MPH

Dr. Getahun joined the Fellowship Program on July 1, 2001. He was born in Ethiopia and earned his degree from Leipzig University, Germany in 1990. While in medical school he completed a project (Mesothelioma in Patients Autopsied in the Institute of Pathological Anatomy from 1958 to 1987). Before immigrating to North America, Dr. Getahun worked as an assistant physician for the Jesuit Order in Rome, Italy. In Canada, he actively participated in clinical research in respiratory medicine and dialysis modalities in diabetic patients with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). Dr. Getahun has been conducting research projects in the areas of Maternal and Child Health and Respiratory Medicine. Dr. Getahun successfully completed his course work and graduated from the UMDNJ-School of Public Health on May 21, 2003 with a MPH degree in Epidemiology. His research mentors were George G. Rhoads, MD, MPH. Division of Epidemiology, UMDNJ - School of Public Health, and Kitaw Demissie, MD, PhD. Division of Epidemiology, UMDNJ - School of Public Health and Department of Environmental and Community Medicine. Dr. Getahun was offered a third year fellowship in July 2003. During this time he completed the following research projects: 1) Temporal Trends in Gestational Diabetes and Fetal Macrosomia: the Impact of Screening, 2) Recent Trends of Asthma Hospitalization and Mortality in the United States, 3) Concordance of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) among Twin Births in the United States, 4) Obstetric and Infant Risk Factors for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Among Singleton Births in the United States, 1995-1998, 5) Trends in Obstetric Intervention Pre-term Births, Stillbirths, and Infant Mortality among Triplet Births in the United States, 1989-2000, and 6) Trends in Obstetric Intervention Pre-term Births, Stillbirths, and Infant Mortality among Twin Births in the United States, 1989-2000. Dr. Getahun presented abstracts at the 10th Annual NRSA Trainees Research Conference, San Diego, CA (2004), 100th International American Thoracic Society Conference, Orlando, FL (2004), 24th Annual Meeting of the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine Conference, New Orleans, LA (2004), and at the Society for Pediatrics and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research (SPER) 16th Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA (2003). Dr. Getahun completed his NRSA Research Fellowship on June 30, 2004, and accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Jersey.

Sonja Harris-Haywood, MD

Sonja Harris-Haywood, MD joined the Fellowship program on September 23, 2002 after completing a Career/Faculty Development Fellowship at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Department of Family Medicine. Dr. Harris-Haywood is a graduate of New Jersey Medical School and her residency training was at Mountainside Family Practice, Verona, NJ. Most of her clinical, teaching and research experiences have centered on the care of minority and underserved populations. During her Fellowship Dr. Harris-Haywood had the unique opportunity to be project director of the NHLBI funded ULTRA project. While working on the ULTRA project she gained practical experience in qualitative data collection, analysis and interpretation and also assisted in developing the quantitative tools used in the project. As the Fellow representative for the Society of Teachers in Family Medicine (STFM) research committee, she reviewed over 75 abstracts and papers submitted for presentations. Her role as the NHLBI project director during her first year of her fellowship, positioned her as a central member of the project's research team. She took a leadership role in the recruitment of at least 20 of the 60 practices needed to complete this study. She was instrumental in identifying and recruiting several minority practices and is presently analyzing data from these practices with her mentors Dr. Benjamin Crabtree, Dr. Shawna Hudson, and Dr. Barbara DiCicco-Bloom. Dr. Harris-Haywood projects included; 1) Recruitment of Minority Primary Care Community Practices into Practice-based Research: Experience in a Chronic Disease Clinical Trial, and 2) Cancer Control in Minority Practices. Dr. Harris-Haywood graduated in September 2004, and accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in Research, Department of Family of Medicine, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. She will continue exploring quality of care issues in practices that care for large numbers of minority patients.

