Dr. Juliet Iwelunmor is a Professor of Medicine and an Associate Director for Global Health and Dissemination at Washington University School of Medicine. Her research is centered around the use of culturally salient implementation science strategies to develop, implement, and sustain in community settings, evidence-based health interventions that reduce health burden and advance positive health outcomes. She is the PI of an R01 study aimed to use participatory crowdsourcing methods to drive HPV prevention among mother-daughter dyads in Nigeria (1R01CA271033-01A1). She is also the PI of a UG3/UH3 NIH phased grant aimed at assessing the effectiveness of youth-friendly implementation science strategies in increasing uptake and sustainability of HIV self-testing led by and for Nigerian youth (UH3HD096929). In addition, she has also led other implementation science trials focused on evaluating the scale-up and sustainability of well-proven chronic disease management programs targeted at hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors in sub-Saharan Africa

Dr. Joseph D. Tucker is an infectious diseases physician and Professor at UNC Chapel Hill with a special interest in social innovation and crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing has a group of individuals solve a problem and then share solutions with the public (more details here). He is Co-Director of the International Diagnostics Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His team’s ongoing research investigates crowdsourcing open calls to increase sexually transmitted disease test uptake in China, enhance research mentorship in LMICs, and promote HIV self-testing in Nigeria. His open calls have focused on promoting diagnostics, creating people-friendly health services, and enhancing uptake of vaccines. Dr. Tucker works closely with the TDR Social Innovation in Health Initiative. He has contributed to several World Health Organization guidelines and serves as a member of the TDR Global Working Group. Dr. Tucker has published 449 manuscripts. He received his BA from Swarthmore, MD from UNC, AM (RSEA) from Harvard, and PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Idia Binitie Thurston, PhD (she/her) is a licensed clinical psychologist and Professor of Public Health & Health sciences and Applied Psychology at Northeastern University (NU). She is Associate Director of the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at NU. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and serves on the APA board of Scientific Affairs. She trained at Florida State University, University of South Florida, and Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She directs the CHANGE lab, where she collaborates with scholars and community members in health equity science initiatives.

Idia Binitie Thurston, PhD (she/her) is a licensed clinical psychologist and Professor of Public Health & Health sciences and Applied Psychology at Northeastern University (NU). She is Associate Director of the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at NU. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and serves on the APA board of Scientific Affairs. She trained at Florida State University, University of South Florida, and Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She directs the CHANGE lab, where she collaborates with scholars and community members in health equity science initiatives.

Dr. Collins Airhihenbuwa is a Professor of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences and leads the Global Research Against Non-Communicable Disease (GRAND) Initiative at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. He is a global health scholar and a pioneer in centering culture in global public health research and practice. For over 40 years, he has been innovating culturally based solutions to promote health equity in national and global health programs. He has led several multi-institutional partnerships for training diverse students and early career professionals to develop and implement public health research and intervention. He is the author of the PEN-3 cultural model that is used in several countries to develop programs and interventions to advance health inequity. He co-authored (with Chandra Ford) the Public Health Critical Race Praxis which is designed to offer a health equity lens to applying critical race theory in public health. He has served as a visiting scholar to UN agencies such as the World Health Organization and major universities, including Purdue and Boston University, and has served on boards of Saint Louis City and Hospitals, the National Advisory committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Scholars, the Global Philanthropy Alliance, and the board of Scientific Counselors for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Airhihenbuwa has authored 11 books and more than 170 articles and book chapters. His books include “Health and Culture, Beyond the Western Paradigm” in 1995, “Healing Our Differences, the Crisis of Global Health and Politics of Identity” in 2007, “Health, Culture and Place: From the Tree to the Forest” in 2022 (co-edited with Juliet Iwelunmor) and his most recent book “Health and Culture Beyond the Western Paradigm: Then and Now in 2025. He was previously Dean of the College for Public Health and Social Justice at Saint Louis University in Missouri and Chair of Department of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University. He is a former President and Distinguished Fellow of the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) and a fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. He is also the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Scholar of the Year by the American Association of Health Education, the symbol of H.O.P.E award by the American Journal of Health Promotion, the Outreach award by Penn State University, the David Satcher award for leadership in reducing health disparities by CDC and DHPE, and the Mentor award by SOPHE.

