Faculty

Jaine Strauss, Director of the program in Community and Global Health and Professor of Psychology, completed her doctoral and post-doctoral training at the University of Rochester with a primary focus on adolescent health. Several years ago, she received a Mellon New Directions sabbatical to develop specific expertise in public health. Her most recent work focuses on the psychosocial correlates of overweight in teens and on media influences on snack food consumption. Professor Strauss’s research has appeared in such journals as Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, International Journal of Eating Disorders, and Sex Roles. Professor Strauss teaches Community Psychology.

Devavani Chatterjea, Associate Director of the program in Community and Global Health and Assistant Professor of Biology, completed her doctoral and post-doctoral training at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying the developmental mechanisms of T cells and the intersections of allergic reactions and anti-bacterial responses in mice. Her subsequent work in the immunology research division at Genentech, Inc. was to develop therapeutic targets for automimmune diseases. Professor Chatterjea has long been involved with HIV education and outreach as well as diverse community science literacy projects (most recently a youth and community genomics project with the Minnesota Department of Health). She is a frequent contributor to national conversations on the intersections of public health and liberal arts education and she, along with Professor Liz Jansen, will offer Introduction to Community and Global Health.

Vittorio Addona, Assistant Professor of Math and Computer Science, completed his PhD in Statistics from McGill University. In his thesis in the field of Survival Analysis, he developed inferential procedures for an incidence rate by following-up subjects identified through a prevalent sampling scheme. This more convenient sampling method results in data which do not form a random sample from the target population and adjustments for this fact must be made. He also spent some time working as a statistical analyst in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Community Studies at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. He will teach the Epidemiology course and will develop a new course for the concentration entitled Applied Survival Analysis.

Ron Barrett, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, is a medical anthropologist and registered nurse with research interests in the social aspects of infectious disease, religious healing, and end-of-life issues. His book, Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India, is based on his dissertation research on religious healing and the social stigma of leprosy in the North Indian pilgrimage city of Banaras. More recently, he has been conducting NSF-sponsored research on health-seeking for influenza-like illnesses in a Western Indian slum. Ron is also co-editor of a reader, Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology. His clinical background is in hospice, neuro-intensive care, and brain injury rehabilitation. He teaches courses in medical anthropology, emerging infections, and the anthropology of death and dying. Before coming to Macalester in 2009, he was on the faculty at Stanford and Emory Universities.

Martin Gunderson, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Philosophy, completed his PhD from Cornell University and his JD from the University of Minnesota. He is the co-author of the book AIDS: HIV Testing and Privacy and has numerous publications and presentations in the area of bioethics, including recent articles on the ethics of genetic engineering in the journals Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics and Social Philosophy Today, on refusing medical care and on physician-assisted death in The Hastings Center Report and the Journal of Social Philosophy.

Helen Hazen, Visiting Assistant Professor of Geography, completed her Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Minnesota under the direction of medical geographer Prof. Connie Weil. Her Masters work focused on social and environmental influences on the incidence of dengue fever, and included course work at the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. Helen currently teaches a class in the Geography of Health and Healthcare at Macalester, a class which she previously taught at the University of Minnesota. She is now developing a course on Environmental Hazards, which will incorporate a considerable focus on issues of vulnerability to disease and injury, as related to natural disasters.

Elizabeth Jansen, Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology and Faculty Liaison to the Office of Research and Experiential Learning, is a neuroscientist with interest in injury-induced neural plasticity as well as experience-induced neural plasticity in development. Both of these areas of scholarship have laboratory science as well as public health dimensions and thus reside within public health neuroscience. Liz teaches Women, Health and Reproduction, a course that covers topics in individual women’s health, as well as community health and global health, and she and Professor Chatterjea will teach Introduction to Community and Global Health. She participates in a national effort aimed at integrating public health and undergraduate liberal arts education and has been working with the Office of Minority and Multicultural Health of the Minnesota Department of Health on a youth genomics project.

Danny Kaplan, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, became involved with public health during his graduate studies applying nonlinear dynamics (chaos theory) to cardiology. His novel data analysis techniques were also being applied by epidemiologists to construct models of the nonlinear interactions involved in the spread of infectious disease and he became involved in the development of statistics to determine whether historical epidemiological data gave support for the new models. Professor Kaplan will teach Epidemiology: Data and Decision in Public Health.

Steve Sundby , Instructor and Laboratory Supervisor of Biology, is a microbiologist with an emphasis in virology. Steve has been on the Steering Committee since the inception of the Community and Global Health program, and has a special interest in helping students pursue health-related careers. He teaches Microbiology annually and Virology whenever possible.

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