Dr. LaVeist's research and writing has focused on three broad thematic research questions: 1) What are the social and behavioral factors that predict the timing of various related health outcomes (e.g. access and utilization of health services, mortality, entrance into nursing home?); 2) What are the social and behavioral factors that explain race differences in health outcomes?; and 3) What has been the impact of social policy on the health and quality of life of African Americans? His work includes both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Arachu Castro, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Professor and Samuel Z. Stone Endowed Chair of Public Health in Latin America and Director of the Center for Health Equity in Latin America at the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University. Her major interests are how social inequalities are embodied as differential risk for pathologies common among the poor and how health policies may alter the course of epidemic disease and other pathologies afflicting populations living in poverty. Dr.

Trained as a sociologist and demographer, Dr. Meekers has conducted extensive research on sexual risk behavior and reproductive health. He has been involved in several studies aimed at improving the design of social marketing and behavior change communication programs in developing countries, and at assessing the impact of behavior change programs.

Dr. Kendall, a medical anthropologist, is a former acting chair of the Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences and in the Department of International Health. He was an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health where he founded the Center for International Community-Based Health Research. Dr. Kendall is a Fulbright Senior Fellow, CNPq Senior Researcher, and served on three Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences panels. He served on the governing council of the American Public Health Association. Dr.

Dr.

Pierre Buekens' research focuses on reproductive epidemiology, including neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and pregnancy, and he is the director of the Tulane Center for Emerging Reproductive and Perinatal Epidemiology (CERPE). His current research spans Chagas disease in Argentina, syphilis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia, and Zika virus in Honduras.

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.

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.

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.