Dr. Weiming Tang is an associate professor of UNC Chapel Hill, and the Co-Director of UNC Project-China. His background training is in epidemiology, with an emphasis on HIV/STI epidemiology, study design, and data analysis. His research focuses on promoting HIV/STI testing and healthy behavior change among key populations. Specifically, he is interested in using crowdsourcing and other participatory methods to enhance health services. He also pays specific attention to digital health/telemedicine, especially in the evaluation of digital health. He has co-authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Kathryn Muessig (/MESS-ig/) – Kate (she | her | hers) – is an Associate Professor of Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina and co-Director of the Behavior and Technology Lab. Dr. Muessig received her PhD at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and postdoctoral training at the UNC School of Medicine. Her research develops interventions combining digital health tools, behavior-change strategies, and health systems navigation to decrease HIV transmission and improve health care for people living with HIV. She is the Principal Investigator of three NIH research grants, including a six-city pilot trial supporting HIV medication adherence, a national RCT testing stigma reduction to improve HIV outcomes, and an implementation study to increase the availability of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in rural health clinics. Over the past six years she has co-led the analytic core of an NIH Adolescent Trials Network grant which supports 12 national HIV prevention and care studies. Dr. Muessig mentors MPH and PhD students and teaches graduate-level courses in Globalization and Health, Research Proposal Development, and mHealth Interventions.

Dr. Enbal Shacham is a Professor and the Associate Dean for Research at the College for Public Health and Social Justice and the Acting Associate Director of the Taylor Geospatial Institute at Saint Louis University. She has been researching the intersection of health and location using geospatial science and application, epidemiology, and behavioral science throughout her career. Her research has explored how social and physical environmental factors and their impact on infectious and chronic diseases by leveraging technological advancements and data to improve health equity. The research she conducts is committed to growing insightful methods to better know and provide real-time data, analyses, and interventions for improving health in communities and clinic settings both domestically and internationally.

• Leverage geospatial technology to identify physical and social environment predictors of health outcomes that build the foundation for actionable interventions to create more equitable environments
• Develop and use smartphone apps to better understand real-time behaviors and symptoms including: COVID-19 symptom tracking and contract tracing, mental health symptoms, alcohol and drug use, sexual behavior
• Determine access and availability to community resources that interrupt health management (including HIV infection, mental health, and drug use)

Dr. Suzanne Day is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a sociologist with a special interest in community-engaged and participatory approaches to health research. Her current work is focused on strategies for obtaining community stakeholder input on the design and conduct of HIV clinical trials, as well as clinical trials for other infectious diseases.

Professor Dr. Jason Ong is an academic sexual health specialist and health economist based at Melbourne Sexual Health Centre. His research focuses on economic evaluations and demand creation strategies to improve the uptake of HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and management services. He is a board director of several peak HIV/STI organizations in Australia (ASHM, AFAO, ASHRA) and is involved in several committees at the World Health Organization working towards the elimination of HIV/STIs as a public health threat.

Dr. Ike S Okosun is a Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Population Health Science at Georgia State University School of Public Health. He holds an MPH degree in Biostatistics and Epidemiology and a PhD in Epidemiologic Methods from the College of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, respectively. Dr. Ike S Okosun has been doing epidemiologic research nationally and internationally for over 20 years. His study investigates the epidemiology of metabolic syndrome, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia in populations of African origin. His current research investigates epigenetic markers underlying the increased risk of high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes in people of West-African ancestry. He aims to disentangle the scientific puzzle of these diseases by exploring the role and relative contribution of (1) environmental changes due to migration and (2) the effect of migration on epigenetic modification via DNA methylation patterns. The premise of his research is that environmental changes following migration alter DNA methylation levels creating an epigenetic signature and subsequent increase in high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Okosun is a member of many scientific organizations, editorial boards, and the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Environmental and Public Health (Hindawi). He is also a Fellow of The Obesity Society and the American College of Epidemiology.