Mergie Desir, MD, MPH

Mergie Desir, MD, MPH joined the Fellowship program in September 2002 after completing her residency training at the University of Rochester Family Medicine Program. As a resident she worked in a primary health care clinic serving an inner city population. Dr. Desir's research activities during the Fellowship centered on designing, implementing, and evaluating a pediatric asthma education program for an urban New Jersey community. This project allowed her to gain experience in preparing an IRB application, using SPSS and SAS software for statistical analysis, survey tool development and administration, community partnership, and skills in scientific presentations. The study received a small grant from the Department of Family Medicine-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Dr. Desir completed the course requirements and earned an MPH degree in Health Education from the University of Medicine and Dentistry School of Public Health in May 2004. In the graduate program she developed skills in health education and behavioral science, community research, health administration, health policy, biostatistics, research methods, health behavior, health education planning, and teaching skills. During her two year fellowship training, she worked with Dr. Kitaw Demissie an Assistant Professor and Co-director of the Division of Epidemiology at the UMDNJ - School of Public Health and Dr. Lynn Waishwell, Assistant Professor and Director of Health Education and Behavioral Sciences in the UMDNJ - School of Public Health and completed two projects entitled, 1) "Educational Strategies to Increase Asthma Knowledge and Skills in Minority Adolescents, and 2) "Relationship of Seven Day Hospital Readmission to Insurance and Race/Ethnicity in Childhood Asthma in New Jersey". Dr. Desir completed her fellowship on September 2, 2004 and accepted a position as a Faculty Clinician at Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center Family in Queens New York. Most of her work will be in an outpatient setting, precepting residents, seeing patients and coordinating the family medicine resident's community based interventions urban program.

Maisha M. Amen, RN, PhD, CHES

Dr. Amen joined the NRSA fellowship on August 17, 2001. She was an Assistant Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) in the Department of Nursing and Allied Health. She has extensive clinical expertise and clinical knowledge in international health care and management of culturally diverse populations. Her goal during the fellowship was to develop her research skills in areas related to her clinical expertise. Dr. Amen completed a Seminar in Transcultural Nursing and graduate courses in Nursing Science and Nursing Organizational Theory at Kean University's Transcultural Nursing Institute. She also completed several courses on approaches to qualitative inquiry at New York University. She has particular interests in primary prevention, women's health, and the education of culturally competent health professionals. She completed a qualitative research project "Experience of Low-Income Mothers and Health Care Providers with Preventive Child Health Care Services in an Urban Environment". Dr. Amen's manuscript, "The Influence of Mother's Health Beliefs Upon Use of Preventive Child Health Care Services and Mothers' Perception of Children's Health Status" was accepted for publication in the Issues of Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing. Her manuscript, "Different Ways of Creating Knowledge", is currently under review with the Journal of Cultural Diversity. Dr. Amen's research mentors were Dula Pacquiao, EdD, RN, CTN at Kean University and Vivian Clarke, EdD at New York University. She graduated from the fellowship on August 16, 2003 and accepted a position as Director of Black Infant Mortality Reduction (BIMR) Resource Center at the Northern New Jersey Maternal Child Health Consortium.

Katherine Chung, MD, MPH

Dr. Chung started her fellowship on August 1, 2001. She came to us from Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York where she completed her family medicine residency in the Residency Program in Social Medicine. Before that, she earned her medical degree at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. Dr. Chung enrolled in the MPH Program at the UMDNJ-School of Public and completed all the course requirements and earned her MPH degree in Epidemiology in May 2003. Dr. Chung's research interests include the psychosocial dimensions of health, as well as the importance of race, socioeconomic status and discrimination as determinants of health. She is particularly interested in African American health, and its importance as a public health issue. She advocates the need for cross-disciplinary alliances in order to eradicate the existing minority health disparities. This includes a greater focus on relationships between clinicians, epidemiologists, sociologists, historians and governmental bodies, among others. Dr. Chung completed the following research projects: 1) African-American health disparities: A literature review, 2) Perinatal Determinants of Atopic Disease - A Book Chapter, 3) Asthma in pregnancy - its relationship with race, insurance, maternal education, and prenatal care utilization, and 4) Fetus-at-risk approach to understanding racial disparities in fetal deaths. Her research mentors include: Mark Johnson, MD, MPH, Mark Fulcomer, PhD, Adrienne Headley, MD, and Robert C. Like, MD, MS. Dr. Chung completed her fellowship on June 30, 2003 and accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health, Epidemiology Division, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She is also a Faculty Associate at the Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities in Newark, New Jersey.