CDC Community Guide Staff Members

Biographical Sketches

Shawna L. Mercer, MSc, PhD
Shawna L. Mercer, MSc, PhD is director of The Guide to Community Preventive Services. She previously served as senior advisor and health scientist on the Science Vision and Alliances Team in CDC’s Office of the Chief Science Officer where she led a number of initiatives aimed at bridging gaps between research, practice and policy and developed CDC-wide mechanisms and information systems to ensure CDC’s compliance with Office of Management and Budget requirements for scientific information. Dr. Mercer earlier served as a senior scientist and deputy director of the Office of Science and Extramural Research in CDC’s Public Health Practice Program Office where she co-developed and oversaw a $12M extramural grant funding program for community-based participatory prevention research and led a research and evaluation program aimed at strengthening the rigor of participatory research and assessing its value and benefits for bridging research and practice. Dr. Mercer also served as an associate service fellow on the Global Team in the Office on Smoking and Health, where she explored the benefits of participatory research approaches for helping states to implement best practices for tobacco control following the Master Settlement Agreement.

Before joining CDC, Dr. Mercer worked at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and at the University of Toronto as an investigator and research associate on numerous cancer screening research grants and projects. She also worked as the first evaluation coordinator for the province-wide Ontario Breast Screening Program.

Dr. Mercer has a master’s degree in health behavior from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and a doctoral degree in epidemiology from the University of Toronto. She has a growing number of publications, serves as an editor for the American Journal of Health Promotion, and is a reviewer for a large number of journals.

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Randy W. Elder, PhD, MEd
Randy W. Elder joined The Guide to Community Preventive Services as scientific director for systematic reviews in April of 2005. He oversees the development of Community Guide methods and ensures the methodological rigor of the systematic reviews. He earned a master’s degree in education with a focus on applied measurement and evaluation from the University of Alberta and a doctorate in clinical psychology from Emory University. Dr. Elder joined CDC’s Injury Center in 1999 to conduct research in the areas of alcohol-impaired driving and alcohol epidemiology. During his tenure there, he conducted several Community Guide reviews on the effectiveness of community-based interventions to prevent alcohol-impaired driving. In recognition of the contribution of these reviews to traffic safety, his team received several awards, including MADD’s Ralph W. Hingson Research to Practice Award and the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service.

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Theresa Ann Sipe, PhD, MPH, CNM
Theresa Ann Sipe has served as the statistician for The Guide to Community Preventive Services since August 2005. Dr. Sipe assists the teams conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses with statistical analyses. In addition, she is the co-coordinating scientist for a systematic review on HIV prevention programs for adolescents and the coordinating scientist for a systematic review on mental health. Prior to joining CDC, Dr. Sipe worked for 10 years at Georgia State University where she conducted data analyses, managed large datasets and held state contracts for the evaluation of the Georgia Fatherhood Program. Dr. Sipe is a Registered Nurse and a Certified Nurse-Midwife. She received her doctorate in research, measurement and statistics in education from Georgia State University (1995), and a master of public health in health education and a master of nursing from Emory University (1986)

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Sajal K. Chattopadhyay, PhD
Sajal K. Chattopadhyay is the principal economic advisor for The Guide to Community Preventive Services. He directs the review, analysis, and use of economic findings for community-wide health promotion and disease prevention interventions previously reviewed for their effectiveness. Dr. Chattopadhyay’s prior positions at CDC include serving as a senior economist at the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control and as the chief of the Prevention Effectiveness Branch in the Epidemiology Program Office. Before joining CDC, he was a member of the economics faculty at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Chattopadhyay is a founding member of the International Health Economics Association. He coordinated the collaborative work between CDC and the Institute of Medicine on re-estimating health benefits of federal regulations with different health-related quality-of-life measures and, more recently, served as an economic advisor for the Purchaser’s Guide to Clinical Preventive Services. Dr. Chattopadhyay received his doctorate in economics with a specialization in health economics from the University of Connecticut in 1991.

