WORKSHOP LEADERS
Dionne Stephens, PhD, is a health inequities researcher whose work focuses on the intersections of culture, sexuality and health among marginalized populations. A Professor in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University (FIU) in the United States, she holds affiliated faculty member status with the Center for Qualitative Research (CQ; University of Toronto), Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program (FIU), and Center for Women and Gender Studies (FIU). Her research broadly examines the ways meaning constructions contributes to health inequities across diverse populations. Currently, she works with community partners in Miami, Colombia, and India to identify cultural and contextual factors influencing perceptions of various forms of violence and stigmatization. Dr. Stephens integrates socio historical, intersectional, and psychological lenses to explore these phenomena primarily using methods. Additionally, using community engaged research (CEnR) practices allows her to center research collaborations with partners outside of academia to ensure the “real world” applicability and relevance of these efforts. Her qualitative research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Energy, Meta (Facebook), and the American Psychological Association.
Elizabeth Rhodes, PhD, MS is an Assistant Professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health. As her primary focus, Elizabeth conducts implementation research to optimize the delivery and scale-up of interventions that improve maternal and child nutrition, prevent and control type 2 diabetes and hypertension, and promote health equity – for example, breastfeeding peer counseling, fruit and vegetable prescription, and interventions to increase early detection and control of postpartum hypertension. Elizabeth also leads and collaborates on the qualitative components of several multi-site, mixed methods implementation research studies as well as methodological research projects to develop innovative qualitative methods for use in a wide range of implementation research studies, such as rapid analytic techniques. To build qualitative research capacity, she teaches graduate students, researchers, and health practitioners, both in the US and internationally.
She has worked in the US with communities of color and other underserved populations, Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Panama), South Asia (India, Nepal), and Africa (Malawi, South Africa). Elizabeth earned an MS in Social and Behavioral Sciences from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a PhD in Nutrition and Health Sciences from Emory University. She was a Fogarty Global Health Predoctoral Fellow from 2016-17 and a Fogarty Global Health Postdoctoral Fellow from 2018-19.
Email address: elizabeth.rhodes@emory.edu