As a social epidemiologist, Theall's research focuses on reducing health inequities by understanding and altering built and social neighborhood environments and social policies for better health in vulnerable populations locally, nationally, and internationally and researching innovative methodologies to do so. She is actively involved in interventions and policies aimed at altering environments for better health in vulnerable populations. Dr. Theall has received funding from the CDC, NIH, HRSA and private foundations such as the Robert Wood Johnson and W.K.

Catherine Taylor’s work is focused on the primary prevention of family violence, particularly child physical abuse, corporal punishment, and intimate partner violence.

Eva Silvestre works in the monitoring and evaluation of health and education programs domestically and internationally. Her educational background is in nutrition, anthropology, and public health, and she has experience with both quantitative and qualitative data collection. Dr. Silvestre has worked in the areas of HIV prevention, treatment, and communication, reproductive health, health information systems, health systems strengthening, and technology use in healthcare settings.

Dr. David Seal, professor, has extensive experience and expertise with the conduct of social behavioral formative and intervention research within a multicultural community-based participatory framework. He has been the PI on funded HIV prevention intervention studies with people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men, prison populations, and delinquent female adolescents.

Karis Schoellmann holds a joint appointment with Tulane and the Louisiana Department of Health, Office of Public Health, Bureau of Family Health (BFH). At the BFH she serves in a key leadership position as the Director of the Communications, Innovation and Action team, and is responsible for developing and managing the BFH's health communication/education activities, partnerships and community networks, best practice health promotion strategies, and system level actions.

Diego Rose's research explores the social and economic side of nutrition problems, with a focus on nutrition assistance programs, food security, and the food environment. He has studied disparities in access to healthy food in New Orleans and has developed a framework for how the neighborhood retail food environment influences dietary choices and obesity. His latest research projects examine grass-roots efforts to improve healthy food access in New Orleans and the environmental impacts of U.S. dietary choices.  Dr.

Marsha Piacun is a registered dietitian and the program director of the dietetic internship at Tulane. Her degrees are from the University of Texas in Austin and Loyola University. She began her career at Charity Hospital where she directed the School of Nursing food service and compiled information to begin the dietetic traineeship program.  She then directed the program for three years.  After staying home with her 3 children for several years, she returned to work part time as a dietitian consultant to several healthcare facilities. Over the years, the numbe

Valerie A. Paz-Soldan is a Peruvian-American social scientist based permanently in Peru as the Director of Tulane’s Health Office for Latin America (~19 years). She obtained her PhD in Maternal and Child Health (2003), with a minor in Population Studies, for which she took courses on demography, health econometrics, health policy, and qualitative research, and used mixed methods for her dissertation work on reproductive health in Malawi.

Dr.