Member Details

Health Equity/Research Interest

I am currently a research assistant in Dr. Norman Porticella’s lab working on data collection efforts for his Enhancing Collaborations project; this project aims to address barriers to inter-organizational partnerships and collaboration, and design sustainable and equitable interventions to support that coordination. As such, for the first phase of this project, I have been focusing on coding past needs assessments documents related to challenges within a human and environmental health framework (e.g. substance abuse and mental health, food insecurity during COVID-19, watershed management, etc.).

I also just started work on an Honors Thesis project with Dr. Jenny Kao-Kniffin in SIPS, and I am currently looking to facilitate collaborations between the larger plant science research community and the human and environmental health community (i.e. looking at data related to the personal health and well-being of farmers themselves, how and where grower perspectives are included or not, food justice and food sovereignty, and community benefits of farms as related to social activism-just to name a few). I am brainstorming how to integrate methods for analyzing human health metrics within a larger independent project on soil health. Both projects and my additional past experiences, including those with the Georgia Department of Public Health, have required me to examine issues in health equity more broadly.