EPRC Staff Team
April Hermstad, MPH , Lead Public Health Program Associate. Ms. Hermstad holds a Master of Public Health from Emory University and she joined the EPRC in 2007. She has more than 10 years of experience coordinating research and evaluation projects focused on policy, system, and environmental improvements related to heathy eating and physical activity behaviors, cancer screening, and access to health care and health-supporting environments. Notable current and past projects include evaluating Healthcare Georgia Foundation’s The Two Georgias Initiative to achieve greater health equity among rural Georgians; coordinating a clinical trial in Emory Healthcare breast centers to increase genetic counseling referral for women at risk for hereditary breast/ovarian cancer; evaluating colorectal cancer screening programs throughout Georgia; and numerous research studies and evaluations of socio-environmental health promotion programs. Her professional interests include evaluating health promotion programs, understanding the role of lifestyle factors in preventing and reversing chronic diseases, and reducing health disparities e‑mail: ahermst@emory.edu
Erin Lebow-Skelley, MPH, Lead Public Health Program Associate and Community Engagement Manager. Ms. Lebow-Skelley earned her Master of Public Health degree in Health Behavior at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Since joining the EPRC, Ms. Lebow-Skelley has managed the smoke-free multi-unit housing initiatives and the community engagement activities for the HERCULES Exposome Research Center. Before joining the EPRC in 2015, Ms. Lebow-Skelley worked on the Evaluation Team of the Prevention Research Centers Program at the CDC, where she and a team designed and implemented the evaluation of the Prevention Research Centers network. While in North Carolina, she worked on a variety of chronic disease prevention projects, including a smoke-free multi-unit housing communication initiative with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and several local food systems projects with UNC’s Prevention Research Center. Ms. Lebow-Skelley also has a background in early childhood development, pre-and post-natal care, and home visiting. Her interests include community engagement, program evaluation, and social ecological approaches to preventing chronic disease and improving health equity. e‑mail: erin.lebow-skelley@emory.edu
Shadé Owolabi, MS, Intervention Coordinator.Ms. Owolabi completed her degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Penfield College, Mercer University. Since joining the EPRC in 2012, she has worked on multiple research and evaluation projects to address secondhand smoke exposure, weight gain prevention, and health equity. These projects have included the EPRC’s signature projects, the NCI funded Smoke-Free Home’s project, Healthy Homes/Healthy Families, as well as Healthcare Georgia Foundation’s The Two Georgias Initiative. Prior to joining the EPRC team, Ms. Owolabi trained in applied behavioral science and worked as a behavior data analyst at the Marcus Center. Her research interests include addiction and chronic disease health education, as well as the intersection between mental health and public health; her clinical interests include substance abuse, mental health disparities in low-income and minority communities, and risky health behaviors. e‑mail: shade.o.owolabi@emory.edu
Deborah Stephenson, EdM, Center Coordinator. Ms. Stephenson is responsible for coordinating administration and selected communications activities for the EPRC. She has a background in project management, communications, process improvement, training, and organizational change management. Before coming to Emory, Ms. Stephenson worked as Marketing and Operations Manager for a small business and spent 20 years working in Fortune 500 corporations providing consulting services in a wide variety of business functions. She holds a Master of Education from the University of Georgia. e‑mail: deborah.stephenson@emory.edu
Shaheen Rana, MA , Associate Director of Research Projects. Ms. Rana earned her Master of Art in Psychology from the Clinical/Community Psychology division at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her focus in graduate school was the use of unique and mixed methods analysis for evaluating large-scale service delivery programs. She has over ten years of experience coordinating and leading research and evaluation projects in various fields, including public health, mental health, and education, and has served as an expert on culturally responsive evaluation and the use of social network analysis in social sciences. She has worked in a variety of settings, including serving as an external evaluator for a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration systems of care grant serving 15 counties in Northwest Georgia and serving as an internal evaluator for a STEM outreach program by a university. Her research interests include systems change to address well-being and culturally responsive evaluation to address inequities in various outcomes. e‑mail: shaheen.rana@emory.edu
