Program Staff
Leadership
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Spero M. Manson, PhD (Pembina Chippewa)
Dr. Manson is a Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry and directs the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health which includes 10 national centers engaging with 250 Native communities. Dr. Manson occupies The Colorado Trust Chair in American Indian Health within the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
Dr. Manson’s programs include 10 national centers, totaling $63 million in sponsored research, program development, training, and collaboration with 250 Native communities, spanning rural, reservation, urban, and village settings across the country. Dr. Manson has published 200 articles on the assessment, epidemiology, treatment, and prevention of physical, alcohol, drug, as well as mental health problems over the developmental life span of Native people.
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Dedra Buchwald, MD
Dr. Buchwald is a Professor in the College of Medical Sciences at Washington State University and the director of the Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health. Dr. Buchwald founded the Partnerships for Native Health, which encompasses research, education, training, advocacy, and technical activities nationwide with over 160 partners. Partnerships for Native Health has developed a program of culturally appropriate research that spans a wide range of topics, including physical, mental health, addiction, health services, and social issues in Native communities.
Dr. Buchwald is also the Director of the National Institute on Aging-funded Native Investigator Development Program, a 2-year career training program for American Indian and Alaska Native post-doctoral fellows, designed to increase the number of independent Native researchers. She also directs two other career training programs for junior faculty and has received accolades and awards for her mentorship activities.
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Robert J. Freishtat, MD, MPH
Dr. Freishtat is Senior Investigator in the Center for Genetic Medicine of the Children’s Research Institute and is Chief of the Division of Emergency Medicine at Children’s National. He is also a Professor with Tenure in Pediatrics and Genomics and Precision Medicine at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Dr. Freishtat’s research has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health since 2003. He is the principal investigator for international collaboratives studying injury/repair in the lung and systems biology investigations in obesity. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 articles and book chapters in the fields of lung injury, asthma, obesity and emergency medicine. In addition, he was a recipient of the 2011 International Klosterfrau Award for Research of Airway Diseases in Childhood. Dr. Freishtat is Past-President of the American Federation for Medical Research and is an active member of the American Thoracic Society and Society for Pediatric Research.
Coaches
During the course of the GUMSHOE program, researchers from across the country have acted as grantwriting coaches to the junior faculty participants, assisting them with the preparation of an application to NIH to conduct biomedical research. Below are all the coaches that have participated in GUMSHOE.
Cathryn Booth-Laforce, PhD
Coached Cohort: October 2016, May 2018, January 2019
ibcb@uw.edu
Dr. Booth-LaForce is a Professor of Family and Child Nursing and Research Affiliate in the Center on Human Development and Disability at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. Her primary research interest is the social-emotional development of children. In longitudinal projects that follow children from infancy to late adolescence, she investigates early and ongoing experiences in various contexts to examine how these experiences affect children's development, including typically developing children, those who are at risk for maladaptive outcomes, and those with developmental disabilities.
Bert Boyer, PhD
Coached Cohort: April 2016
boyerbe@ohsu.edu
Dr. Boyer is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Oregon Health and Sciences University. Dr. Boyer’s research group is broadly interested in genomic, epigenomic and environmental risk and protective factors related to obesity and diabetes in Yup'ik Alaska Native people from Southwest Alaska.
Kathryn L. Braun
Coached Cohort: May 2018, January 2019
kbraun@hawaii.edu
Dr. Braun is a Professor of Public Health and Chair of the Doctor of Public Health program at the University of Hawai‘i. She is known for her work in community-based participatory research in cancer and gerontology, and she has published more than 180 peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics.
Malcolm Cutchin, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
mpc@wayne.edu
Dr. Cutchin is a Professor at the Institute of Gerontology and in the Department of Occupational Therapy at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. His work generally falls into the category of human-place relationships and well-being, and his studies have often focused on residential environments (e.g., home, neighborhoods) and stress.
Letha Chadiha, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
lethac@umich.edu
Dr. Chadiha is a Professor Emerita in the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan. She specializes in caregiving by African American women to older African Americans and on recruitment and retention of ethnically diverse elders in research.
