Bushra Sabri’s research focuses on lifetime cumulative exposures to violence, including intimate partner violence and stress caused by experiencing health inequities, particularly among minority and immigrant women. She has led or co-led multiple funded research projects focusing on risk factors and health outcomes of interpersonal violence across the lifespan. Dr. Sabri’s recent work focuses on the intersecting epidemics of violence, HIV, mental health, and reproductive and sexual health problems among women; the role of physiological stress responses in coping; and developing and evaluating trauma-informed, culturally tailored interventions. Dr. Sabri’s goal is to develop interventions that contribute to reducing health disparities among vulnerable, underserved, and marginalized populations.

Kalpana Poudel-Tandukar is an Associate Professor at the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing, UMass Amherst. She has a broad background in international health, epidemiology, social science, and general medicine, with training in community-based participatory research, intervention design, and longitudinal data analysis. She has over 15 years of experience researching global mental health, HIV, and nutrition. She is interested in applied and translational research on developing and testing culturally-tailored, community-driven, strength-based interventions to reduce mental health disparities among refugees, immigrants, and HIV-infected populations using a mixed-method approach.

Megha Shah, MD, Msc is a family physician and health services researcher. She practices clinically at Emory Family Medicine in Dunwoody, is involved in resident education, quality improvement, and community-partnered research. Her research focuses on community-partnered approaches to chronic disease management. Specifically, implementation of evidence-based strategies for primary care-based diabetes prevention and self-management in under-resourced communities. Her most recent work focuses on community outreach for diabetes self-management in the low-income South Asian population in Atlanta. Her work has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Mary Bunn is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychiatry. She is also a core faculty member and Co-Director of the Global Mental Health Research and Training Program in the UIC Center for Global Health and a clinical faculty member in the Mood and Anxiety Disorder Program where she provides therapy services to survivors of war, torture and forced migration.

Her research program focuses on community-based mental health prevention and care interventions for refugees and forced migrant communities across the migration continuum. This involves bridging prevention and intervention research to integrate a spectrum of services that are used for communities with diverse needs. She is particularly interested in peer service delivery models, therapeutic processes and how to best mobilize social and family resources through interventions to enhance coping and wellbeing. She integrates implementation science and human centered design methods in her research in order to enhance uptake and sustainability of evidence-based mental health services for refugee communities.

Bola Adegboyega received both a BSN and PhD in Nursing from the University of Kentucky. She completed a post-doctoral training in Cancer Control and Prevention. Dr. Adegboyega is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing. She is a member of the  UK Community Health Advocacy iNterventions Generating Equity (CHANGE) Team and the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at the UK Markey Cancer Center.

Learn more about Bola Adegboyega

Learn more about Kafuli Agbemenu

Manka Nkimbeng is a nurse scientist and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and an Affiliate assistant professor in the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. Prior to that, she was a Robert L. Kane Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She received her PhD in nursing from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, her MPH from Boston University School of Public Health and Bachelors of Science in nursing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She works with communities to develop and test culturally appropriate interventions that can be translated into health policies and clinical practice to improve health and eliminate health inequities for older adults. 

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Katherine Yun MD, MHS, is a pediatrician with Primary Care, South Philadelphia and the Refugee Health Program at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Health Equity faculty lead at PolicyLab and Director of CHOP’s Academic General Pediatrics Fellowship.

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Rima Afifi engages in public health research and practice with intent to promote social, community, and policy environments conducive to wellbeing. Whenever possible, she uses methods of Community Based Participatory Research; applies an ecological lens to the understanding of the issues; engages multiple disciplines to widen the perspectives on any topic; and emphasizes knowledge transfer of research to practice and policy. She is specifically interested in intervention and implementation science.

Learn more about Rima Afifi

Clinical Associate Professor, College of Education & Human Development, Nationally Certified Counselor and Licensed Professional Counselor

Kaeden Tun is a refugee from Myanmar and worked as a COVID-19 vaccine community ambassador with the GSU Prevention Research Center to promote vaccine confidence among refugee and underserved communities in Clarkston

Dawood Azeemy

Emily Torstveit Ngara, Associate Clinical professor and Director of the Immigration Clinic, teaches a live-client clinic where students represent indigent noncitizens in a variety of immigration matters, honing their skills in interviewing, counseling, fact investigation, legal research and writing, and trial skills.

Four students from Perimeter College at Georgia State University share their stories and experiences as former refugees representing Ethiopia, Eritrea, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Iraq.

Dr. Jennie Burnet of the Georgia State University Department of Anthropology leads an engaging conversation on the historical and contemporary conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Cultural insights and panel discussion on the current humanitarian and refugee crisis.

Presented by the National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants, and Migrants in collaboration with the PRC.  Utilizing a case study in Dekalb County, Georgia, representatives from the Clarkston Health Equity Coalition offered webinar participants practical tips on how to develop and sustain meaningful partnerships between local school districts, Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), health departments, and other community groups to reduce COVID-19 and increase equitable access to vaccines and health services for school-aged children and their families.

A conversation with the Clarkston community on COVID-19 vaccinations for children and mental health issues among children related to COVID-19. Open to the public, including all families, child care teachers, home visitors, health promotors, and other community members.

Dr. Frank Minja, a radiologist at Emory University, and Dr. Esther Kim, co-founder of Ethne Health in Clarkston, Georgia. The providers discussed COVID-19 and vaccination, answering questions submitted by the audience. Dr. Minja answered some questions in Swahili during the event.

The GSU PRC COVID-19 Community Ambassadors introduce themselves and share their challenges, successes, and lessons learned when encouraging vaccine uptake in the refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities in Clarkston, Georgia.

A conversation with the Indian Creek Elementary School community on pediatric COVID-19 vaccines ft. Dr. Susan Reines, Dr. Veda Johnson, and Rev. Kimani Francois

Discussion on the work of the National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants and Migrants (NRC-RIM) with state and local health departments working with RIM communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19.