2018 Graduate Impact Awards

Every year at Commencement, the School of Public Health honors outstanding graduate public health students with the presentation of Graduate Impact Awards. Meet the 2018 awardees!

Jerson Cochancela

AM, Biostatistics
While at Brown, Jerson has served on the School's Diversity and Inclusion Committee and as a Hassenfeld Scholar in the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute's Childhood Asthma Research Program.
Up next: Jerson will work in analytics at Johnson & Johnson before begining doctoral studies in the Department of Biostatistics at Brown in September.

Kaitlin Gregg Goodman 

MPH
At Brown, Kaitlin was a 2017-18 Graduate Community Fellow in Health and Wellness, where she worked with the Graduate School to improve graduate student physical and mental well-being. She was also a TA for Steve McGarvey's Global Health Nutrition course and served as an Evaluation Intern at the RI Department of Health, working with their Community Health and Equity team. 
Theses: Chronic Disease Health Literacy and Barriers and Facilitators to Type 2 Diabetes and Hypertension Self-Management amongst Older Women in a South African Township AND From Community Health Workers to Community Health Coaches: An Intervention to Reduce Sedentary Behavior to Address Obesity-Related Chronic Disease amongst Older Women in a South African Township
Up next: Kaitlin will remain in the Providence area and continue training as a professional track & field athlete, gearing up for the 2020 Marathon Olympic Trials—her 4th Olympic Trials event! She is also pursuing public health opportunities related to obesity prevention and physical activity promotion, with a focus on low-resource populations, while continuing to work to publish the qualitative research she conducted on diabetes and hypertension amongst older women in South African townships.

Akash Radia

ScM, Behavioral and Social Health Sciences
During his time at Brown, Akash worked in health promotion for Brown's Wellness program.
Thesis: The Combined Effects of Exercise and Mindfulness on Stress Reduction
Up next: Akash is headed to Teachers College, Columbia University, for a one year program in Clinical Exercise Physiology. 
Goal: Akash's goal is to work with patients. He hopes to create programs for the chronically ill that combine exercise, mindfulness, and meditation techniques to help alleviate symptoms of disease.

Alexandra Ellis, MSc

PhD, Health Services Research
While at Brown, Alex co-led a course on evidence synthesis methods, tutored graduate students and post-docs, co-developed and led a club for HSR students to discuss and share challenges with coding, and co-developed and organized the School's Responsible Conduct in Research course. 
Dissertation: Emulators to Facilitate the Development and Analysis of Computationally Expensive Decision Analytic Models in Health; Dissertation Chair: Thomas A. Trikalinos, MD, PhD
Proudest moment: Defending my dissertation :)
Up next: Alex has been working as a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review in Boston since 2017. At the ICER, she leads teams conducting rigorous analyses and critical appraisals of published medical evidence. She also supports methodological developments for both economic evaluations and systematic reviews.