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David P. Hopkins MD, MPH
David P. Hopkins is a medical epidemiologist with The Guide to Community Preventive Services. Dr. Hopkins graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of California at San Francisco in 1989. He completed his post-graduate training at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and was board certified in internal medicine in 1992. He then received a master of public health in epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993. Dr. Hopkins joined the CDC as an epidemic intelligence service fellow in 1995 and served for two years with the Tuberculosis Control Unit of the New York State Health Department. He joined the Community Guide in 1997 as a physician in the United States Public Health Service. Dr. Hopkins has worked on a variety of projects for the Community Guide including a systematic review of tobacco prevention and control interventions, a set of reviews regarding interventions to increase vaccination coverage in high-risk adults, and reviews of interventions appropriate for worksites. His current projects include updating existing Community Guide reviews, and assisting in the development of new intervention reviews for the topic of asthma.

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Laurie M. Anderson, PhD, MPH
Laurie M. Anderson is a health scientist conducting evidence-based reviews of community interventions for The Guide to Community Preventive Services. She designs, implements, and directs research to provide information on the effectiveness of interventions for the control and prevention of illness and injury; coordinates national systematic review teams and content experts in development of conceptual models that direct the search for evidence in the scientific literature; evaluates the design of intervention research studies to answer research questions; and evaluates the quality of execution of these studies, including sampling, measurement, analysis and interpretation of results. Dr. Anderson trains and supervises research assistants and literature review teams and develops and improves methods for evaluation synthesis. She received her doctorate in public health from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health in 1994 and her master of public health in epidemiology from Emory University in 1990.

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Carolyn Beeker, PhD
Carolyn Beeker is a behavioral scientist conducting evidence-based reviews of community interventions for The Guide to Community Preventive Services. In collaboration with Dr. Jeff Herbst of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention, she conducted a systematic review of behavioral risk reduction interventions for men who have sex with men. She is now leading a review of abstinence and risk reduction interventions to reduce adolescent pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections. Originally trained as a clinical psychologist, Carolyn later trained in Sociology and has been at CDC since 1990.

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Robert A. Hahn, PhD, MPH
Robert A. Hahn has served as an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta since 1986 and is a member of the Senior Biomedical Research Service. He has conducted anthropological and public health research in Peru, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, Niger, and the Cameroon, and published studies on a variety of topics, including diverse chronic diseases, syphilis and AIDS, obstetrics and internal medicine in the U.S., perinatal ethics, racial and ethnic classification in public health, poverty and death, blindness and breast cancer, and the nocebo phenomenon. He is the author of Sickness and Healing: An Anthropological Perspective (Yale, 1995) and editor of Anthropology in Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society (Oxford, 1999). In 1998 - 1999, he worked as a Capitol Hill fellow in the House of Representatives Committee on Veterans' Affairs and in the office of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter. Dr. Hahn is currently coordinating scientist of systematic reviews on violence prevention and excessive alcohol consumption for The Guide to Community Preventive Services. He received his doctorate in anthropology at Harvard University (1976) and his master of public health in epidemiology from the University of Washington (1986).

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Robin Soler, PhD
Robin Soler is coordinating scientist for the worksite health promotion reviews being conducted by The Guide to Community Preventive Services. In this role she supervises fellows and collaborates with other members of the Community Guide to lead systematic reviews and further develop and document Community Guide methods. Prior to joining the Community Guide, Robin was a technical director for ORC Macro where she coordinated an evidence-based treatment study, a study of family involvement in children's mental health services, and technical assistance and training for a national evaluation project of children's mental health services. From 1996–2000 she served as faculty associate at the Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health and project director for Project Excellence, a substance use prevention program for African American children living in Atlanta public housing complexes. She holds a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan and is the mother of two young children.

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Tony Pearson-Clarke, MS
Tony Pearson-Clarke (General Dynamics Information Technology) coordinates publications for The Guide to Community Preventive Services. He has worked with the Community Guide since receiving his master’s degree in technical and professional communications from Southern Polytechnic State University in 2001, and brings perspectives from career and in-depth volunteer experiences including engineering and technical writing; nonprofit organization around poverty and food availability; and exercise and healthy diet. With the Community Guide he has worked with scientists, journal editors, and web designers to prepare many documents—including several from the violence prevention, cancer, and social environment reviews—for publication or posting to the Community Guide web site.

