Global Reach

Featured Faculty

Public Health

	Stephanie Brodine, M.D., is a Professor and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases with active research interests and expertise in Infectious Diseases Epidemiology, particularly in HIV and AIDS, International Health, and Health Disparities. She is the Clinical Director of the DoD HIV/AIDS Prevention Program, Program Director of the California NARCHM (Native American Research Center for Health), U.S. coordinator of the VIIDAI program and a co-investigator in a recently funded USAID TIES program. She is also active in U.S./Mexico border educational and research collaborations.
	Zohir Chowdury, Ph.D., M.S., is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Health (EH) Division in the Graduate School of Public Health. Dr. Chowdhury's research interests are in Air Pollution focusing on particulate matter (PM)-both in urban and in rural regions as well as in indoor and in outdoor environments. Dr. Chowdhury's research seeks to measure air pollution from particulate matter and understand its sources, chemistry, and health effects, both in the US and across the world, particularly in India, China, and Guatemala.
	John Elder, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.A., is a Professor of Health Promotion at San Diego State University Graduate School of Public, and Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California-San Diego. He currently serves as Principal Investigator of four NIH funded research projects. Dr. Elder has consulted for USAID, DoD, the Rockefeller Foundation and WHO projects in 20 different countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. His international work has been in the areas of child survival, MCH, AIDS/HIV, dengue fever control, research design, and social marketing.
	Hala Madanat, Ph.D., M.S., is a health educator and medical sociologist. Her interests include the impact of culture, traditions, and western influence on health in the global setting with emphasis on the Middle East. In her research, she focuses on tobacco prevention, smoking cessation, and the impact of westernization on diet and nutrition. Currently, she is developing culturally appropriate tobacco policies for Jordan. In addition, she is working on the development of appropriate nutrition education programs that emphasize health and biological hunger.
	Thomas E. Novotny, M.D., M.P.H., is a medical epidemiologist and family physician specializing in global health and non-communicable disease control. He was with the U.S. Public Health Service for 23 years, and served as assistant surgeon general and deputy assistant secretary for international and refugee health.
	P.J.E. Quintana, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health at the Graduate School of Public Health. Recent studies include investigating children''s asthma in relation to exposure to peaks in fine particulate air pollution, and levels of toxic pollutants in house dust in homes with young children. In conjunction with researchers at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana, she has studied birth defects in Baja California, markers of DNA damage in placentas from a Tijuana hospital, and exposure to toxic air pollution inside vehicles crossing the US-Mexico border. She is currently the co-Director of the new PhD program in Public Health, concentration in Global Health.
	Emmanuel Rudatsikira, M.D., Dr.PH., is the director of the global emergency preparedness and response program. As a global health specialist, he has worked in more than 30 countries in all six regions of the World Health Organization. His other research interests include global adolescent health, tobacco control and violence prevention.
	Carleen H. Stoskopf, Sc.D., M.S., is the Director of the Graduate School of Public Health. Her areas of research include access to and utilization of health services, patient outcomes, health insurance reform, and health disparities among vulnerable populations such as those living with HIV/AIDS, the elderly, the mentally ill, and African Americans. Dr. Stoskopf started two doctoral programs overseas, a Ph.D. in the Republic of China and a Dr.P.H. in the Republic of South Korea.
	Gregory Talavera, M.D., M.P.H., is a bilingual, bicultural physician trained in public health and preventive medicine. His current research interests explore the culture-specific beliefs that serve as barriers to chronic disease prevention and control. Research areas include diabetes, cancer, oral health, border health and health promotion in Latin America. Currently he is associate professor at the Graduate School of Public Health, Division of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences and is co-director of the Center for Behavioral and Community Health Studies.

Social Work

	David W. Engstrom, Ph.D., M.A., is an Associate Professor of Social Work at San Diego State University. His research focuses on immigration policy and services to immigrants and refugees. Dr. Engstrom has written extensively on the plight of vulnerable immigrant populations, such as torture survivors and trafficked persons and has explored the role of bilingual social workers in service delivery. Dr. Engstrom founded the MSW Thailand Summer Internship Program in 2002 and has supervised nearly 70 students in internships ranging from child welfare to human trafficking to mental health. He has been a visiting professor at the Faculty of Social Administration at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Engstrom is presently setting up collaborations with academic institutions in Mexico.
	Loring Jones, D.S.W., is a Professor of Social Work at SDSU where he has taught since 1989. He has extensive teaching, research, and practice experience focused in the areas of the social welfare of children and international social services. His research in Thailand has included an investigation of recruitment for human trafficking. For the past seven years he has accompanied SDSU students to Thailand on their annual summer study tour. This experience has given him extensive knowledge of Thai culture, health care, social services, economics, and language. He is also SDSU's School of Social Work MSW Program Coordinator.
	Sally Mathiesen, Ph.D., M.S.W., is an Associate Professor of Social Work at SDSU. She is also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (Florida). Her research agenda addresses mental health over the life span. Dr. Mathiesen's interest in international social work has resulted in trainings and presentations in several Caribbean countries, and is currently focused on collaborative relationships with professionals in the border cities between the US and Mexico. In addition, she leads groups of SDSU students on a 6 week Social Work study abroad program in Prague, in conjunction with the Florida State University College of Social Work.

Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences

	Karen Emmorey, Ph.D., focuses on what sign languages can reveal about the nature of human language, cognition, and the brain. Dr. Emmorey currently holds several research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. She collaborates with researchers in England, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada. Dr. Emmorey is also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, is on the Advisory board for the Centre for Deafness, Cognition, and Language, based at University College London and is a member of the Canada Research Chairs College of Reviewers.
	Lewis Shapiro, Ph. D., M.A., is a Professor of Speech Language and the Director of the Language Processes Laboratory in the SDSU School of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences. Dr. Shapiro is the Principal Investigator on an NIH grant, which includes collaboration with colleagues at McGill University in Canada, Aachen University in Germany and the Brain Mapping Research Center in Juelich, Germany. Over the last several years he has worked with colleagues in the Netherlands and has directed and been a member of dissertations at both the University of Groningen and Utrecht University in The Netherlands. In addition, he has published articles with colleagues at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel and at the University of Warsaw in Poland.
	Peter Torre III, Ph.D., M.A., focuses on epidemiology of age-related hearing loss, auditory evoked potentials, and research methods. Specific research includes: 1) risk factors associated with age-related hearing loss, 2) the relation between cardiovascular disease and otoacoustic emissions, and 3) age-related hearing loss in Latino Americans. As the undergraduate advisor in the SDSU School of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, he is currently in the process of developing an exchange program with Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland for SLHS students.

Gerontology

Mario Garrett, Ph.D., has coordinated the digitizing of one of the largest longitudinal databases in England and has worked with all three longitudinal from-birth databases sponsored by the British government. As the team leader of a United Nations Population Fund, and as the Program Manager/ Director of Programs with the United Nations International Institute on Aging, Dr. Garrett coordinated a five-year project looking at support for the elderly in the People's Republic of China. Since 1995, Dr. Garrett has been working exclusively with national American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations.

Nursing

Diane Hatton, D.N.Sc., has a background in the area of community/public health nursing with a special interest in the health and human rights of vulnerable women and their families. She is the co-editor of a book that will be published by Radcliffe entitled Unfair Differences in the Health Status of Incarcerated Women: Justice for an Internationally Excluded Population, which was the result of an international, interdisciplinary meeting held at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. Dr. Hatton is the 2008 Chair of the Committee on Women's Rights (COWR) of the American Public Health Association. She is currently involved in planning an exchange program in Switzerland for SDSU Nursing Students.

last updated: 9/08/09