Ja’Shondra Pouncy, MPH, CHES®, Public Health Program Associate. Ms. Pouncy is a Certified Health Education Specialist and holds a Master of Public Health degree from Emory University (May 2019). Upon completion of her studies, she began work supporting projects focused on promoting health equity through community engaged public health research and practice under the direction of Dr. Briana Woods-Jaeger’s THRIVE Research Lab in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at the Rollins School of Public Health. Ms. Pouncy later served as a contractor within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she assisted with the evaluation of a lifestyle interventions summary report and with survey development to better understand the role and effectiveness of community health workers in addressing social determinants of health related to chronic disease prevention. Ms. Pouncy has rejoined Emory University with the EPRC team as the Project Coordinator for an adapted Smoke-Free Homes intervention project. e‑mail: ja'shondra.pouncy@emory.edu
Archna Patel, MPH, CHES, Public Health Program Associate. Ms. Patel is a Certified Health Education Specialist and holds a Master of Public Health degree from Emory University. Immediately upon graduation in 2010, she began work on several research projects in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at the Rollins School of Public Health including implementing Project UPLIFT, a mindfulness-based intervention for people with epilepsy developed by Dr. Nancy Thompson. Ms. Patel served as a fellow for the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) before joining their Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support (CSTLTS) where she developed and created online training materials for the Public Health Associates Program (PHAP). She has rejoined Emory University and is the project coordinator for the Managing Epilepsy Well (MEW) Network where she will help coordinate and disseminate epilepsy self-management programs. e‑mail: mailto:archna.patel@emory.edu
Victoria Krauss, MPH, Public Health Program Associate. Mrs. Krauss earned her Master of Public Health degree from Emory University in 2019. Upon graduation, she became the Program Coordinator for the Ventanilla de Salud (Window to Health) Atlanta, a preventative community health program for individuals visiting the Consulate General of Mexico in Altanta. There, she implemented a personalized behavioral health intervention which increased healthy behaviors among participants, and improved the quality of health services provided by the program. Before Emory, she served in the Peace Corps in Guatemala as a Maternal and Child Health Facilitator collaborating with the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance of Guatemala. She joined the Emory Prevention Research Center as a Project Coordinator for SurvivorLink, a patient-controlled digital health platform that was created to increase follow-up care among pediatric cancer survivors. Currently, she coordinates the implementation and evaluation of the SurvivorLink project with cancer clinics across the nation. e-mail: vkrauss@emory.edu
Helen Harber Singer, MPH, Senior Research Interviewer. Ms. Singer earned her graduate degree at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education. She spent many years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Her work focused on the intersection of research and practice and knowledge translation methodologies. Ms. Singer developed translation products across a range of subject matter including suicide prevention, child maltreatment prevention, the relationship between bullying and suicide, and the intersection of social determinants of health and violence prevention. She and her colleagues developed DVP’s guidance on expanding the definition of “evidence-based practice” to include research evidence, contextual evidence and experiential evidence and created an interactive online training tool based on this work, VetoViolence/Understanding Evidence. In 2016, Ms. Singer took a position in the CDC’s Office of the Associate Director for Policy as a Health Scientist/Policy Analyst. Her work remained focused on knowledge translation while her focus shifted to how best available evidence is used to develop and implement policy across the public health landscape. Ms. Singer is pleased to return to Emory and join the ERPC. As a Senior Research Interviewer, she is part of the data collection team on the Smoke-Free Homes and the Healthy Homes/Healthy Families projects. e‑mail: helen.singer@emory.edu
Josh Kaufmann, MPH, Research Project Coordinator. Mr. Kaufmann received his Master of Public Health degree from Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health in 2021. Upon completion of his studies, he joined the EPRC team as a Health Educator for an adapted Smoke-Free Homes intervention project. As an MPH candidate, Mr. Kaufmann worked to strengthen active bystander and educational programming as a graduate assistant with Emory’s Office of Respect. During this time he also assisted the Louisiana Public Health Institute with a behavioral health assessment that researched COVID-19’s impact on behavioral health services in the Greater New Orleans area. Before Emory, Mr. Kaufmann served in northern Thailand as a Peace Corps Volunteer collaborating with local government agencies, educators, and community members to implement sustainable youth development programs. His interests include substance education, community engagement, and program evaluation. e‑mail: josh.kaufmann@emory.edu
