Current Collaborating Mentors
Jerel Calzo, PhD, MPH
Professor, Division of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science, San Diego State University School of Public Health; Core Investigator, Institute for Behavioral and Community Health
Dr. Jerel Calzo is a developmental psychologist, Professor in Health Promotion and Behavioral Science at San Diego State University School of Public Health, and a Core Investigator at the Institute for Behavioral and Community Health, where he directs the Action Research on Community Health Equity and Stigma (ARCHES) Lab (arches.sdsu.edu). Dr. Calzo’s research delineates the developmental course of health disparities connected to gender, sexual orientation, and other social determinants of health (e.g., housing), and identifies mechanisms that interventionists can leverage in strategic contexts to promote health and positive social development among adolescents and young adults. His work on body image and eating disorders focuses on advancing health equity among understudied and underserved populations, including boys and men and LGBTQ+ populations. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan and MPH from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Nancy Costello, JD
Associate Clinical Professor of Law; Director, First Amendment Clinic; Director, Free Expression Online Library and Resource Center. Michigan State University College of Law
Professor Costello teaches Research, Writing and Advocacy from an Intellectual Property Law Perspective and teaches student clinicians in the MSU First Amendment Law Clinic. She has also taught Media Law, Copyright Law, and Intellectual Property in the Internet Age. Before joining the law college she practiced in the area of commercial litigation, defamation law, ebusiness law and collections litigation for the law firm of Dickinson Wright PLLC in Detroit. She received her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law where she served as an editor of the Law Review and president of the Women’s Law Caucus. Professor Costello is a crucial component of STRIPED’s work on the development of legislation to protect youth from the dangers of social media.
Allegra Gordon, ScD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health
Dr. Allegra Gordon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health. She received her MPH in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University and her doctorate in Social & Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Women, Gender, and Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In her research Dr. Gordon uses quantitative and qualitative methods to understand the mental and physical health impacts of discrimination and the effects of gender socialization and gender norms on the health of young people across sexual orientations and gender identities. She is funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse to study how changes in the social and policy environment relate to substance use and health-related quality of life among sexual minorities. Recent projects have included research on weight stigma among sexual minority young adults and a study of gender expression, peer victimization, and eating disorders symptoms among U.S. high school students. In collaboration with The Fenway Institute, she has conducted qualitative research on body image and weight control behaviors among low-income transgender women. She is currently working on an exploratory study on appearance ideals and body image concerns among LGBTQ college students and on a pilot study examining the role of intimate partnerships in relation to body image and sexual health among transgender and non-binary young adults.
Michael Long, ScD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Department of Prevention and Community Health, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University
Dr. Michael Long is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University. He conducts research at the intersection of obesity epidemiology and quantitative policy analysis, with the goal of identifying cost-effective and politically feasible policy solutions to the obesity epidemic. He is currently working on the CHOICES (Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost-Effectiveness Study) team led by Steven Gortmaker, evaluating the cost-effectiveness of more than 40 policy and programmatic approaches to prevent childhood obesity in the United States. Previously, Dr. Long mentored Brown University MPH student Esther Li and is now working STRIPED trainee Cindy Hu to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of six unique strategies designed for eating disorders prevention and early detection. Dr. Long earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics from Princeton University and a Master of Public Health degree from Yale, where he worked at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. He earned his Doctor of Science degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Social and Behavioral Sciences, and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Harvard focusing on obesity epidemiology and cost-effectiveness analysis.
Rachel Plummer, MPH
Director of Programs and Public Policy, Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee
Rachel Plummer is the Director of Programs and Public Policy at Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC), the Cambridge’s designated anti-poverty community action agency. In this role, she advocates for policies to end poverty and hunger and promote equity, as well as providing support to CEOC’s programs. Rachel received her Master of Public Health in Nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from William and Mary. With STRIPED, she has been leading advocacy efforts in Massachusetts to ban body size discrimination, including, liaising with community partners across the state and country, and mentoring high school students in gaining experience and building skills for legislative advocacy to ban body size discrimination.
Amanda Raffoul, PhD, MSc
Assistant Professor, Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto
Dr. Raffoul is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. She received her MSc and PhD from the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Raffoul joined STRIPED as a postdoctoral fellow in 2020, funded by a three-year Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship, where she worked on several projects that examined policy approaches to prevent eating disorders, ranging from government policy to social media regulation. Her multi- and mixed-methods research aims to investigate and promote the uptake of evidence-based policies to prevent eating disorders and promote healthy dietary patterns among populations. In collaboration with national and international organizations, she collaborates on knowledge dissemination and legislative advocacy efforts to regulate social media misinformation related to weight and nutrition, ban the sale of harmful weight-loss and muscle-building pills to minors, and prohibit weight discrimination. In collaboration with affected communities, her current research aims to explore the differential impacts of nutrition policy on disordered eating risk and examine avenues through which youth engagement in knowledge translation may impact decision-makers’ use of research evidence in nutrition policy.
