Teaching Public Health: Transformative Educational Models

Dr. Kimberly Jacob Arriola is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences in the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) of Emory University. After graduating from Spelman College in 1994, she earned an MA in 1996 and PhD in 1998 from Northeastern University, both in Social Psychology.  She earned an MPH in Epidemiology in 2001 from RSPH.  For the past 20 years, her work has focused on social and behavioral factors that impact the health of African Americans.  She has led the development, implementation, and evaluation of culturally-sensitive interventions to improve public commitment to organ and tissue donation among African Americans as well as multi-level interventions that address racial disparities in access to renal transplantation.  In addition, she conducts research to study the role of race-related stress in chronic kidney disease progression among African Americans. She has also co-led national and state-level efforts to evaluate structural interventions designed to improve health equity.  Aside from being a faculty member, she serves as Executive Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for RSPH.  In this role she serves to steward the academic mission of the school.  This includes ensuring the integrity of the curriculum, helping to lead the re-accreditation process, and supporting faculty professional development among other things.

Dr. Jonathan Garcia is Assistant Professor and Program Director of Global Health in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University. Jonathan uses innovative teaching methods to advance student success through the lens of Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity (EID). His philosophy is student-centered and draws on theories of Popular Pedagogy to make authentic connections between students’ lived experiences and didactic materials. He mentors students to formulate a critical perspective in courses about participatory and mixed research methods, health in displacement and migration, and public health as a tool for social transformation. He teaches global health systems and politics using his edited volume, Handbook on the Politics of Global Health(Routledge, 2019), which brought together authors from the Global South and North to explore global health governance, human rights, and community mobilization.

As Program Director of Global Health at Oregon State, he played a key role in developing several online programs, including an undergraduate minor in Global Health and an MPH in Public Health Practice. Globally, Jonathan’s mentorship and leadership in developing curricula and training public health professionals includes work on the advisory council of Swasti Health Catalyst, an international health NGO in India, and as a mentor and advisory board member of the South American Program on HIV Prevention Research in Peru (R25 training program).

His research and peer education programs address the cultural and political factors that drive psychosocial health disparities among LGBTQ+ Latinx and Black communities in the USA and globally. His work as Program Director of the ENLACE (Engaging the Next Latinx Allies for Change and Equity) Program demonstrates how LGBTQ+ Latinx voices can be amplified to mitigate social isolation in 4-H positive youth development programs. Using the 4-H extension model and bridging solidarity among racial-ethic and sexual-gender minority youth, this peer education program will continue to extend the culture of health to communities throughout Oregon.

Dr. Garcia received the 2021 ASPPH Early Career Excellence Award for outstanding teaching and mentoring of students toward distinction of public health research, teaching and practice.

Brenda Kirkwood, MPH, DrPH, has experience in higher education spanning public and private institutions on the associate, baccalaureate, and graduate levels, including development and teaching of undergraduate and graduate public health courses, development and management of public health academic programs and contributing to national educational initiatives. She has held faculty and administrative positions at the University at Albany, The George Washington University, American University, and George Mason University. She currently serves as Director of Online Education at the University at Albany School of Public Health where she is also a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Behavior.

Prior to her career in higher education, Dr. Kirkwood held positions in the New York State Cancer Registry, Bureau of Sexually Transmitted Disease Control, and Bureau of Injury Prevention within the New York State Department of Health. She received a bachelor of science in health services administration from Ithaca College, master of public health from the University at Albany and doctorate of public health from The George Washington University.

Dr. Kirkwood has been actively involved in national efforts to expand public health education and strengthen the public health workforce. She has collaborated with a number of academic and public health workforce organizations and is co-author of a textbook titled Public Health 101: Improving Community Health, co-author of a textbook supplement titled One Health: From AIDS to Zika, and contributor to several other public health textbook materials.

Laura E. Liang, DrPH, MPH, CHES, CPH is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy at the Rutgers School of Public Health.  Dr. Liang received her DrPH and MPH degrees from Rutgers and is also a Certified Health Education Specialist and Certified in Public Health. Dr. Liang has been with the Rutgers School of Public Health (and the former UMDNJ-School of Public Health) for over 20 years.  As Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, she plays an essential role in the School’s accreditation process, seeks to expand the School’s portfolio of programs, and oversees the evaluation and assessment of the School’s academic programs.  As Assistant Professor, she has been involved in all aspects of educational and outreach programming, including teaching undergraduate and graduate students, and developing and implementing programs for K-12 schools, teachers and students.  Dr. Liang has served as Principal Investigator on two large health sciences education grants funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Karin J. Opacich, PhD, MHPE, OTR/L, FAOTA holds a BS (occupational therapy) from the University of Kansas and earned both the MHPE (health professions education) and PhD (public health) from the University of Illinois-Chicago. She is currently Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Public Health and Clinical Associate Professor of Health Policy & Administration in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She has accumulated many years of experience in curriculum development, evaluation, and professional accreditation.  She has held positions in physician education, occupational therapy education, and public health education and has consulted to health science programs and agencies from private and public  institutions to professional associations and state boards of higher education. Over the past 13 years, she has stewarded the development of undergraduate public health education at UIC. She was awarded the 2020 Riegelman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Public Health by the Association of Schools and Programs in Public Health. Dr. Opacich has been deeply involved in educational development and quality assurance at UIC at both the college and the campus levels. For the past 10 years, she has served on the Senate Committee on Education Policy having been the Vice Chair and now the Chair of that committee. She was recently appointed Co-Chair for the UIC Senate Task Force on the Future of Instruction at UIC and that work continues.  The challenges and opportunities inherent in the changing educational landscape are of particular interest and part of her everyday lived experience. At this time, she is most interested in a grand vision for education post-COVID-19 that is grounded in best practices.