Scientific Webinar Series

Kaylee Foor
Postbaccalaureate IRTA Fellow

Kaylee Foor (she/her) is a second year postbaccalaureate IRTA fellow in the Social and Behavioral Research Branch in the NHGRI. Her research is primarily focused on macrolevel influences on individual well-being, particularly with regard to the LGBTQ+ community. Through her work, she aims to clarify the utility of social messaging and systemic inequity on health- and well-being-related outcomes among sexual and gender minorities, so as to eradicate disparities and promote queer joy. In the fall of 2024, Kaylee will begin her graduate training at Carnegie Mellon University where she will work toward her doctoral degree in Social/Health Psychology.

Anthony Pho PhD, MPH, ANP-C
Primary Care Nurse Practitioner at the Stanford LGBTQ+ Health Program
Former Postdoctoral Fellow, The PRIDE Study/PRIDEnet at Stanford School of Medicine

Anthony Pho PhD, MPH, ANP-C (he/him) is a primary care nurse practitioner at the Stanford LGBTQ+ Health Program, where in addition to his clinical and precepting responsibilities, he works with Stanford’s Gender Recognition and Affirmative Care through Education (GRACE) initiative to promote culturally competent LGBTQ+ care throughout the health enterprise. He was formerly a postdoctoral clinical scholar with The PRIDE Study/PRIDEnet at Stanford School of Medicine where he was an inaugural Propel Postdoctoral Scholar. Dr. Pho earned his PhD from Columbia University School of Nursing, where he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Future of Nursing Scholar. He has held an adjunct faculty appointment at NYU Meyers College of Nursing since 2013. Dr. Pho’s doctoral research that explored online health information seeking, eHealth literacy, and human papillomavirus vaccination among transgender and gender diverse people, was awarded the Columbia Nursing Dissertation Excellence Award. He also earned BSN, MSN, and MPH degrees from Johns Hopkins University, and a BA from UC Berkeley.

Nancy Bates, MA
Statistical Methodology Consultant on NIH Grant to Stanford University

Co-Chair, National Academy of Science and Medicine Consensus Panel Report: Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation

Nancy Bates spent her career as a survey statistician/methodologist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Before she retired in 2020, she served as the Census Bureau’s Senior Methodologist for Survey Research. During her tenure in that position, she conducted research to improve measurement of same-sex couples in the Decennial Census and American Community Survey, served as co-chair of the research group on sexual orientation and gender identity for the Office of Management and Budget and the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology, and co-edited a special issue on measuring LGBT populations for the Journal of Official Statistics. In retirement, she co-chaired the National Academy of Science and Medicine consensus panel report: Measuring Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation. Additionally, she was a consultant on the NIH grant awarded to Stanford University: Identifying, refining, and testing demographic questions to detect and delineate sexual and gender minority populations for populations research. Nancy is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and enthusiastic participant in the League of Lady Statisticians. Nancy obtained an M.A. in Applied Sociology from the University of Oklahoma.

Juno Obedin-Maliver, MD, MPH, MAS

Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University School of Medicines Institute & Co-Director of The PRIDE Study 

Dr. Juno Obedin-Maliver (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University School of Medicine who provides clinical care and strives to advance scientific health knowledge, equity, and justice through her research. She focuses on promoting health equity and well-being for sexual and gender minority (SGM)/ LGBTQIA+ people, with a special emphasis on sexual and reproductive health. Dr. Obedin-Maliver, is the Co-Director of The PRIDE Study (pridestudy.org), a longitudinal cohort of SGM individuals and Co-PI of PRIDEnet (pridenet.org) a community-engagement network aimed at catalyzing LGBTQIA+ health research. 

Casey D. Xavier Hall, MPH, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in the Center of Population Sciences for Health Equity in the College of Nursing
Assistant Professor (courtesy appointment) in the College of Social Work at Florida State University

Dr. Xavier Hall (he/him) is a queer-identified scientist and educator. He employs mixed-methods research focused on health disparities particularly mental health, violence, and sexual health among sexual and gender minority populations. His post-doctoral fellowship was completed at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority and Wellbeing at Northwestern University. He is the Principal Investigator of a U01 funded by the Food and Drug Administration examining perceptions of mRNA vaccine trial participation among Latinx SGM populations. He is also co-investigator for three NIH-funded R grants addressing SGM health. He has a growing body of research addressing the experiences of SGM populations in STEM fields. 

