Forthcoming PhD Graduates: 2022-23

TONYA EDMOND & RODIGRO REIS, Interim Co-Deans

“This highly talented, international cohort is united by a passion to advance equity and improve the well-being of people across the globe using community-driven science. We are proud of these graduates, who exemplify the Brown School standards of excellence.”

2022

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to introduce you to our upcoming graduates of the PhD programs at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. These highly accomplished scholars are excited to bring their research, teaching and leadership experiences to your institution or organization.

As you review their research interests, biographies and curriculum vitae, you will find that our graduates have an impressive roster of publications and presentations at national conferences such as the Society for Social Work and Research and the American Public Health Association. Many have received external grants or competitive fellowships to support their research as well.

If you would like to meet with any of our upcoming graduates or require additional information, please contact our program managers for Social Work (Marissa Hardwrict, phdsw@wustl.edu) or Public Health Sciences (Jonesey Johnson, brown-phdphs@wustl.edu).

Sincerely,

Leopoldo J. Cabassa, PhD, MSW Professor Director, Social Work PhD Program Director, NIMH T-32 Brown School Training Program in Mental Health Services Research Co-Director, Center for Mental Health Services Research, Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis

Patrick Fowler, PHD

Associate Professor Director, Public Health Sciences PhD Program Co-Director, Division of Data and Computational Sciences PhD Program, Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis

Enoch Azasu enochazasu@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/eazasu

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Mental health

Suicide prevention

Enoch Kordjo Azasu received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Ghana in 2010 and worked at the Psychology Department tutoring students and leading laboratory experiments in Cognitive Psychology, specifically learning, attention, memory and recall. In 2011, he began working as the administrator for Vine Christian School in Accra, a position he occupied for six years. Enoch then pursued an MBA in Total Quality Management from the University of Professional Studies in Ghana and graduated in 2016. In 2017, Enoch was selected as the McDonnell Academy Scholar for Ghana after being admitted into the Master of Social Work program at the Brown School of Washington University in St Louis. In 2019, he was admitted into the Social Work PhD program and was awarded McDonnell Academy Scholar for that year. At the Brown School, he works with the Race and Opportunity Lab as a Research Associate and Data Manager. The Race lab work centers on social mobility outcomes, mental health and suicide prevention among Black boys and young men.

Enoch loves doing community work and has served the youth in his community with passion for more than a decade. He is the founder of STAY Ghana, a nonprofit that focuses on suicide prevention among Ghanaian youth. Enoch enjoys music, traveling and spending time with his family.

Flora Cohen flora.cohen@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/name

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Global mental health

Mental heath infrastructure development in low resource settings Community based rehabilitation Implementation science

Community based participatory research

Flora Cohen is passionate about global mental health. She is a former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) T32 Pre-Doctoral Fellow, where she focused her work on the implementation of mental health services in low-and middle-income countries, especially within refugee contexts. Her dissertation uses data from a psychosocial parenting intervention for refugees living in Uganda to explore the relationship between caregiver well-being and care giving behaviors using longitudinal structural equation modeling. She collected and analyzed primary mixed methods data to assess the effectiveness and implementation of the program.

She also has six years of experience as a therapist with populations encountering significant psychological distress, primarily with children and families. Flora enjoys teaching students through Socratic studentcentered methods. She integrates innovative decolonialist approaches throughout her research, clinical work, and teaching. She believes in centering the experiences and voices of study participants, clients, and students.

Darejan (Daji) Dvalishvili ddvalishvili@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/ddvalishvili

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Child maltreatment and Child Welfare

Gender-Based Violence

Child Poverty Economic Strengthening Interventions

Global Child Protection

Darejan (Daji) Dvalishvili is completing her PhD in social work at Washington University in St. Louis. Her dissertation focuses on the intersections of poverty, child maltreatment, and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Her dissertation received an Honorable Mention distinction from the APA Division of Child and Family Policy Section on the Child Maltreatment Dissertation Award committee.

As a predoctoral fellow at the Institute for Child and Family WellBeing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she studies the intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity, and economic status in the context of ACEs.

Her interests also include exploring the impact of various economic interventions on children’s well-being both in the US and globally. Toward that end, she has been working with UNICEF and other international and local non-profit organizations for several years.

Darejan earned an MSW from Columbia University (New York, US) and an MD from Tbilisi State Medical University (Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia).

Rachel Garg rminson@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/rgarg

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Smoking cessation

Social determinants of health

Integrating health and social services

Rachel Garg’s research examines the impact of unmet social needs –such as housing instability and food insecurity – on health outcomes and behaviors in low-income populations. In her dissertation, she employs intensive longitudinal data to test the role of stress and sleep as mediators between social needs, depression, and cigarettes smoked per day. She seeks to build theory around mechanisms linking social needs and health to inform future intervention development to address social needs and reduce health disparities.

Rachel works as lead data analyst at the Health Communication Research Laboratory, based at Washington University’s Brown School, where she supports multiple NIH-funded research trials testing interventions to promote smoking cessation. Her work has been published in journals such as Annual Review of Public Health, Health Affairs, and American Journal of Preventive Medicine. She received her MPH in Epidemiology/Biostatistics from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Mark Hawes

markhawes@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/mhawes

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Health and healthcare inequities impacting adults with serious mental illness

Recovery and community integration of adults with serious mental illness

Integration of physical health, mental health, and substance use treatment

Mark is a National Institute of Mental Health T32 Pre-Doctoral Fellow and is affiliated with the Center for Mental Health Services Research , based at Washington University’s Brown School. Mark works on projects aiming to improve the quality of behavioral and physical health care for people with serious mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder).