Dr. Weiming Tang is an associate professor of UNC Chapel Hill, and the Co-Director of UNC Project-China. His background training is in the field of epidemiology, with an emphasis on HIV/STI epidemiology, study design, and data analysis. His research focuses on promoting HIV/STI testing and healthy behavior change among key populations. Specifically, he is interested in using crowdsourcing and other participatory methods to enhance health services. He also pays specific attention to digital health/telemedicine, especially in the evaluation of digital health. He has co-authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications.

Ucheoma Nwaozuru, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Implementation, Division of Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest School of Medicine. She received a Master’s in Community Health and Preventive Medicine from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a PhD in Public Health Studies from Saint Louis University, College for Public Health and Social Justice. Her research focuses on participatory and community-engaged research to promote the adoption and sustainability of evidence-based interventions. Her training and research experience has involved qualitative research methodology, community-based participatory research, crowdsourcing, and social innovations for health and the use of these principles to promote health equity, intervention adoption, and sustainability. She is a co-investigator on the Innovative Tools to Expand HIV Self-Testing (ITEST) project in Nigeria (MPI: Iwelunmor, Tucker, and Ezechi) that uses crowdsourcing open calls to promote the uptake of HIV self-testing among Nigerian youth. In this capacity, she facilitates the youth advisory board meetings and assists with implementing the crowdsourcing open call activities for Nigerian youth.

Dr. Kristie Foley is Chair of the Department of Implementation Science and Interim Senior Associate Dean for Research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She earned her PhD from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina and completed an NCI-funded post-doctoral fellowship in cancer prevention and control. She studies how to implement and sustain best and promising practices in primary and oncology care to reduce cancer disparities. Dr. Foley was a Fulbright Scholar at Semmelweis University in Budapest and led two R01s in Eastern Europe that focused on tobacco control capacity building. Data from these grants provided the evidence for national clean air legislation, tobacco taxation, and integration of cessation training in medical and dental schools in Hungary and Romania. She has also led research to integrate cessation support in community-based free clinics, HIV clinics, and lung cancer screening facilities. Her research has been highlighted in the Tobacco Atlas and the Fogarty International Center’s Global Health Matters as a model for translating science into practice and policy to address the global burden of tobacco-induced diseases. She currently serves as principal investigator of iDAPT: Implementation and Informatics - Developing Adaptable Processes and Technologies for Cancer Control, one of seven NCI Implementation Science Centers in Cancer Control in the United States. She also leads a T32 post-doctoral training grant in cancer prevention and control and partners with the Atrium Health Social Impact Team to understand the combination of COVID-19 and cancer on social service and health care utilization. Dr. Foley was awarded the 2019 Wake Forest School of Medicine Mentoring Award at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and is a 2020-2021 Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) alumnus. ELAM is a highly selective and intensive one-year fellowship of leadership training to expand the national pool of qualified women candidates for leadership in academic medicine, dentistry, public health, and pharmacy.

Nora E. Rosenberg, PhD, MSPH, is an infectious diseases epidemiologist with a background in health policy, behavioral science, and implementation science. Her research is focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating HIV prevention, care, and treatment programs in low-resource settings. Her overarching career goal is to support the scale-up of evidence-based interventions in marginalized groups, particularly women of reproductive age. Dr. Rosenberg has expertise in HIV testing, contact tracing, partner services, youth-friendly health services, and health worker capacity-building.

Dr. Hong Xian is a Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice. He received an MS degree in Mathematics from Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL, in 1989 and a PhD degree in Mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, in 1994. He was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship and received training in statistical genetics and biostatistics at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, from 1994 to 1997. Dr. Xian became a faculty member at Washington University School of Medicine in 1997 and joined the Saint Louis University faculty in 2012.

Laura F. Salazar, PhD, is a Professor at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Science. Dr. Salazar’s research has been devoted to helping understand, prevent, and ameliorate HIV/AIDS among high-risk populations and also interpersonal violence. She was trained as a community psychologist at Georgia State University (GSU) where she received her PhD (2001). She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in HIV/AIDS clinical research at Emory University’s School of Medicine (2003). Before joining the faculty at GSU in 2011, Dr. Salazar was a member of the faculty at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and includes the use of web-based and mobile technologies to expand the reach of health promotion efforts. Dr. Salazar has published over one hundred and fifty journal articles in medical, public health, and social science journals and is a co-author of five public health textbooks. Dr. Salazar currently teaches a PhD level seminar class.