Interventions and Support for Chronic Diseases

Bianca Reid hones a strong passion to enhance and improve the well-being of peoples' lives. Bianca takes pride in following my purpose through health promotion and education. As a Certified Health Education Specialist with the Riverside Community Health Foundation; having the opportunity to make an impact on enhancing lifestyle changes. Her role contains many hats such as; cultivating safe spaces in our programming, health equity, advocacy, collaboration efforts, health strategies, program implementation, evaluation, community event planning. Some efforts to reach the community are through active communication, engagement, empowerment, and sharing experiences through relational equity. A few programs within her scope of work include; the National Diabetes Prevention Program (NDPP) as a Certified Lifestyle Coach; Birth Doula; Certified Childbirth Educator/Mentor; Certified A.F.A.A. Group Fitness Instructor, and so much more. Bianca always looks forward to sharing the wealth of viable resources and information with the community at large.

Molly Alawode is an award-winning public health educator who leverages evidence-based techniques to develop public health campaigns and programs. She has more than 10 years of experience in leading interventions rooted in health behavior change theories, driving content strategy for patient and professional audiences, managing digital health technologies, cultivating strategic partnerships, and measuring outcomes.

With 20 years in the field of health communication, Malaika Hilliard has used public health research principals, evaluation, project management, strategic planning and partnership development to communicate with various audiences to help advance public health. Malaika has been a health communication specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) since 2009 where she has supported public health crises including the H1N1 influenza pandemic, the E-cigarette or Vaping Product Use-Associated Lung Injury (EVALI) outbreak, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Malaika currently works in CDC?s Division of Viral Diseases, where she manages parent outreach communication activities on the Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM) team.

Melanie Paris, M.A., MPH, is Senior Director of Health Initiatives and Education at American Kidney Fund (AKF) in Rockville, Maryland. Melanie joined AKF in 2017 with 14 years of experience in health program implementation and evaluation and analytics with such companies such as Truven Health Analytics, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, and American Heart Association. She holds a bachelor?s degree in Foreign Language Education, and master?s degrees in public health and in African studies, all from The Ohio State University.

Derek is a doctoral student in the department of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston's (UTHealth) School of Public Health. His research broadly focuses on physical activity promotion, organizational readiness and implementation science. Derek also serves as a research coordinator for an NCI-funded R01 study (PI, Fernandez) to develop and validate a measure of organizational readiness for implementation, and has advanced training in using Intervention Mapping to develop and evaluate health promoting interventions.

Dr. Jacob Szeszulski is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. His primary research interest is in the development, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of school- and community-based health promotion programs. Specifically, he is interested in understanding policies, systems, and environments that affect health outcomes and, identifying organizational and contextual factors that affect the adoption, implementation, and maintenance of school- and community-based programs.