He is currently examining how substance use impacts the physical health of people with SMI. Mark’s future research agenda aims to further the integration of physical health, mental health, and substance use treatment for people with mental illness. Mark’s research interests stem from his experience working as a hospital social worker where he worked on inpatient medical and psychiatric units, as well as in the emergency department. Mark holds Bachelor and Master of Social Work degrees.

Dominique Horton d.horton@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/dhorton

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

K-12 Equity

African American Children & Families

School Social Work

Social Work Education & Culturally Responsive Practice

Dominique Horton’s scholarship, teaching and community work aims to educate, equip and empower those committed to dismantling systemic racism in and around schools. Her work seeks to expand the ways urban educators, parents, community stakeholders, other researchers and policymakers think about how racism impacts academic, social-emotional and family well-being outcomes, particularly for African American families and their children.

Bringing over a decade of experience as a Chicago school social worker to research, Dominique’s dissertation work explores reimagining how schools engage with Black families and its potential implications for these outcomes in addition to broader educational and social policy reform.

Dominique is the recipient of a number of fellowships and awards. She has independently taught practice courses such as Trauma and Black Adolescents and Social Work Practice with Children in Families. Dominique has also authored and co-authored publications both accepted and currently under review.

Ashley Jackson ashley.jackson@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/ajackson

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Police violence

Racial and legal socialization

Psychological well-being

Racial disparities

Ashley Jackson’s research focuses on the impact of police contact on youth. Her dissertation research examines the factors influencing how youth engage in discussions about preparation for police interactions. Ashley’s publications have appeared in the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, Criminal Justice and Behavior, and The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. She has training in mixed-methods research and has teaching experiences in Human Behavior, Qualitative Research, and Research Methods.

She is also a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow and U.S. Fulbright Scholar, with seven years of post-MSW experience. Specifically, she has supported communities addressing public safety issues, conducted mixed-methods research on youth experiences with the juvenile legal system, and examined how police contact impacts youth and families. Ashley has an MSW from the University of Chicago, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and a BS in Administration of Justice from George Mason University.

Kakada Kuy kakadakuy@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/kkuy

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Socioeconomic and political determinants of health in later life

Effects of early life and current life outcomes on health and well-being Advancing aging research, data collection and construct measurement among older population in post-conflict, low- and middle-income countries

Kakada Kuy is an Open Society Foundations’ Civil Society Scholar (OSF) awardee interested in gerontological research among older adults in post-conflict, low-and middle-income countries. From the life course perspective, he aims to understand how early life outcomes, resulting from wars and conflicts, could affect later life outcomes, and how current life circumstances (i.e., socioeconomic characteristics, social support, social engagement, etc.) could mediate or moderate potential associations in this demographically unique population. The research goal is to improve interventions improving health and wellbeing of older adults living in low-resource settings.

A challenge of doing research in these countries, such as Cambodia, is the lack of data and the limited amount of aging literature. Funded by OSF and supported Cambodian authority and a grass-root partner, he tackled this challenge by conducting a primary data collection in rural Cambodia. Using this dataset, his dissertation is focused on how social support mediates the relationship between socioeconomic characteristics (i.e., wealth and economic satisfaction) and health outcomes.

Christopher Weatherly weatherly@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/cweatherly

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Climate change and mental health

Rural Mental Health Participatory Research

Chris Weatherly’s research focuses on the impacts of climate change and rural mental health. For his dissertation, he is working with farmers and using systems-based and participatory approaches to investigate these intersections. His work prioritizes communities’ capabilities and conceptualizations of a presenting issue to ultimately build a formal theoretical model and highlight potential intervention points. His training and research have been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health T32 Predoctoral Award in Mental Health Services Research. His research is also informed by his professional experience within acute psychiatric settings as a licensed clinical social worker.

Chris is passionate about social work education and has experience as lead instructor in beginner and advanced clinical courses for masterlevel students. His research and professional history demonstrate his capacity to work across disciplinary aisles and outside the university system in hopes of safeguarding the health of our planet and to ultimately reduce suffering.

Yingying Zeng y.zeng@wustl.edu

access curriculum vitae at: sites.wustl.edu/yzeng

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Poverty and inequality

Social welfare and social policy

Immigration and immigrant integration

Immigration policies as social determinants of health

Yingying Zeng’s research focuses on issues related to poverty and inequality, with a special interest in policy solutions to address structural and social inequalities impacting marginalized populations. Yingying’s dissertation investigates the role institutional constructs play in wealth stratification among immigrants and wealth disparities between children from immigrant and native-born families. Yingying is involved in multiple research projects at the nexus of financial wellbeing, inequality, policy, and health. As a fellow for the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) and Knology Data Training Fellowship, she conducts research on the effects of state financial education spending on young adults’ financial health using nationally representative data. Additionally, Yingying’s research addresses structural and social inequities impacting immigrants’ and refugees’ outcomes related to economic and health wellbeing.

Yingying has published several peer-reviewed articles and presented research findings at national and international scientific conferences. A passionate social work educator, she has taught MSW and PhD courses on community development, social policy, social welfare, advanced research methods, and statistics.