Committee on the Advancement of Women Faculty (CAWF)

Adrianna is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Politics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research interests include the politics of health reform, barriers to take-up and retention of subsidized health insurance, and program evaluation for health policy.

She graduated with a PhD from the political analysis track of Harvard University’s interdisciplinary health policy program in May 2021. She also holds a Master in Public Health and a Master in Public Policy from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. From June 2015 to June 2016, she was a David A. Winston Health Policy Fellow in Washington, DC.

Trained in social epidemiology and planned behavior change, my research focuses on identifying successful, efficient, and cost-effective strategies to modify children’s environments to make the healthiest choice the easiest choice and to help children form healthy habits for life. I do this through conducting both intervention studies and epidemiological studies. My work is grounded in social ecological theory and the investigation of how children’s environments can be feasibly changed to promote healthy eating habits and less screen time. This has resulted in work on developing valid, easy-to-use measures of dietary intake, feeding behaviors, nutrition policies, and the nutrition environment in child care and school settings; conducting and evaluating randomized, controlled trials of school- and afterschool-based interventions; and analyzing national datasets to identify important determinants of nutrition behaviors and obesity risk for children. At the Prevention Research Center, I collaborate with colleagues and community partners to identify and evaluate usable strategies for increasing drinking water access and reducing intake of sugary drinks in school, afterschool, and child care settings. With the Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost Effectiveness Study (CHOICES) team, I also study the cost-effectiveness of different policy strategies to prevent childhood obesity in early care and education settings. As a a faculty member with the Strategic Training Initiative for the

My major area of research and teaching is cancer epidemiology. I am the Director of the Cancer Epidemiology and Cancer Prevention Program (Area of Interest) within the Department of Epidemiology here at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). In addition, I am Leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

After receiving my doctoral degree in epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (formerly the Harvard School of Public Health), I trained as a post-doctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. At the Karolinska, I gained expertise in using nationwide health registries to examine cancer etiology and formed a long-term partnership with epidemiology colleagues in the Nordic countries. For the past 9 years, my primary faculty appointment has been at the Harvard Chan School, where my research uses integrative molecular epidemiology approaches within cohorts in the United States and globally to investigate research questions focused on cancer etiology, mortality, and survivorship. I serve as co-Principal Investigator for the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (https://sites.sph.harvard.edu/hpfs/) as well as IRONMAN (see below). Below is a summary of some major areas of interest.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The primary aim of my research is to develop statistical methods that enable maximally rigorous and impactful uses of data to answer environmental health questions. In particular, my recent work centers on the following topics:

(1) Methods for estimation of the health impacts of complex, nationwide environmental regulations
(2) Integration of causal inference principles and methods into epidemiological cancer cluster analyses
(3) New causal inference approaches for studying the effects of environmental exposures on childhood cancer
(4) Methods for studying the impacts of climate, heat, and natural disasters on health and predicting the health impacts of future extreme climate events

Beyond causal inference, my methodological research interests include machine learning, Bayesian methods, latent variable models, spatial statistics, and time series analysis. I have applied these methods to investigate scientific questions not only in environmental health contexts but also in reproductive epidemiology, neuroimaging, social science, and cell biology.

Sheila Isanaka conducts large-scale epidemiological studies in complex settings, using both observational and randomized designs, to inform practice and policy in global nutrition. Her research is intentionally developed with and for practitioners and policy makers and aims to bring the best in study design and data analysis to challenging settings. This approach delivers the most solid scientific evidence possible to the most appropriate audience and assures that findings can be translated to shape programs, policy, and research.

Since 2007, Sheila’s work has focused on the study of severe acute malnutrition (SAM), informing practice around diagnosis, estimation, treatment and prevention. Over 52 million children worldwide suffer from acute malnutrition, with 875,000 deaths in children < 5 years annually attributable to this condition. Her work also spreads more widely across disciplines to explore the interaction between malnutrition and infectious disease and the role of maternal nutrition in child health and development.

I am a behavioral scientist with expertise in implementation science, cancer disparities, and community-based participatory research. My work focuses on strengthening systems in underserved communities to leverage the best available evidence for cancer prevention and control.

My research falls into three streams. First, I design and evaluate workforce development interventions to promote the use of research evidence within community-based organizations in the US and India. This work also includes examinations of the impacts of staff social networks on the uptake and use of research evidence. Second, I study the adaptation of evidence-based preventive services for use in underserved communities in the US and India. My goal is to design practice-focused guidelines for strategic adaptation so that implementing organizations can increase the impact of available interventions by leveraging practice- and research-based expertise. The third stream of my work focuses on methods to incorporate practitioner expertise into the health promotion evidence base more effectively. This includes evaluations of strategies to identify and engage critical implementation stakeholders as well as technology-based methods to gather stakeholder insight efficiently. Much of my work is conducted in partnership with community-based organizations and coalitions.

Shruthi Mahalingaiah is an assistant professor of environmental, reproductive, and women’s health in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public health. She serves clinically as a physician specializing in ovulation disorders, reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Research

Dr. Mahalingaiah’s research seeks to understand the association of environmental and modifiable risk factors on human reproduction as they pertain to the etiology and prevention of gynecological disease. Through physiology-informed research, she focuses on identifying environmental exposures associated with the development of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and metabolic sequelae. Her research encompasses three distinct areas: 1.) Air pollution and gynecologic disease incidence including cardiometabolic risk across the reproductive lifespan; 2.) Environmental toxicant exposures in the perinatal, perimenarchal, and adult time window with placental disease and ovulatory disorders; and 3.) Creation of diverse cohorts to study women’s health across the reproductive lifespan. She is currently funded by the March of Dimes, National Science Foundation, and is on the leadership team of the Apple Women’s Health study.

She was awarded the 2016 Endocrine Society Early Investigator award, an Ellison Family Foundation award, and an RSDP seed grant in 2017–2018 to create a pilot on…