Denise A. Dillard, PhD (Inupiaq Eskimo)
Coached Cohort: October 2015, January 2019
dadillard@scf.cc
Dr. Dillard is Director of the Research Department at Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage, Alaska,where she also serves on the Board of Directors as they review and consider approval of research involving Alaska Native people in and around Anchorage. She has conducted postdoctoral quantitative and qualitative research since 1998 and is a licensed psychologist.
Glen E. Duncan, PhD
Coached Cohort: April 2016, October 2016
glen.duncan@wsu.edu
Dr. Duncan is a Professor in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine and the Chair of the Nutrition and Exercise Physiology program at Washington State University. He is also the Director of the Washington State Twin Registry. His research interests include 1) the relationships among cardiovascular fitness, body fat content, and metabolic disease, 2) lifestyle interventions designed to modify diet and increase habitual physical activity or exercise training in order to prevent and treat metabolic and cardiovascular disease, and 3) non-biological determinants of physical activity and obesity.
Beth E. Ebel, MD
Coached Cohort: April 2016
bebel@uw.edu
Dr. Ebel is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and an adjust professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington and an attending physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Her research interests include injury prevention, community interventions and health behaviors with emphasis on high-risk populations, and global injury.
Todd Edwards, PhD
Coached Cohort: October 2016
toddce@u.washington.edu
Dr. Edwards is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Services at the University of Washington and an investigator for the Seattle Quality of Life Group. His research interests include development and validation of patient-reported measures of symptoms, function, and quality of life; integration of patient-reported measures into clinical practice, decision making, and assessment of treatment outcomes.
Susan Eggly, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
seggly@med.wayne.edu
Dr. Eggly is a Professor in the Department of Oncology at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. The overall goal of her research is to investigate and improve the relationship between cancer clinical communication and health outcomes for patients and families.
Deborah Elis, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
dellis@med.wayne.edu
Dr. Ellis is Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences in the Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. A pediatric psychologist by training, her research focuses upon developing behavioral interventions to improve health outcomes among minority adolescents with chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, asthma and HIV.
R. Turner Goins, PhD
Coached Cohort: October 2015
rtgoins@wcu.edu
Dr. Goins is a Professor of Gerontological Social Work at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC. Her research has focused on American Indian and Alaska Native health- and aging-related issues, with her primary data collection efforts with tribal communities adopting a community-based participatory research approach, wherein her research examines issues of local importance.
Margaret Heitkemper, PhD, RN
Coached Cohort: October 2016
heit@uw.edu
Dr. Heitkemper is Professor and Chairperson, Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics, Adjunct Professor, Division of Gastroenterology, and Director, Center for Research on Management of Sleep Disturbances at the University of Washington. She leads an interdisciplinary team focused on the study of the pathophysiology and non-pharmacological management of individuals with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Jeff Henderson, MD (Lakota, Cheyenne River Sioux)
Coached Cohort: April 2016
jhenderson@bhcaih.org
Dr. Henderson is founder, President, and CEO of the Black Hills Center for American Indian Health, a community-based, non-profit, research-intensive organization whose mission is to enhance the health and wellness of American Indians through research, service, education and philanthropy.
Earl Hishinuma, PhD
Coached Cohort: May 2018
hishinumae@dop.hawaii.edu
Dr. Hishinuma is a Professor and Associate Chair of Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
Gail Jensen (Summers), PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
gail.jensen@wayne.edu
Dr. Jensen is Director of Training at the Institute of Gerontology and a Professor of Economics at Wayne State University. As a health economist and gerontologist, her current research interests include the evaluation of health system reforms, the determinants of healthcare disparities, the effects of Medicare payment generosity on beneficiaries' access to care and satisfaction with care, and the economics of health insurance.
Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan, DrPH (Choctaw)
Coached Cohort: October 2015
valarie-jernigan@ouhsc.edu
Dr. Jernigan is an Associate Professor of Health Promotion Sciences at the College of Public Health, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She is also Associate Dean of Community Research for at the University of Oklahoma Tulsa. She is a community-based participatory researcher, trained in intervention science, with the goal of combining research and action for social change.
Joseph Kaholokula, PhD
Coached Cohort: May 2018
kaholoku@hawaii.edu
Dr. Kaholokula is Professor and Chair of Native Hawaiian Health in the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a licensed clinical psychologist. His research involves developing community-based and culturally relevant health promotion programs to address diabetes and cardiovascular disease inequities in Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders using community-based participatory research approaches.
Carol Kaufman, PhD
Coached Cohort: October 2015, January 2019
Dr. Kaufman is a Professor at the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health and the Department of Community and Behavioral Health at the Colorado School of Public Health. She is a demographer/sociologist with major research interests in 1) the cultural and community context of adolescent sexual health risks; 2) the adaptation, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of theory-based health interventions within and across diverse communities; and 3) new applications and approaches in research design and methodology.
Peter Lichtenberg, PhD
Coached Cohort: April 2016
p.lichtenberg@wayne.edu
Dr. Lichtenberg is the Director of both Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, the Institute of Gerontology and the Founding Director of the Wayne State University Lifespan Alliance. Dr. Lichtenberg is also a Professor of Psychology and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He is a national expert in financial capacity assessment and financial exploitation of older adults. He is particularly interested in the area of intersection between financial capacity and financial exploitation; finding ways to balance autonomy and protection for older adults.
Mark Luborsky, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
mluborsky@wayne.edu
Dr. Luborsky is Director of Aging & Health Disparities Research at the Institute of Gerontology and Professor of Anthropology and Gerontology at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. His research focuses on lifecourse reorganization and continuity of meaning and function. Topics include physical disability (polio; mobility loss), mental health, and normative biases in development theory.
Larry Matherly, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
matherly@karmanos.org
Dr. Matherly is a Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Oncology at Wayne State University and the Director for Basic Science for the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, MI. A major focus of his research is on the basic biology of membrane transporters relevant to cancer therapy and drug discovery, and on translational studies with primary patient specimens.
Michael McDonell, PhD
Coached Cohort: October 2015, April 2016, October 2016, January 2019
mmcdonell@wsu.edu
Dr. McDonnell is an Associate Professor in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at the Washington State University Spokane and an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He has an extensive background in developing and testing the effectiveness of treatments for co-occurring substance use disorders and severe mental illness. He is also active in public health research and behavioral interventions in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.
James McNally, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
jmcnally@umich.edu
Dr. McNally is a Research Scientist at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on aging and life course issues and on methodological approaches to the improvement and enhancement of secondary research data.
Aimee McRae-Clark, PharmD
Coached Cohort: April 2016
mcraeal@musc.edu
Dr. McRae-Clark is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. The majority of her research has focused on medication development for cannabis dependence and on the use of human laboratory paradigms to both examine precipitants of relapse as well as to screen medications for potential utility in the treatment of substance use disorders.
Clemma Muller, PhD
Coached Cohort: October 2015, April 2016, October 2016, January 2019
mcraeal@musc.edu
Dr. Muller is an Assistant Research Professor in the College of Nursing at Washington State University. She has more than 15 years of experience as an epidemiologist and biostatistician engaged in study design, quantitative methods, and causal inference in health disparities research involving American Indian and Alaska Native populations.
Lonnie Nelson, PhD (Eastern Band Cherokee)
Coached Cohort: October 2016
lonnie.nelson@wsu.edu
Dr. Nelson is an Assistant Professor at Washington State University College of Nursing. Within the WSU Initiative for Research and Education to Advance Community Health (IREACH), he works with his colleagues at Partnerships for Native Health to address health disparities experienced by AI/AN communities through the application of culturally adapted, evidence-based interventions and other patient-centered approaches to changing health behaviors.
