Appalachian State University

Dr. Felicia Arriaga is currently a tenure-track assistant professor of sociology in the criminology concentration at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. Her research interests are in the areas of race and ethnicity, immigration, and crimmigration (criminalization of immigration policy and procedure). Her current book project highlights how federal immigration enforcement programs are implemented through local law enforcement in the new immigrant destination of North Carolina. She is originally from Western, North Carolina and completed her undergraduate, Master’s degree, and PhD in sociology at Duke University. She considers herself a public-sociologist and hopes that her scholarship and community work will contribute to more fruitful discussions around crimmigration policies. She is especially interested in how these policies and procedures relate to issues of criminal justice accountability, transparency and reform.

Vanderbilt University

Dr. Derek M. Griffith is professor of Medicine, Health and Society, and he is the founder and director of the Center for Research on Men’s Health at Vanderbilt University. Trained in psychology and public health, Dr. Griffith’s program of research focuses on developing and implementing behavioral and policy strategies to achieve equity in health and well-being by race, ethnicity and gender. He has collaborated with colleagues in Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States to address institutional racism in public health departments and systems, to pursue men’s health equity, and to promote the health and well-being of African American and Latino men through policy and precision lifestyle medicine interventions. He has been the principal investigator of research grants from the American Cancer Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, other foundations, and several institutes within the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Griffith is a contributor to and editor of two recent books – Men’s Health Equity: A Handbook (Routledge, 2019), and Racism: Science and Tools for the Public Health Professional (APHA Press, 2019) – and he has co-authored or provided expert review of reports from the American Psychological Association, Promundo-US, and the World Health Organization. Dr. Griffith was given the Tom Bruce Award by the Community-Based Public Health Caucus of the American Public Health Association in recognition of his research on “eliminating health disparities that vary by race, ethnicity and gender”, and he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior for his significant contributions to the field of health behavior research.

University of Miami

Zinzi Bailey is a social epidemiologist focused on the health impacts of and policy solutions for structural and institutional racism, especially at the intersection of public health and criminal justice. She is also interested in the use of data and indicators in policy and management. She is currently a research scientist at the University of Miami Miller School Of Medicine. From 2015-2017, she was the director of Research and Evaluation at the Center for Health Equity in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). Prior to her position at DOHMH, she was a Montreal Health Equity Research Consortium postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Health and Social Policy at McGill University. She received her Doctor of Science degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Harvard School of Public Health in May 2014 and served as a research fellow with the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management (PCJ) at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) 2011-2014. Zinzi received her Master of Science in Public Health with a concentration in Global Epidemiology from Emory University, conducting research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the (then potential) implementation of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV/AIDS prevention, especially as it related to social network theory, health equity measures, and ethics. Zinzi's previous research, while completing her A.B. in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, focused on Afro-Brazilian political mobilization.  

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health *Moderator

Dr. Anissa I. Vines is an assistant professor and member of the social epidemiology program at the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health and is affiliated with several research centers where she contributes expertise in health equity. She has extensive experience developing and leading initiatives to reduce and eliminate health disparities through research engagement with the community; programs to train health disparities scholars; and development and use of innovative research methods and approaches.