Courtney Petagna, MPH, Public Health Program Associate. Ms. Petagna received her Master of Public Health degree from Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health in 2021. After graduation, she joined the EPRC team as a Public Health Program Associate to lead the HPV project focused on strategies to adopt multi-level HPV vaccine interventions among clinical and community organizations in Southwest Georgia. She also serves as the project director for Emory’s Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN) which focuses on dissemination and implementation of evidence-based approaches for the national and state workgroups. As an MPH candidate, Ms. Petagna worked as a Graduate Research Assistant on the HPV projects, more specifically the HPV vaccine qualitative study and the HPV systematic review. Ms. Petagna’s interests are sexual health, cancer prevention, dissemination, implementation, evaluation, and qualitative research. e-mail: Courtney.n.petagna@emory.edu
Ja'Vae Greene, BS, MPH, Health Educator. Ms. Greene received her Bachelor of Science degree from Georgia Southern (2015) and holds a Master of Public Health degree from Argosy University (2018). While earning her MPH she interned with the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) as a Health Educator where she was introduced to maternal and child health and sexual health. Shortly after graduation she was employed with DPH as a Communicable Disease Specialist. During this time her main focus was disease investigation and case management. She also served as provider liaison where she collaborated with healthcare facilities and providers on developing materials and presentations to inform various populations on transmission and reinfection risks. Ms. Greene served as a COVID-19 Contact Tracer in addition to her Communicable disease role, working alongside epidemiologists, reporting and controlling outbreaks in the Central Savannah River Area. Her interests include maternal and child health, sexual health prevention and education, and serving diverse and deprived populations. Ms. Greene has joined Emory University as a Health Educator for the EPRC Core research project, Healthy Homes. Healthy Families. e-mail: ja’vae.greene@emory.edu
Angela Zhang, MPH, Public Health Program Associate. Ms. Zhang received her Master of Public Health degree in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health in 2021. After graduation, she joined Emory as a Public Health Program Associate at Dr. Megan Winkler's research lab where she coordinated the Healthy Food Retail Project investigating relevant factors that shape the healthfulness of food and beverages in small food retail. There, she also served as a key liaison in the Atlanta Nutrition Security Surveillance Project that collected critical information about the Atlanta community to support small food stores and customers around healthy food and beverage access. Before her career at Emory, Ms. Zhang worked with the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center on a partnership that focused on implementing a patient engagement strategy to increase overall patient engagement in cancer related research. Her interests include qualitative research, community engagement, developing, implementing, and evaluating public health interventions. Ms. Zhang joined EPRC in July 2022 as a Data Collector for the Smoke-Free Homes intervention project e-mail: angela.zhang@emory.edu
Ana Arana, MPH, Public Health Program Associate. Ms. Arana received her Master of Public Health degree from Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health in 2022. After graduation, she joined the EPRC team as a Senior Research Interviewer for the EPRC Core Research Project, Healthy Homes/Healthy Families and most recently joined The Two Georgias Initiative project to achieve greater health equity among rural Georgians. As an MPH candidate, Ms. Arana worked as a coordinator facilitating and leading discussion around topics of college, culture, and educational attainment for the Latino Youth Leadership Academy at a non-for-profit organization in Georgia. She is interested in preventative mechanisms for chronic diseases, health equity, dissemination, implementation, evaluation, and qualitative research. e-mail: ana.arana@emory.edu
Radhika Agarwal, MPH, Project Coordinator. Ms. Agarwal joined the EPRC in January 2023 as Project Coordinator for a sun safety prevention study working with Alexandra Morshed in BSHES. Previously, Radhika worked with the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) and UCSF to support research and evaluation projects in food access, mental health, substance abuse, and housing. Radhika worked closely with the policy department to promote a proactive rental inspection program in the Bay Area, advancing ACPHD’s data to action initiatives. Additionally, she worked with the Healthy Retail Department to promote food access in food retail outlets in Oakland, CA. Radhika received her Master’s in Public Health degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2016. Radhika is most excited about blending design thinking concepts with public health to drive community-driven change from the ground up. : Radhika.agarwal2@emory.edu
Kristi Logue, MS, Project Coordinator. Ms. Logue graduated from Georgia State University with a Master’s degree in Exercise Science. She worked for Emory University Rollins School of Public Health as an Exercise Physiologist contractor administrating fitness assessments for exercise, nutrition and obesity prevention studies. Ms. Logue transitioned to a Research Project Coordinator, Supervisor position where she served as the lead coordinator for several Emory projects in the areas of Child and Maternal Health, Exercise and Nutrition and Emergency Preparedness at Rollins School of Public Health, School of Medicine and Nell Hodgson School of Nursing. Ms. Logue currently is working with the Healthy Homes/Healthy Families program at the EPRC conducting data collection and process evaluation. : kristi.logue@emory.edu