Andy Tan, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication 
Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics

Andy Tan is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. His research program aims to advance communication science to achieve health equity. His work in tobacco prevention and control involves community-engaged research in collaboration with community leaders and members to design and develop culturally appropriate communication interventions. He utilizes mixed-methods research designs, including sequential designs integrating multiple data collection and analytic methods. His work has received funding from the FDA, NCI, NIDA, and private foundations. He received his medical degree from the National University of Singapore, his Master's in Public Health and Master in Business Administration from Johns Hopkins University, and his Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School for Communication. Prior to his doctoral work, Tan has over 5 years of medical and health promotion experience.

Claire Kamp Dush, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Co-Director, Development Core, Minnesota Population Center

Claire Kamp Dush (she/her) is Professor of Sociology and co-director of the Development Core at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She is a family demographer who studies intimate relationships and their intersection with human development. She is the principal investigator of two population health data collections funded by NICHD - the National Couples' Health and Time Study (with Dr. Wendy Manning) and NIA - the third repeated cross-section of the Work and Family Life Study (with Dr. Miles Taylor). Dr. Kamp Dush is a member of the NIH CSR Social Sciences and Population Studies B study section. She is a passionate teacher and mentor who was awarded the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching at The Ohio State University. She enjoys reading, exercising, and spending time with her family.

Wendy D. Manning, Ph.D.
Dr. Howard E. Aldrich and Penny Daum Aldrich Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Bowling Green State University
Co-Director, National Center for Family and Marriage Research 

Wendy D. Manning (she/her) is the Dr. Howard E. Aldrich and Penny Daum Aldrich Distinguished Professor of Sociology and co-director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University. She is a family demographer focusing on trends in family formation, dissolution, and well-being for individuals identifying as sexual minorities as well as same-gender and different-gender couples. Her research examines social relationships and the health and well-being of children, parents, and adults in the United States. She has contributed to major data collections including the seven-wave Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study and the two-wave National Couples’ Health and Time Use Study.

Kellan Baker, Ph.D.
Centennial Scholar & Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Research Scholar
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 

Kellan Baker (he/him) is the Centennial Scholar and a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Research Scholar in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where his research focuses on economics, policy, and methodology issues in transgender health. He is a health policy expert and health services researcher with an extensive background in regulatory policy, public health, health equity, and federal statistics. Previously Kellan was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, where he worked on health equity and data collection policy at the federal and state levels and was a founding Steering Committee Member of Out2Enroll, a nationwide campaign in partnership with the White House and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to connect low-income LGBT populations with coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Kellan has consulted on LGBT health and health equity issues with the Joint Commission, the Open Society Foundations, and Kaiser Permanente, among others, and he currently serves as a consultant for the National Academy of Sciences on a consensus study report assessing the well-being of LGBTQI+ populations. He has published widely on data collection, health law and policy, and LGBT population health and was one of the authors of the 2014 GenIUSS Group report on gender identity data collection. Kellan is the board chair of the Equality Federation and also serves on numerous scientific and community engagement bodies. He holds a Ph.D. in health policy and management with a focus on health services research and health economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, a Master of Public Health from the George Washington University, a Master of Arts in International Development from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, and a BA with high honors in astrophysics and Russian from Swarthmore College.

Nancy Bates, Ph.D.
Co-Chair, Consensus Study Report Committee
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Nancy Bates is an international expert in the measurement of SOGI. She is currently working as a consultant with Stanford University on an NIH grant on SOGI measurement. Bates recently retired from the Census Bureau where she served as the senior methodologist for survey research. She oversaw and contributed to the research that formulated inclusive relationship questions resulting in the reduction of measurement error for same-sex couples in the 2020 decennial census. Bates was the co-chair of the Office of Management and Budget and the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology SOGI research group from 2015 to 2019. She recently co-edited a Journal of Official Statistics special issue on measuring LGBT populations (2019). She served as a planning committee member for the Institute of Medicine, a national academy workshop on SOGI data collection in electronic health records (2012). Bates is also an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association. She is an accomplished researcher with over 30 peer-reviewed papers. She earned her MA in applied sociology from the University of Oklahoma. 