Carolyn Noonan, MS
Coached Cohort: January 2019
carolyn.noonan@wsu.edu
Ms. Noonan is a Biostatistician at the Washington State University’s Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health (IREACH). She has worked for the past 15 years to design studies and analyze data examining both physical and mental health conditions, with a particular emphasis on reducing health disparities among racial minorities.
Scott Okamoto, PhD
Coached Cohort: May 2018
sokamoto@hpu.edu
Dr. Okamoto is a Professor in the School of Social Work at Hawai’i Pacific University. His research focuses on the social determinants of health and on developing evidence-based prevention interventions with indigenous and underserved communities.
Steve Ondersma
Coached Cohort: September 2016
sondersm@med.wayne.edu
Dr. Ondersma is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences and Obstetrics & Gynecology at Wayne State University and Director of the Merrill-Palmer Skillman Institute. His primary interest is in computer-delivered assessment and motivational interventions for substance use and other risk factors among pregnant and postpartum women.
Neal Palafox, MD
Coached Cohort: May 2018
npalafox@hawaii.edu
Dr. Palafox is a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Hawai’i.
Lou A. Penner, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
pennerl@karmanos.org
Dr. Penner is Professor in the Department of Oncology at Wayne State University. His research focuses on how personal attributes and social factors affect the quality of the health care people receive and their ability to cope with life-threatening illnesses.
Ka'imi Sinclair, PhD (Cherokee)
Coached Cohort: October 2015, October 2016, May 2018
kaimi.sinclair@wsu.edu
Dr. Sinclair is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health at Washington State University. For two decades, she has focused on improving diabetes outcomes among health disparity populations. Her work has generally been translational in nature, blending the rigor of randomized controlled trials with a community-based approach.
Rich Slatcher, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
richard.slatcher@uga.edu
Dr. Slatcher is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Georgia. The focus of his research is understanding close relationships (e.g., marital relationships, parent-child relationships) and their impact on health and well-being.
Eric Strachan, PhD
Coached Cohort: October 2016, January 2019
erstrach@u.washington.edu
Dr. Eric Strachan is a Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. His clinical specialty includes CBT for psychosis, anxiety, and depression.
Hayley Thompson, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
hayley.thompson@wayne.edu
Dr. Thompson is Associate Director of Community Outreach Engagement in the Department of Oncology at Wayne State University. Her research seeks to understand and eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in cancer prevention and control, specifically screening and survivorship.
Roland Thorpe, PhD
Coached Cohort: January 2019
rthorpe@jhu.edu
Dr. Thorpe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research interests include health disparities, poverty status, functional decline, hypertension, older adults, life course, and men’s health disparities.
Daphne C. Watkins, PhD
Coached Cohort: September 2016
daphnew@umich.edu
Dr. Watkins is Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan and Director of the Vivian A. and James L. Curtis Research and Training Center. Her research interests include gender disparities, mood disorders, health education, behavioral interventions, masculinity, men's mental health, and mixed-methods research.
Noel S. Weiss, MD, DrPH
Coached Cohort: April 2016
nweiss@uw.edu
Dr. Weiss is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington. His research is primarily in the area of cancer epidemiology. Part of his time is devoted to the study of epidemiologic methods and of the application of these methods to the understanding of the determinants of the outcome of illness.
Nancy Whitesell, PhD
Coached Cohort: May 2018, January 2019
nancy.whitesell@cuanschutz.edu
Dr. Whitesell is a Professor at the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health and the Department of Community and Behavioral Health at the Colorado School of Public Health. Her work focuses on child and adolescent development within the contexts of American Indian and Alaska Native communities.
Tom Wills, PhD
Coached Cohort: May 2018
twills@cc.hawaii.edu
Dr. Wills is a Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi Cancer Center at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His research interests are in etiology and prevention of tobacco and alcohol use with a focus on early and middle and adolescence.
Frankie Y. Wong, PhD
Coached Cohort: May 2018
fwong@fsu.edu
Dr. Wong is a Professor in the College of Nursing at Florida State University. He has expertise in community-based research targeting racial/ethnic and underserved populations with a history of or who are currently using alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs and engaging in HIV-related risk practices.