JHU Housing & Health Collaborative
People
Faculty Leads
Sarah L. Szanton, PhD, RN, FAAN
Dr. Szanton is the Dean and Patricia M.Davidson Health Equity and Social Justice Endowed Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Her main research strands are improving health equity among older adults, aging in community, the effects of financial strain on health, and structural racial discrimination and resilience.
Craig Pollack, MD, MHS
Dr. Pollack is the Katey Ayers Endowed Professor with primary appointments in the School of Nursing, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an internal, primary care physician whose research focuses on how housing, and its neighborhood context, impact health and health care use. He currently works at the Office of Policy Development and Research at the U.S Department of Housing & Urban Development on a part-time basis.
Collaborative Coordinator
Barrow is a Johns Hopkins School of Public Health PhD student in the Department of Health Policy and Management with a concentration in Health Services Research and Policy. She is interested in how housing discrimination impacts health outcomes. Before joining Hopkins, Barrow worked in healthcare strategy and operations and takes a systems thinking approach to address complex health needs for vulnerable populations. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Movement Science from the University of Michigan and a Master’s in Healthcare Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Faculty
Thomas K. M. Cudjoe, MD, MPH
Dr. Cudjoe is the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric and Gerontology. He is board certified in internal medicine & geriatric medicine and is actively engaged in the medical care of older adults in the community who are homebound via the Johns Hopkins Home-based Medicine Program. His research focuses on the intersection of social connections, aging, and housing.
Laken Roberts Lavigne, PhD, MPH
Dr. Roberts Lavigne is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research interests focus on urban housing and neighborhood environments and investigating the mechanisms linking these contextual characteristics to health across the lifespan. She previously worked as a data manager of the Community Aging in Place – Advancing Better Living for Elders (CAPABLE) studies and is currently a study coordinator and data analyst for the Mobility Asthma Project.
Dr. Linton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Broadly, Dr.Linton’s research uses mixed methods and multi-method designs to evaluate the impacts of social and structural factors on substance use and related sequelae, including HIV and overdose. She has particular interest in evaluating the impacts of housing policies, community development and gentrification on behavioral health in Baltimore and nationwide, and incorporating participatory approaches in her research and community organizing in her practice.
Safiyyah Okoye PhD, RN, FNP-C
Okoye is an assistant professor at Drexel University College of Nursing and Health Professions in the Department of Graduate Nursing. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Health Management and Policy, Dornsife School of Public Health. She studies how socioeconomic position influences older adult physical function via built and social environments, including housing.
Dr. Perrin is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Primary Care in the Schools of Medicine and Nursing. She is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars trained research pediatrician who studies obesity prevention in children at high risk for obesity including Black and Latinx children who have food and housing insecurity and who come from neighborhoods that have been systematically disadvantaged.
Dr. Samuel is a nurse practitioner-turned-researcher who investigates income-based health disparities. Her research examines the pathways that link low income and financial strain to physiologic aging. This includes research investigating the health impact of policies and programs related to economic well-being for low-income households, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. She has also built a body of evidence demonstrating that financial strain contributes to aging-related health disparities. In this research, she has found that housing conditions such as disorder in the home partly account for socioeconomic disparities in functional limitations for older adults.
Dr. Seltzer is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Division of General Pediatrics with joint faculty appointments at the Berman Institute of Bioethics and Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a general pediatrician at the Harriet Lane Clinic. Her research focuses on improving care and quality of life for children with medical complexity and their families, with a particular interest in identifying and addressing the unique challenges they face in regard to housing adequacy and stability.
Trainees
Veronica Eva Helms Garrison
Garrison is a researcher with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development & Research, Office of Research, Evaluation and Monitoring. At HUD, Veronica leads in-house research initiatives focussed on housing as a social determinant of health, substandard housing, and data linkage. In addition to her role at HUD, she is a part-time Doctor of Public Health candidate in the health equity and social justice concentration and a Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Justin Rose
Rose is a PhD student in the Department of Health Policy & Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research explores how housing environment influence community health and safety, with a focus on injury and violence prevention. He received a bachelor’s degree in sociology and French from North Carolina State University and a master’s degree in urban planning from the Harvard Graduate School of design.