Aliya Saperstein, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Sociology
Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor in Human Biology
Stanford University

Aliya Saperstein received a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California-Berkeley. In 2016, she received the Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at Sciences Po and the Russell Sage Foundation. Her research focuses on the social processes through which people come to perceive, name, and deploy seemingly immutable categorical differences —such as race and sex—and how such processes create and maintain social inequality. This research has been published for social science audiences in the American Journal of Sociology, the Annual Review of Sociology, Demography, Gender & Society and Ethnic and Racial Studies, among other venues, and for general science audiences in Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and PLoS One. It also has been recognized with multiple article awards and gained attention from national media outlets, including NPR (twice) and The Colbert Report.

SGM people and COVID-19: Vulnerability, medical mistrust, and the imperative of SOGISC data collection

Sean Cahill, Ph.D. -  Fenway Institute

Abstract: Sexual and gender minority (SGM) people are more likely to work in front-line jobs like retail and food services, and experience higher rates of comorbid conditions and risk behaviors such as smoking and vaping. Therefore SGM people may be at elevated risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and complications should they become sick with COVID-19. High rates of medical mistrust and lack of access to care—especially common among sexual minority women, transgender people, and/or people of color—may interfere with vaccine uptake. More than two years into this global pandemic, there is an urgent need for the collection and use of sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics (SOGISC) data in testing, care, and vaccination to understand the impact of COVID-19 on SGM populations. I will review steps public health leaders could take to encourage SOGISC data collection and use to understand the impact of COVID-19 on SGM populations, including state-level data collection and federal data opportunities.

The Confluence of COVID-19 and Health in U.S.-based LGBTQ+ Populations

Perry N Halkitis, Ph.D., MS, MPH - Rutgers School of Public Health

Abstract: Our team at the Center for Health, Identity Behavior & Prevention Studies at Rutgers School of Public Health undertook a series of studies to examine the manifestation and impact of COVID-19 in LGBTQ+ and/or HIV-seropositive populations. Our first sought to delineate the health impacts of COVID-19 in a geographically and demographically diverse sample of LGBTQ+ people in the United States after March 13, 2020, when COVID-19 was declared a national emergency including but not limited to SARS-CoV-2 exposure and testing. We collected data between May and July 2020, for adults residing in the U.S. (N=1,090) who completed an internet-based survey that assessed sexual, mental, and economic health at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from this study will be presented with preliminary findings from our current study of COVID-19 and other vaccination behaviors in sexual and gender minority individuals in New York and New Jersey.

LITE CONNECT: Addressing testing gaps and epidemiologic disparities of COVID-19 among transgender people in the United States

Sari L. Reisner, ScD - Harvard School of Public Health

Abstract: Transgender (TG) people are an NIH-designated health disparities population with high morbidity and mortality across multiple health conditions, including HIV infection, mental health, and substance use. These conditions are a product of and exacerbated by historical and ongoing discrimination and inequities in access to healthcare. In early 2020, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) were recognized as a global pandemic. To date, no data exist on COVID-19 disease in TG people. There is an urgent need to understand the burden of COVID-19 disease, investigate its impact on other health conditions and vulnerabilities burdening TG populations, and identify future public health intervention targets. The current proposal aims to fill this gap. To accomplish these goals, disparities in access to testing among TG people must be identified and mitigated. The parent LITE study enrolled a baseline sample of more than 1500 TG women in the eastern and southern U.S. to assess HIV risk across 24 months of biobehavioral follow-up using technology-enhanced, digital methods of data capture. Leveraging the LITE infrastructure and in partnership with two community-based organizations, we aim to develop LITE-CONNECT, a rapid, community-engaged mixed-methods assessment that will enroll over 2,000 TG men and women across eastern and southern U.S. The objective of this supplemental study is to characterize access and barriers to COVID-19 testing, provide access to and evaluate the use of home-based COVID-19 antibody testing to identify past infection and potential immunity, connect TG men and women to available community-based COVID-19 testing and support services, and identify community-based solutions to support access to COVID-19 testing, interventions, and care among TG people. Results from this study will be rapidly used to inform community-based efforts and a national COVID-19 response that is inclusive of TG people. The proposed research will provide critical and timely insights about COVID-19 disease in TG people in a space in which almost no information currently exists. Early identification of disparities in COVID-19 morbidity and access to COVID-19 testing and care is critical to ensuring access to services as the pandemic continues. We will leverage our existing infrastructure and community collaborations to gather new data, including unprecedented data from TG men, to guide urgently needed interventions to improve and optimize the health and wellbeing of TG people in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 health behaviors in a sexual minority sample: The impact of internalized stigma

