Thursday, June 12, 2025
2-4 p.m. ET
Join AAMC CHARGE (Collaborative for Health Equity: Act, Research, Generate Evidence) for a preview of research to achieve health equity. This webinar will feature five AAMC CHARGE members and their teams. Each team has been awarded access to the AAMC Center for Health Justice’s polling data, to answer their own research questions. This webinar will provide a glimpse into these five studies’ preliminary results to answer important health equity-focused questions to inform policy, and will include time for a Q&A.
Presentations
Fostering health justice: Analyzing patients’ perceptions of trust and trustworthiness in health care in Northeastern communities
Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine
Scranton, Pa.
Mushfiq Tarafder, PhD, MPH, MBBS
Mushfiq Tarafder, PhD, MPH, MBBS, is an associate professor of epidemiology and a population health researcher at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. His areas of interest are disease screening, health behavior, and vaccine and infectious diseases epidemiology. At the School of Medicine, he serves as the faculty lead for the Population Health theme in the MD program and as the course director for the Principles of Population Health course in the master of biomedical sciences program. He also serves on an Institutional Review Board for graduate medical education.
Ryan Weber, PhD
Ryan Weber, PhD, is an associate professor of medical humanities at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, where he also serves as lead for the Personal and Professional Development theme. His research and publications focus on disability studies, the history of eugenics, representations of pain, music and medicine, the history of nutrition, pedagogical methods for employing vulnerability as a critical lens, and managing the metacognitive effects of uncertainty in medicine. He also serves on the editorial board for the International Journal of Music, Health, and Wellbeing.
Identifying priorities in child health to inform a national health equity agenda
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
Chicago, Ill.
Brian Feinstein, PhD
Brian Feinstein, PhD (he/him), is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. His research focuses on understanding and reducing the health disparities affecting sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations, especially bisexual, pansexual, and queer (bi+) individuals. In particular, his work focuses on understanding how different types of stress (e.g., discrimination, internalized stigma, rejection sensitivity) influence mental health and substance use, and developing and testing interventions to improve health in SGM populations. He is also an associate editor for the journals Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity and Behavior Therapy.
Em Shea
Em Shea, BS (she/they), is a second-year master’s student in clinical counseling at Rosalind Franklin University. They earned bachelor’s degrees in clinical-community psychology and political science, with a minor in LGBTQ+ studies, from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and have worked on research related to perinatal depression prevention and mindfulness, stress regulation, and generational transmission of stress-related disorders. Their current research is related to child health priorities and health equity. Clinically, Em is interested in working with LGBTQ+ individuals across the lifespan. Outside of school, they enjoy baking, taking her dog, Olive, on adventures, and learning to crochet.
Understanding the drivers and modifiers of race/ethnic inequities in ease of and satisfaction with access to health care
Rosalind Franklin University
Chicago, Ill.
Amanda Simanek, PhD, MPH
Amanda Simanek, PhD, MPH, is an associate professor in the Chicago Medical School, and founding director of the Michael Reese Foundation Center for Health Equity Research, at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. Her research focuses on understanding biologic pathways by which social inequities in health develop across the life course and are perpetuated across generations, assessing best practices in science communication and infodemic management, interrogating drivers of socioeconomic and race/ethnic inequities in access to health care, and identifying ways to better address social needs in the context of health care delivery.
Why are we overlooking disability in DEI and access to care?
Blue Shield of California
Long Beach, Calif.
Lynda Douge, MS
Lynda Douge, MS, is the project lead for Blue Shield of California's AAMC CHARGE research. She holds a master of science degree and is currently a principal program manager at Blue Shield of California, focusing on growth and strategic partnership and planning. Her approach emphasizes keeping the individual (patient/member) front and center in all health care decisions. She is an outspoken advocate for disability rights and equity, and is herself a survivor of a traumatic brain injury, with visible and invisible disabilities. Douge is actively involved in numerous initiatives, including leading a disability equity working group, and is cochair of the Disability Inclusion Alliance employee resource group at Blue Shield.
Angela Garcia, PhD
Angela Garcia, PhD, is the institutional data lead for Blue Shield of California's AAMC CHARGE research. She holds a doctorate in biological anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she studied how social and environmental stressors impact neuroendocrine and immune regulation and disease pathways in Honduran immigrant women. She is a former National Institutes of Health Butler-Williams scholar and currently works in research and evaluation at Blue Shield of California, where she evaluates health-program outcomes in terms of clinical impact, health equity, and cost effectiveness. She is cochair of the LGBTQ+ employee resource group at Blue Shield of California.
Young adults and health care access through a financial equity lens using ordinal logistic regression modeling
Young Invincibles
Washington, D.C.
Lynneah Ciera Brown, PhD
Lynneah Ciera Brown, PhD, is the director of policy research for Young Invincibles. She leads the research portfolios on policy issues affecting young adults in the areas of health care, higher education, workforce policy, and financial health. She has worked on a range of research topics that include the importance of Social Security for young adults, expanding the earned income tax credit, shifting the narrative of apprenticeships in Texas, and learning more about the young adult worker perspective. In prior positions she worked on projects such as state performance funding, state funding equity audits, college closures, college completion, direct admissions, free college, free application for federal student aid simplification, and organizational membership reporting. She has conducted quantitative and qualitative research in her current and prior positions, using the data to support issues that impact not just young adults but all Americans.
Mina Schultz, MPH, MA
Mina Schultz, MPH, MA, is the health policy and advocacy manager at Young Invincibles, where she advocates for policies that will lead to more equitable, affordable, and accessible health care for young adults. From assisting rural West Virginians with finding affordable health insurance to conducting community outreach and health literacy education in New York City, she has dedicated over 10 years to helping people access health care. She earned her MA in French and foreign language education from the University of Missouri and her master of public health from The George Washington University.