SOPHIA LEADERSHIP
Executive Leadership Team
Sandra Whitehead, President
Professor and Program Director, George Washington University Sustainable Urban Planning Program.
Sandra has worked on over ten HIAs on a range of topics including climate change, food access, transportation, and brownfield redevelopment. She has trained over 300 public health and planning professionals to conduct HIAs and has worked extensively with communities to implement Health in All Policies (HiAP). At George Washington, Sandra teaches applied courses including the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) class, HIA and health assessment methods.
Contact Sandra by e-mail sandra@hiasociety.org
Katie Hirono, Past President
Principal Consultant, Health & Social Impact, RPS Consulting UK (a Tetra Tech Company)
Katie Hirono received her PhD from the Global Public Health Unit at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focused on the role of participatory engagement in citizens’ juries and health impact assessment for improving policymaking and health equity. She is a former research associate at the Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation at the University of New South Wales, Australia where she specialized in conducting, training and teaching HIA. She has contributed to 30 HIAs throughout her career. Before joining CHETRE, Katie worked at the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to increase the use of health impact assessment in the U.S. Katie also has a long-standing record of helping to support underserved communities. She served on the board of directors for a health clinic in Maryland that serviced undocumented Latino populations, and volunteered as a Spanish medical translator at a free health clinic in Virginia. She has worked as a consultant to the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization in the department of Gender, Diversity and Human Rights. She is also a certified hatha yoga teacher.
Vice President Member Services, vacant
Audrey Boerner, Secretary
Project Manager, Eau Claire City-County Health Department
Audrey is a project manager at the Eau Claire City-County Health Department (Wisconsin) and is part of a diverse team that is working to increase the use of health impact assessment and promote health in all policies in the Eau Claire Community. She previously worked for the Institute for Wisconsin’s Health as an HIA Specialist and led a team on the state’s first regional HIA, which was awarded the Wisconsin Public Health Association Excellence in Public Health Research award. Audrey’s HIA experience has centered on natural resources and built environment issues. Her work also includes developing and supporting community health coalitions, supporting the use of data in decision making, environmental public health initiatives, and grant writing. She has conducted trainings locally on community health data, health impact assessment, and built environment issues.
Oma McLaughlin, Coordinator
Research Coordinator, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington
Oma is the SOPHIA Coordinator and works out of Seattle. She has worked at the community level providing evaluation services to local nonprofits and has worked at an NGO focused on women's health issues in developing countries. She is a research coordinator in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington. Oma has an MPH degree from the University of Washington.
Contact Oma by e-mail at coordinator@hiasociety.org
Steering Committee Members
Marcus Chilaka
Assistant Professor of Public Health at the University of Bradford, UK
Marcus is passionate about public health and contributing to people’s health and wellbeing (in the widest sense) through teaching, research and management techniques. His main research interests are in health impact assessment, health needs assessment, and the wider social and environmental determinants of health. Marcus has done a number of training and consultancy projects in health impact assessment – covering policies, the built environment, development projects and sustainable waste management. He has also contributed to the human health sections of several environmental impact assessment (EIA) Statements.
Gabriell Gassaway
Director of Research, Health Equity Innovation Hub at the University of Louisville
Gabriell is the Director of Research for the Health Equity Innovation Hub at the University of Louisville. Previously she served as the Chief of Staff at the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness where she collaborated with the division directors on department strategy and community relationship building. While at the health department she also supervised the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program where she worked closely with agency and community partners to address lead poisoning by focusing on community education, policy analysis, and development of cross-sector partnerships using a Health in All Policies framework.
Ukaegbu Kingsley O.E
Health Impact Assessment Inspector, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria
Kingsley is a young professional with over three years of HIA-related working experience in the Upstream Oil and Gas Industry with specialties in the use of geospatial intelligence in environmental pollution control with keen skills in geospatial intelligence. He was one of the winners of 2015 Emerging Space Leaders of the International Astronautical Federation and has been the project coordinator for He Space Children Foundation where he developed a STEM program called “Take Space to Grassroots” Nigeria. His professional and research areas are in the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing techniques in developing logic models for HIA in diverse host communities of Niger Delta Oil-Producing and host communities in Nigeria, with focus in Environmental Impact Assessment of development projects and environmental evaluation studies where he coordinates the scoping workshop for stakeholders, community engagements, field data gathering, reporting and mitigation monitoring exercise. Kingsley has led over 20 HIAs and is currently pursuing an advanced degree in Environmental & Public Health. He holds a B.Tech in Environmental Pollution Control and a Masters in Environmental Management.
Cynthia Stone
Retired Professor, Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health
Cynthia has a background in Community Health Nursing, viewing the world through a public health lens. Her funded research includes The Use of a Health Impact Assessment in the Development of a Full Service Grocery Store within a Food Desert (Indiana Minority Health Coalition - 2012/2013), a Community Health Assessment for Parkview Health (2016), and most recently, the Inter-professional Education IU Grand Challenge (2018-2021).
Emily Suter
Doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Emily, MPH, MSP (she/her) is researching Health in All Policies (HiAP) implementation in local governments. Her research interests include advancing policy, environmental, and systems (PSE) change, emphasizing cross-sector collaboration and health equity. Emily is a pracademic with experience leading program, policy, and system change efforts in local and state health departments and non-profits. She has facilitated health impact assessments, community health assessments, community health improvement plans, and strategic planning processes throughout Florida. Her credentials include a Master of Public Health, a Master of Science in Planning, and an undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies with a minor in Psychology from Florida State University.
Kerry Wyss
Director, Environmental Health, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO)
Kerry leads ASTHO’s program implementation and policy development and analysis on environmental health issues such as health in all policies (HiAP), HIA, safe water, and food safety. Since 2008, Kerry has managed ASTHO’s grants to state and local health departments to conduct HIA capacity building activities, collaborated with a broad spectrum of HIA partners across the country, and participated in many HIA and HiAP projects and presentations as a result. Together with her team, Kerry has developed numerous resources related to HIA and HiAP, including policy guides, program reports, and research briefs. Kerry currently leads ASTHO’s monthly HIA practitioner calls and ASTHO’s HiAP advisory groups. Kerry received her Masters of Environmental Management from Duke University where she focused on children’s environmental health and health policy.