Dr. David Solomon, Ph.D. – Western Carolina University

Abstract: COVID-19 has been identified as a public health crisis that can be avoided by preventative health behaviors such as social distancing, the use of a cloth face covering when in public, and regular handwashing or sanitizing. Although identifying predictors of preventive health behaviors related to COVID-19 is important across the general population, it may be especially pertinent in marginalized populations including sexual and gender minorities particularly due to the role of minority stress and internalized stigma in predicting health behaviors. The purpose of this study was to expand the current COVID-19 literature to investigate whether internalized stigma regarding sexual orientation and gender minority status may impact COVID-19 preventative health behaviors. For all the COVID-19 health behaviors examined, internalized stigma and gender minority status accounted for significantly more variance than predictors that were not specific to sexual or gender minority status. However, different facets of internalized sexual minority predicted varying preventative health behaviors. For instance, sexuality dissatisfaction predicted leaving home for nonessential reasons whereas belief in negative stereotypes predicted less frequent handwashing and less use of face masks and social distancing in public places. 

Sean Cahill, Ph.D.
Director of Health Policy Research
Fenway Institute

Sean Cahill, Ph.D. is Director of Health Policy Research at the Fenway Institute, Affiliate Associate Clinical Professor of Health Sciences at Northeastern University, and Adjunct Associate Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. Cahill serves on the Massachusetts Special Legislative Commission on LGBT Aging, and the HIV and Aging Policy Action Coalition. He is Director of Policy for the HRSA HAB-funded 2iS Coordinating Center for Technical Assistance. An Associate Editor at LGBT Health, Cahill has authored or coauthored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, monographs, chapters, and books on LGBTQ+ health, LGBTQ+ public policy issues, and HIV/STI prevention and care.

Perry N Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH
Professor, Biostatistics & Urban-Global Public Health
Director, Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies (CHIBPS)
Rutgers School of Public Health

Perry N Halkitis, Ph.D., MS, MPH  is a public health psychologist, infectious disease epidemiologist, applied statistician, researcher, educator, and advocate. For three decades, the focus of his research has been on the emergence, prevention, and treatment of infectious diseases, specifically, HIV, HPV, and other sexually transmitted infections, and more recently SARS-CoV-2. His program of study has sought to disentangle the biological, behavioral, psychosocial, and structural mechanisms that predispose people and populations to these infectious diseases, and the synergies of infectious disease with mental health burdens - including drug abuse – primarily in sexual, gender, and racial, and ethnic minority populations.
 
Dr. Halkitis is currently dean and professor of biostatistics and urban public health at the Rutgers School of Public Health. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies (CHIBPS) and a primary member of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and the Global Health Institute. He holds the status of Professor Emeritus at the College of Global Public Health at New York University.
 
Dr. Halkitis is the author of numerous books, including Out in Time: The Public Lives of Gay Men from Stonewall to the Queer Generation and The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience. He has also authored some 300 peer-reviewed academic manuscripts and also actively disseminates knowledge to mainstream media, appearing frequently on television, radio, print, and podcasts. Dr. Halkitis has been the Editor in Chief of Behavioral Medicine since 2013 and is the Founding Editor in Chief of Annals of LGBTQ Public and Population Health.

Sari L. Reisner, ScD
Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology
Harvard School of Public Health

Dr. Sari Reisner is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital; director of transgender research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital based in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Hypertension; and director of transgender health research at The Fenway Institute of Fenway Health, a federally qualified community health center specializing in the provision of care to sexual and gender minority LGBTQIA people in Boston, MA. Trained as a social and psychiatric epidemiologist, Reisner focuses on:(1) health disparities and inequities in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ) populations; (2) the epidemiology of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs); and (3) psychiatric epidemiology of mental health and substance use risks and resiliencies across adolescence and young adulthood.

Dr. David Solomon, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Western Carolina University

Dr. David Solomon completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Central Michigan University in 2017. He currently works as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Western Carolina University where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in assessment, multicultural psychology, and introduction to clinical and counseling psychology. His research interests involve predictors of risk and resiliency in marginalized individuals, particularly sexual and gender minorities, as well as predicting outcomes for survivors of trauma.

