In this new position, Dr. Gans will provide planning and guidance for community engagement and will work with community partners to identify issues most important in advancing well-being in our community. She will enhance relationships with our current partners and build new relationships with other community stakeholders. Dr. Gans will oversee and enhance collaborations between community partners and School of Public Health students, faculty, and staff. She will develop programming and training programs for faculty who are interested in conducting community-based research and/or faculty who want to form their own community advisory boards for their research. Dr. Gans will work with Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Melissa Clark, to identify, implement, and track all CEPH (Council on Education for Public Health) requirements related to community engagement, including reporting requirements for the upcoming reaccreditation. She will also implement and track progress on community-focused initiatives in the School’s strategic plan, Advancing Well-Being for All. Dr. Gans will serve as the primary liaison to the School’s Community Advisory Board, organizing regular meetings and engaging the board members.
A graduate of Duke University, Dr. Gans earned advanced degrees from the University of North Carolina and the University of Rhode Island. She has held academic appointments at Brown University since 1992, in addition to positions at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island and, most recently, the University of Connecticut.
Since joining the faculty at Brown, Dr. Gans has taught several courses including Nutrition in the Developing World, Public Health Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies, and Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Public Health Interventions. She has mentored numerous students and led the School’s Institute for Community Health Promotion (now the Center for Health Promotion and Health Equity) from 2011 to 2014.
Author of more than 110 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Gans has over 29 years of experience developing interventions and evaluating research in community-based settings to prevent obesity and improve eating habits and physical activity. Currently she is evaluating a multi-level intervention to improve childcare nutrition and physical activity environments and a web- and text-based intervention to increase physical activity in Latino men.