Class Notes: Spring 2019

Leo continues to chug along balancing family life with two bandits (now age 5 and 4) and career at the intersection of law and public health, with focus on substance use and overdose. He loves the work coming out of Brown!

Dr. Sundstrom is a 2018-2019 U.S. Fulbright Scholar researching reproductive justice in Ireland. In the U.S., she is an associate professor of communication and public health at the College of Charleston in South Carolina where she was awarded the William V. Moore Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Award in 2018. Dr. Sundstrom is a member of the graduate faculty and the Director of the Women’s Health Research Team. A leading scholar on health communication, social marketing, and women’s reproductive health, Dr. Sundstrom is the author of Reproductive Justice and Women’s Voices: Health Communication across the Lifespan (2015) along with more than 30 peer-reviewed articles published in top-tier journals, including Contraception, the Journal of Health Communication, and the Maternal and Child Health Journal, among others.

Sofía is an Adolescent Health Specialist at Youth Services of Tulsa (YST). In this role she collaborates with school districts (some of which have the highest rate of teen pregnancy by zip code) in Tulsa County to implement evidence-based, medically accurate, sexual and reproductive health curricula. She also teaches these curricula to provide awareness, education, and resources to prevent pregnancy, STDs, and HIV among youth. Through YST, Sofía has been invited to present inclusive and culturally appropriate sexual and reproductive health information, education, and resources to LGBTQ+ and Latinx youth. In addition, she assists in training other non-profit organizations in Tulsa County on teen pregnancy, STD, and HIV/AIDS. She is also part of the Diversity and Inclusion Training Committee and the Co-Liaison for the Policy and Advocacy work group for the Tulsa Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition. Sofía continues to work with Brown University researchers by assisting with manuscript preparation, analysis, and reviewing her thesis manuscripts for publication.

Valerie was sad to leave the Brown community last fall. After 6 years of schooling followed by two years of full-time employment at the School of Public Health, she accepted a biostatistician position at Boston Children’s Hospital in the Department of Cardiology. Valerie is working on an assortment of projects relating to neurodevelopmental outcomes in children with congenital heart disease, including both clinical trials and registry studies. She still lives on the East Side of Providence, and is looking forward to attending her 5th Year undergraduate reunion in May.

Before graduating from the Master’s degree program, Jerson was accepted by the Ph.D. Program in Brown’s Department of Biostatistics and offered a summer internship as a Data Scientist at Johnson & Johnson in Providence. His capstone work at Johnson & Johnson automated an anomaly detection system that blocked the sale of malicious purchasing patterns. His work was based on a Bayesian forecasting algorithm developed at Facebook for server allocation. Jerson joined Professor Roee Gutman to investigate methods within causal inference and bayesian methods this past fall. They are applying that work to two projects: one that investigates extra-pulmonary cancers and mortality, and another designed to assess the maternal and child health consequences of decisions regarding interventional delivery at 34-38 weeks’ gestation. Jerson is also in the middle of planning a wedding with Ms. Angela Pizzuto, ScM ’18. They got engaged at Brown University during their masters. Their wedding is set for October!

Meg is currently working as a Clinical Research Coordinator in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Mind Research Network. She coordinates multiple studies on the behavioral health, personalities, and neuroscience of incarcerated inmates experiencing substance use disorders. Meg is very excited to be returning to Brown in the Fall of 2019 to begin the doctoral program in neuroscience.