Preventing Infant Mortality

Lead Faculty
		Melissa Hawkins, PhD Lecturer Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Dr. Hawkins is a faculty member in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health and is the primary instructor for this course. She is a graduate of the department where her doctoral work, under Dr. Janet DiPietro, focused on fetal neurobehavioral development and the influences of maternal stress. Dr. Hawkins has over 10 years of research experience in perinatal and reproductive epidemiology and advanced statistical methodologies. Currently, she is a Principal with the contract research organization, Epidemiology International, located in Owings Mills, Maryland. Prior to joining Epidemiology International, Dr. Hawkins directed the grant writing endeavors of Sterilex Corporation as a senior research scientist.
Guest Speakers
		Bernard Guyer, MD, MPH Zanvyl Krieger Professor of Children's Health Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Dr. Guyer is a Zanvyl Krieger professor of children's health and former chairman in the Department of Population and Family Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Guyer is a pediatrician and has completed a master's degree in public health. He came to Hopkins as chairperson of the MCH department in 1989. Prior to that, he was an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and the director of the Division of Family Health Services at the Massachusetts State Department of Health (State Title V, MCH Agency). Dr. Guyer recently served as the chairman of the Maryland Commission on Infant Mortality Prevention and spearheaded efforts to formulate recommendations for closing the gap between African-American and Caucasian infant mortality rates.
		Christine Layton, PhD, MPH Dr. Layton is a Public Health Scientist with RTI International, a not-for-profit research firm based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. Dr. Layton has more than 15 years of professional experience, primarily in the qualitative analysis and evaluation of public health programs and policies including those related to immunization and vaccines. Dr. Layton received her PhD in Public Health from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Health Policy and Management in Baltimore, Maryland; an MPH from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
		Cynthia Minkovitz, MD, MPP Associate Professor Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Dr. Minkovitz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Family Health Sciences at Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a pediatrician and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical School. In addition to her medical education, she completed a master's degree in public policy. Dr. Minkovitz's current areas of interest include the following: improving the delivery of preventive services to children, exploring maternal influences on children's receipt of care, and understanding and improving health care provider behavior to promote the health of children and families.
		Sangeeta Mookherji, PhD, MHS Dr. Mookherji has 15 years’ experience working with health programs and providers in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Denmark, India, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Tanzania, Uganda and the US. Her areas of expertise include health systems evaluation, operations research, economic evaluation, and performance-improvement interventions. She has worked with evaluating a variety of public health program areas, most recently on the Five-Year Evaluation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, as well as GAVI HSS, tuberculosis, urban health systems, neonatal health, reproductive and child health, and malaria. Since 1993, she has been employed by Johns Hopkins University, Crone and Koch A/S (Denmark), and Management Sciences for Health, and has worked as a consultant for Asian Development Bank, Danida, USAID, WHO, and the World Bank.
		Patricia O'Campo, PhD Professor, Alma and Baxter Ricard Endowed Chair in Inner City Health University of Toronto Dr. O'Campo has a doctorate in epidemiology. Her current research interests lie in applying epidemiologic methods to a wide range of women's health issues, maternal health issues, and child health issues, examples of which are as follows: infant mortality, perinatal health, and early childhood health; evaluation of maternal and child health community-based and clinic-based interventions; contraceptive practices; HIV infection among women; violence toward women; smoking cessation interventions during pregnancy; contextual analyses and multi-level modeling.
		Donna Strobino, PhD Professor Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Dr. Donna Strobino is a professor in the Department of Population and Family Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She has a doctorate in population dynamics (demography). Dr. Strobino conducts research primarily in perinatal health. Much of her research has focused on the reasons why disadvantaged women have high rates of poor pregnancy outcomes and the interventions that can be implemented to improve their outcomes.
		Courtney Reeve, MS Courtney Reeve has built her career on education for under-served populations with a focus on refugee and immigrant families. Most recently, she served as education program manager for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Liberia, having previously directed education programs for resettled refugees of all ages through the IRC's regional resettlement office in Atlanta. Courtney is currently executive director of the Greenbrier Learning Center, providing after-school and summer programs to refugee and immigrant children and youth in the DC area. She has a master's degree from Harvard in International Education Policy.
		Lucia Rojas-Smith, DrPH, MPH Program Evaluator RTI Dr. Rojas-Smith, DrPH, MPH, is a program evaluator with more than 17 years of experience conducting health policy and evaluation research focusing on women and children’s health, public health systems and public health preparedness. Since coming to RTI in 2000, she has led or provided substantive technical support to over ten HHS evaluations for agencies such as the CDC, HRSA, AHRQ, the Office of Population Affairs, and the Office of the Surgeon General.
Teaching Assistant
		Terri-Ann Thompson Teaching assistant Terri-Ann Thompson is in her second year of the doctoral program with the department of Population Family and Reproductive Health. Originally from Portland, Jamaica, Terri-Ann has spent the last ten years in the U.S. studying and working. Her primary interests are in the effects of gender-related factors on Caribbean women’s engagement in health promoting activities.

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