Lauren B. Beach, JD/PhD (she/they)
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Social Sciences and Department of Preventative Medicine, Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine; Interim Director, Evaluation, Data Integration, and Technical Assistance (EDIT) Program, Northwestern Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. 
 

Dr. Lauren B. Beach investigates the epidemiology of chronic physical health conditions over the life course among diverse SGM populations and people with HIV. She also studies how multilevel health and identity-related stigmas affect chronic condition management and health outcomes of minoritized populations. They are PI of a R01 in the CARDIA cohort to characterize the cardiovascular disease epidemiology and health disparities impacting SGM populations in the CARDIA cohort study (R01HL149866). They are also a PI for Project Recognize – a project to develop novel and standardized measures of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity (R01AA029076).

Dr. Beach is also active in community-engaged, evidence-informed advocacy efforts to improve the health of bisexual populations. She is a founding Steering Committee Co-Chair of the Chicago Bisexual Health Task Force (CBHTF). She is also nationally active in bisexual health policy leadership circles and has spoken at the White House, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to present recommendations for improving bisexual health outcomes and bisexual data collection methods. You can follow them on Twitter @laurenbbeach.

Gregory Phillips II, Ph.D. (he/his)
Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Social Sciences and Preventive Medicine,
Northwestern University

Dr. Gregory Phillips II (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medical Social Sciences and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University. He received his MS and Ph.D. in epidemiology at The George Washington University and has dedicated his career to studying the factors that disproportionately impact the health of minoritized individuals, particularly those who are sexual and/or gender minorities. He leads the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) funded Evaluation Center, which oversees evaluation and quality management services for the City’s HIV funding portfolio; the Evaluation Center’s reach has recently expanded to also include mental health and substance use services. Further, Dr. Phillips serves as PI or MPI on four R01s and an R34 focused on HIV prevention and SGM health disparities. He is currently Co-Director of the Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) Scientific Working Group (SWG) within the Third Coast Center for AIDS Research (TC CFAR), Co-Chair of the LGBT Topical Interest Group (TIG) within the American Evaluation Association (AEA), and Affiliate Faculty with the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA). Dr. Phillips uses a community-led approach for all his work and is proud of his strong partnerships in Chicago and beyond.

Megan Ruprecht (she/her)
Research Study Coordinator, Evaluation, Data Integration, and Technical Assistance (EDIT) Program, Northwestern University

Ms. Megan Ruprecht (she/her) is a Research Study Coordinator with the Evaluation, Data Integration, and Technical Assistance (EDIT) Program at Northwestern University. She coordinates and oversees the Youth and Young Adults COVID-19 Study, which endeavors to better understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted marginalized young people. She has published on the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on minoritized populations, including a paper in the Journal of Urban Health highlighting local disparities in Chicago. Megan is especially interested in the power of community-engaged research to reduce health disparities among LGBTQ populations and is currently a student in the Masters of Public Health program at Northwestern University.

Ilan H. Meyer, Ph.D.
Williams Distinguished Senior Scholar for Public Policy, Williams Institute

Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University

Ilan H. Meyer, Ph.D. is the Williams Distinguished Senior Scholar for Public Policy at the Williams Institute and Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University. In several highly cited papers, Dr. Meyer has developed a model of minority stress. The model has guided his and other investigators’ population research on LGBT health disparities by identifying the processes by which social stressors impact health and describing the harm to LGBT people from prejudice and stigma.  Dr. Meyer is the Principal Investigator of the Generations Study, a U.S. national probability study of stress, identity, health, and health care utilization across three cohorts of sexual minorities, and TransPop, the first national probability sample of transgender individuals in the U.S. Dr. Meyer received a Ph.D. in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University.

Sari L. Reisner, Sc.D.
Director of Transgender Research, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School & Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Research Scientist and Director of Transgender Health Research,  The Fenway Institute 

Sari L. Reisner, ScD is Director of Transgender Research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital based in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension; Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and Research Scientist and Director of Transgender Health Research at The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health where he lead a global portfolio of community-engaged transgender health research. Trained as a social and psychiatric epidemiologist, his research focuses on: (1) health disparities and inequities in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) populations, with specialization in transgender and gender diverse population health; (2) epidemiology of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including development and design of biobehavioral interventions in traditionally underserved populations; and (3) psychiatric epidemiology of mental health and substance use risks and resiliencies across adolescence and young adulthood.