Kendrin Sonneville, ScD, RD, LDN
Assistant Professor, Nutritional Sciences, University of Michigan School of Public Health
Dr. Kendrin Sonneville is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and is a Collaborating Mentor for the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Sonneville is a registered dietitian, behavioral scientist, and public health researcher whose research is focused on the prevention of eating disorders. The goal of her research program is to understand how to “help without harming,” specifically, how to best promote health and nutrition among youth without inadvertently increasing body dissatisfaction, weight stigma, preoccupation with food and weight, and disordered eating. Dr. Sonneville received a Bachelor of Science in Nutritional Sciences and a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics from Michigan State University, a Master of Science in Human Nutrition from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, and Doctor of Science in Public Health Nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Sonneville is the former Director of Nutrition Training in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Health at Boston Children’s Hospital and was the co-director of STRIPED for several years, providing mentorship to numerous trainees and spearheading STRIPED’s new line of research and training in cost-effectiveness analysis of eating disorders preventive interventions.
Alvin Tran, ScD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Department of Health Administration and Policy; Assistant Provost for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Director, Bachelor of Science in Public Health Program, University of New Haven
Dr. Alvin Tran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy, and Assistant Provost for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. His research focuses on the intersection of body image, disordered eating behaviors, health policy, and racial and sexual minority health. At the University of New Haven, Dr. Tran leads the WeEmbody (or WE) Lab, which is a research working group of public health professionals and students. Dr. Tran is a member of the Academy for Eating Disorders and currently serves as a co-chair for the organization’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. He is an advocate for the prevention of eating disorders and was the 2018 recipient of the SPARK Impact Award for Activism and Issue Advocacy by the City of Boston. Dr. Tran is also the recipient of the 2023 Karen Denard Goldman Health Education Mentor Award from the Society for Public Health Education.
Davene Wright, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Program in Health Economic and Outcomes Methodology, University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute
Dr. Davene Wright is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at University of Washington and an Investigator in the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development at the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. She completed her PhD in Health Policy and Decision Sciences at Harvard University. Previously, Dr. Wright worked with STRIPED trainees Yushan Jiang and Hyungi LeAnn Noh to carry out what may have been the first-ever U.S. cost-effectiveness study of eating disorders screening. Now, Dr. Wright is collaborating on a new cost-effectiveness analysis study of six unique strategies designed for eating disorders prevention and early detection. Dr. Wright is interested in how stakeholders (be they patients, providers, or healthcare payers) make decisions about the use and allocation of healthcare resources and how they can make better decisions in the presence of uncertainty, complexity, and competing values. This field draws upon health economics, psychology, and epidemiology, among other disciplines. Her research focuses on the supply and demand of effective and efficient healthcare for children with obesity.
Past Collaborating Mentors
Jennifer Pomeranz, JD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Policy and Management, College of Global Public Health, New York University
Jennifer L. Pomeranz is a public health law and policy researcher. Her research interests include marketing, labeling, First Amendment protection, and youth access issues related to food and beverages, over-the-counter diet drugs, and dietary supplements. She additionally researches and publishes on the topics of preemption of public health, civil rights, and social justice policies, firearm safety, and innovative regulatory strategies to address public health problems, such as diet-related chronic disease. Ms. Pomeranz is an Assistant Professor at the College of Global Public Health at New York University. Previously, she was the Director of Legal Initiatives at the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. She is currently the Policy Chair of the Health Law Section of the American Public Health Association. She earned her Juris Doctorate from Cornell Law School, and her Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Katherine Record, JD, MPH, MA
Executive Director, Lahey MassHealth Accountable Care Organization, Lahey Clinical Performance Network
Katherine Record is the Executive Director of the Lahey MassHealth Accountable Care Organization (ACO), a risk contract designed to improve the efficiency and quality of care delivered to Medicaid patients within the state. In this capacity, she oversees care management and quality improvement initiatives aiming to reduce total cost of care and improve the ability of primary care providers to manage patient care. With STRIPED, Katherine has examined the ways that federal regulation could prohibit the fashion industry from employing severely underweight runway models, which would both protect the health of these individuals as well as disconnect skeletal frames from the epitome of female beauty and worth. Prior to joining Lahey, Katherine was the deputy director of Behavioral Health Integration & Accountable Care at the Health Policy Commission. She has also worked at the Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation and the O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law at Georgetown University on issues related to the expansion and standardization of mental health courts, healthcare reform implementation, public health law reform, firearms control, and global preparation for pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent the transmission of HIV (PrEP). Katherine received her JD, cum laude, and masters in Psychology at Duke University, her MPH from Harvard’s School of Public Health, and her BA, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University. She is licensed to practice law in the State of New York.
Mihail Samnaliev, PhD
Assistant Professor in Pediatrics, Department of General Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School and Health Economist, Clinical Research Center, Boston Children’s Hospital
Dr. Mihail Samnaliev is a senior health economist in the Clinical Research Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Assistant Professor at the Department of General Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School. He is interested in applied economic evaluations that can be used to improve the economic efficiency of the healthcare system. Over the past decade he has been a co-investigator on numerous research grants involving cost, cost-effectiveness, and cost-benefit analysis of health programs and interventions. Dr. Samnaliev regularly consults researchers on matters related to collection and analysis of cost data, cost-effectiveness, and cost-benefit analysis, and research design of observational studies. He previously has mentored STRIPED trainee LeAnn Noh on an economic pilot study to estimate the cost of eating disorders to our nation’s healthcare system and society.
