Directory & Faculty Profiles

I earned a PhD in Higher Administration from Western Michigan University in 2004 and a Master’s degree in Organizational Communications (2001) and in Public Health in 2011. Additionally, I completed a 3 year, post-doctoral fellowship with a concentration on Women’s Health Disparities under Dr. Gloria Sarto at the University of Wisconsin (Madison). The scope of the fellowship was to study the complex relationship of obesity and metabolic syndrome and its effect on breast cancer mortality in rural African-American women that reside in the Arkansas Delta. My research background includes a study of lifestyle management of rural women with breast cancer; community based participatory research design to address health inequities among African Americans, Hispanics, Hmongs, Marshallese and Impoverished Whites; focus group interviews with African Caribbean women in the United Kingdom; intervention trial to train lay community members to be community health workers; exploratory, mixed methods design with five, rural ethnic populations regarding their use and knowledge of the Affordable Care Insurance; and focus groups on determinants of cancer screening.