Jody L. Herman, Ph.D.

Reid Rasmussen Fellow and Scholar of Public Policy, Williams Institute

Jody L. Herman, Ph.D. is the Reid Rasmussen Fellow and a Scholar of Public Policy at the Williams Institute. Her research focuses on gender identity in survey research and the prevalence and impact of discrimination based on gender identity or expression, including minority stress, health, and suicidality among transgender people. She is a Co-Investigator on the U.S. Transgender Population Health Survey (TransPop), a nationally representative survey of transgender adults. She served as Co-Principal Investigator for the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, the largest survey of transgender adults conducted in the United States to date. Her published research is routinely cited, including by major news sources, such as The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and NPR. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration from The George Washington University, where she also earned her M.A. in Public Policy.

Tonia Poteat, Ph.D., PA-C, MPH

Associate Professor of Social Medicine, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Tonia Poteat, Ph.D., PA-C, MPH is an Associate Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC), core faculty in the UNC Center for Health Equity Research, clinical preceptor for the Gender Affirming Clinic at UNC’s Student Health Action Coalition, and a Physician Assistant in the UNC Infectious Diseases Clinic. Her research, teaching, and clinical practice focus on HIV and LGBTQ health with particular attention to the health and well-being of transgender adults. Certified as an HIV Specialist by the American Academy of HIV Medicine, she is a global leader in HIV research and care with transgender persons.

Poorna Kushalnagar, Ph.D. (she/her)
Director, Center for Deaf Health Equity, Gallaudet University

Dr. Poorna Kushalnagar directs the Center for Deaf Health Equity at Gallaudet University and works as the Special Assistant to the Provost for Research and Engagement. She is a principal investigator of multiple NIH awards that support studies aligned with her primary research interests in deaf health equity and patient-reported outcomes research. Her work includes multiple underserved groups who are deaf or hard of hearing, including sexual and gender minority individuals, older adults, informal caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer's and related dementias, and mid-to-older women. She was recently invited to participate as a member of the RWJF People with Disabilities Expert Panel to transform public health data systems to advance health equity.

Cara A. Miller, Ph.D., P-SEP (she/her)
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Gallaudet University

Cara A. Miller, Ph.D., P-SEP is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Clinical Psychology doctoral program at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C, as well as a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice. Her academic, research, and professional interests include trauma and post-traumatic growth; grief and bereavement; gender and sexuality; disability and identity; and human-animal interaction. While in the role of a Director of Gallaudet's LGBTQA Center, Dr. Miller served as a co-investigator with Dr. Kushalnagar on a NIH SGM project that focused on deaf and hard of hearing adults who self-identified as LGBTQA. She received national recognition for her work from the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals.

Heidi Moseson (she/her), PhD, MPH
Epidemiologist, Ibis Reproductive Health

Dr. Heidi Moseson is an Epidemiologist at Ibis Reproductive Health. Dr. Moseson is the Principal Investigator of the “Understanding the family planning needs and experiences of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people in the United States” study, a national, collaborative, multi-methods study of sexual and reproductive health priorities and experiences of TGE people assigned female or intersex at birth. Dr. Moseson’s training and research portfolio focuses on identifying bias in sexual and reproductive health research, and in developing and testing new research tools to overcome these biases.

Juno Obedin-Maliver (she/her), MD, MPH, MAS
Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University of School of Medicine, and Co-Director of The PRIDE Study

Dr. Juno Obedin-Maliver is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology as well as Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University School of Medicine who provides excellent clinical care and strives to advance scientific knowledge through her research.

Dr. Obedin-Maliver, is the Co-Director of The PRIDE Study (pridestudy.org), a multi-site online prospective longitudinal cohort of sexual and gender minority individuals based at Stanford. She also serves on the medical advisory board of the University of California San Francisco Center of Excellence for Transgender Health and is helping to author the next version (SOC8) of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care. Dr. Obedin-Maliver has also been active in health policy including involvement in helping to legally redefine consideration of sexually intimate partner status and to remove the Medicare Non-Coverage Determination ruling on gender-affirming surgeries.