Dr. Ashli Owen-Smith is a behavioral scientist with research interests in health disparities, mental health (specifically serious mental illness, trauma and suicide), chronic pain, and complementary and alternative approaches for complex conditions with both mental and physical causes and manifestations.

Dr. Owen-Smith’s research aims to identify questions that are relevant and important to patients, and to prioritize the translation of research findings into clinical practice. Accordingly, she is interested in conducting patient-centered research and utilizing patient-reported outcomes. She works closely with patients, caregivers, clinicians, and other healthcare stakeholders and is interested in employing qualitative and mixed methods. Learn more about Dr. Owen-Smith.

Dr. Sarah McCool is a Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University.  Dr. McCool has worked in global health in various capacities since 2010. She most recently worked to support a United States Agency for International Development (USAID)- funded child protection/anti-trafficking project in Haiti. She has worked extensively in the area of tuberculosis surveillance and prevention in Asia. She completed a USAID Research & Development fellowship in Indonesia and consulted for a Fortune 500 company on methods for reducing tuberculosis incidence among garment factory workers in South Asia. Dr. McCool was previously the Executive Director of a Haiti-based NGO that provides primary care to the rural southwest population. She has lived in Singapore, Indonesia and Haiti and has studied and learned—to varying degrees—French, Haitian Creole, Bahasa Indonesia and BCS (Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian) as a U.S. Department of State Critical Languages Scholar. Learn more about Dr. McCool.

Angela Glover Blackwell is Founder in Residence at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity for all. Under Angela’s leadership, PolicyLink gained national prominence in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, and infrastructure. Her Radical Imagination podcast debuted in September 2019, and introduces listeners to a world of talented, creative, progressive thinkers whose vision and determination are challenging the status quo to create the change we need.

Prior to founding PolicyLink, Angela served as Senior Vice President at The Rockefeller Foundation. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Urban Strategies Council. From 1977 to 1987, Angela was a partner at Public Advocates. Angela is the co-author of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future, and she authored The Curb Cut Effect, published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in 2017.

As a leading voice in the movement for equity in America, Angela serves on numerous boards. She advised the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve as one of 15 members of its inaugural Community Advisory Council, and in 2020 was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to the state Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery. She is the 2018 recipient of the John W. Gardner Leadership Award, presented by the Independent Sector, and in 2017, she received the Peter E. Haas Public Service Award from the University of California, Berkeley. Learn more about Angela Glover Blackwell.

Dr. Amanda Gilmore is a clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor in the Mark Chaffin Center for Healthy Development and the Department of Health Policy & Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health. She is also affiliated with the Department of Psychology (Clinical and Community) and the Center for Research on Interpersonal Violence.

Dr. Gilmore’s research interests primarily focus on the development and testing of (1) integrated prevention programs for alcohol and drug use, sexual assault, and sexual risk behaviors among high-risk groups including adolescents, college students, and service members, (2) innovative technology-based interventions to improve the rate of treatment access and decrease treatment drop-out among underserved populations; and (3) secondary prevention programs for individuals who experienced recent sexual assault. Throughout her work she focuses on cultural factors related to gender identity, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. She also focuses her work on reducing barriers to accessing treatment for underserved populations. Dr. Gilmore has served as a Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Department of Defense, Office for Victims of Crime and the Department of Homeland Security as well as several internal grant mechanisms. She has more than 80 peer reviewed publications. She is also a licensed clinical psychologist with particular expertise in the treatment of substance use disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, and suicidal behaviors and she has founded and led clinics that have provided treatment to recent sexual assault victims, victims of crime with posttraumatic stress and suicidal behaviors using Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and integrated behavioral health care within an OB/GYN clinic.  Learn more about Dr. Gilmore.

Dr. Heather Bradley is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. She is an epidemiologist whose main research interests include HIV prevention and treatment outcomes, surveillance methodology, and the intersection of infectious diseases with the U.S. opioid epidemic.

Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia State, Dr. Bradley worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in various divisions, including the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention and the Division of STD Prevention. From 2016-2018, she was the Associate Chief for Science for the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, where she oversaw the training and research of more than 50 epidemiologists in the Behavioral and Clinical Surveillance Branch.

Dr. Bradley also worked a senior research associate for the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health from 2005 to 2010. During that time, she managed a multi-site research study evaluating integration of family planning and voluntary HIV counseling and testing services in Ethiopia.