News from the School of Public Health

The School of Public Health would like to recognize and welcome the following faculty and staff to our community. Some are already part of our community and are being recognized for new roles/titles, while others are joining us this academic year. Welcome and congratulations to all!

Shanéa Thomas, Ed.D., LICSW (he/him; she/her; Dr.), assistant clinical research professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health, recently joined the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center (UMD-PRC) as an LGBTQ+ training specialist.

Jordan Aquino (he/him), a first-year PhD student in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health and graduate assistant for the UMD-PRC, focuses on understanding factors that impact mental and sexual health among LGBTQ+ individuals. In particular, Jordan is interested in the design and implementation of interventions that aim to reduce stigma, suicide, substance use and HIV prevalence among LGBTQ+ people.  

Family Science PhD candidate and UMD-PRC Investigator Natasha D. Williams (she/her) was recently selected for a dissertation award through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars program. Her dissertation, titled: Mental health among Black lesbian, gay, and bisexual people: Examining patterns of risk, treatment utilization, and mental health management strategies will use quantitative analyses of population-level data and interview-based grounded theory methods to elucidate the mental health challenges Black LGB adults face and the ways in which they manage their mental health.  

For many people, seeking mental health treatment can be a challenging process; for LGBTQ+ individuals, many of these struggles are exacerbated by experiences of oppression and/or insensitivity by people they encounter in the health care system. Dr. Richard Shin (he/him), an Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education, is focused specifically on these issues, with a commitment to advocating for social justice within psychology and other mental health professions.

Travis Hyams, PhD '20 in Behavioral and Community Health, has been selected as Presidential Management Fellow with the All of Us Research Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Hyams will help the program reach an ambitious goal, to recruit more than one million people nationwide to be a part of one of the most diverse medical databases in history.