DGHI Postdoctoral Fellows Accept New Positions

Designed to provide postdoctoral trainees with a strong foundation in global health research, the DGHI Postdoctoral Training Program is proud to announce that fellows Jennifer Toller Erausquin and Nina Yamanis have accepted positions to further their research on health disparities, in two very different capacities.

Yamanis will become Assistant Professor of International Development at American University’s School of International Service where she will teach courses on health in developing countries and micropolitics of development. Yamanis will also build upon five years of qualitative and quantitative field research on the social networks of young, urban men in Tanzania and their influence on the men’s HIV risk behavior and partner violence. She and colleagues are currently piloting a combined health promotion/microfinance intervention for the men.

Erausquin, will become Senior Advisor for Healthy Schools within the North Carolina Division of Public Health in the Chronic Disease and Injury Section. She will work with the Department of Public Instruction to incorporate environmental, policy, and health education interventions in the public schools. The work fits well with her interests in communities and health, as well as structural interventions to reduce risk for chronic and infectious diseases.

As a DGHI Postdoctoral Fellow, Erausquin conducted research to understand the effects of a community-led structural intervention to reduce HIV risk among sex workers in Rajahmundry, India. With collaborating researchers at American, Yale, and George Washington Universities, she examined policy and social environmental influences including police-sex worker interactions and the role of sex work venues on HIV risk behaviors. Erausquin also furthered her skills in methods to account for such “contextual” influences on health and behavior, applying multilevel and spatial analytic techniques to her longstanding work with women and HIV vulnerability in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

“We have been very privileged to host two outstanding post-doctoral fellows at DGHI over the past two years,” said John Bartlett, faculty director of the DGHI Postdoctoral Training Program.  “Drs. Jennifer Toller Erausquin and Nina Yamanis have added their energy and expertise to the DGHI community, and they have grown as global health scholars.  We wish them great success as they pursue exciting new career opportunities.”