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Deborah R. Bauer, MPH, RN, CHES
Deborah R. Bauer (McKing Consulting) is partnership & dissemination co-coordinator for The Guide to Community Preventive Services, a role that focuses on optimizing relationships with Liaisons to the Task Force on Community Preventive Services and other Community Guide stakeholders and includes dissemination of Task Force recommendations. Before joining the Community Guide, Ms. Bauer served as coordinator of the CDC Healthier Worksite Initiative. She has many years experience in worksite wellness for various sizes of public and private sector organizations. Ms. Bauer’s public health interests include cancer prevention and control, having served as statewide professional education consultant for the Georgia Department of Human Resources Breast and Cervical Cancer Program.

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Krista Hopkins Cole, MPH
Krista Hopkins Cole (McKing Consulting) is partnership & dissemination co-coordinator for The Guide to Community Preventive Services. In this role, she works closely with her co-coordinator to optimize relationships with Liaisons to the Task Force on Community Preventive Services and disseminate Task Force recommendations. Before joining the Community Guide, Ms. Cole served as a health communication specialist for CDC’s Injury Center where she led communication activities for the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention and worked to promote the application of behavioral sciences to injury prevention. She also has experience leading health communication activities for state and county agencies as well as nonprofit organizations. Ms. Cole has a master of public health in health behavior, health education from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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Qiana Baker, MPH
Qiana Baker is an ORISE research fellow on the worksite review team at The Guide to Community Preventive Services. The present review investigates the effectiveness of programs to improve influenza vaccination rates in worksites. Among a host of other tasks, Ms. Baker contributes to the redesign of the Community Guide web site and works with a coordinating scientist to translate scientific information into user-friendly materials for various audiences. Ms. Baker obtained her bachelor’s degree in biology from Xavier University of Louisiana, where she double minored in chemistry and Spanish. She also holds a master of public health in behavioral science and health education from Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. Before joining the Community Guide, she worked as a student intern at the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health. Ms. Baker plans to pursue a doctorate in public health.

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Marilyn Batan, MPH (DNPAO)
Marilyn Batan is an ORISE fellow and public health analyst with the translation of interventions for dissemination and evaluations (TIDE) review team in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity.  She provides assistance to update the Community Guide chapter on obesity and related promising practices for the worksite and community settings. She assists in conducting literature reviews, abstracting articles, evaluating, collecting, managing data abstractions, and keeping databases for the obesity settings. She currently is preparing and disseminating materials for obesity and assisting with the translation of worksite materials. Ms. Batan holds a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and a master of public health from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has worked for Virginia Governors Mark Warner and Tim Kaine as a fellow and special assistant on their 'Healthy Virginians' Initiative. 

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Helen B. Chin, MPH
Helen Chin is an ORISE research fellow on the sexual behavior review team at The Guide to Community Preventive Services. She works with a coordinating scientist to investigate the effectiveness of programs to reduce risky sexual behavior among adolescents. Ms. Chin received her bachelor’s degree in biology and a master of public health in epidemiology from the University of South Florida. Before joining the Community Guide, she worked for the ‘Closing the Gap in Infant Mortality Project’ at Central Hillsborough Healthy Start in Tampa, Florida.

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Gema Dumitru, MD, MPH (NCEH)
Gema Dumitru is an ORISE research fellow working on the asthma review team with The Guide to Community Preventive Services. The Community Guide and the Air Pollution and Respiratory Health Branch of CDC are conducting a systematic review of community interventions to reduce asthma morbidity and mortality. Dr. Dumitru works closely with a coordinating scientist and a team of national and international experts on the systematic review team. This work involves managing the review process as well as helping to screen, critically assess, and summarize scientific articles, synthesize their findings, prepare draft documents, and communicate the results. Dr. Dumitru is a physician trained at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Romania; she received her ECFMG certification in 1998. She also holds a master of public health in environmental and occupational health from the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. Before joining the Community Guide she worked as a fellow and as a contractor with the CDC Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity and the Division of Adolescent and School Health.

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Matt Griffith, MPH
Matt Griffith is an ORISE research fellow on the worksite and sexual behavior review teams with The Guide to Community Preventive Services. The present reviews investigate the effectiveness of programs to reduce risky sexual behavior among adolescents and to improve influenza vaccination rates in worksites. matt has benefited from studying in Boston, Buenos Aires, Chapel Hill, and Havana; achieving a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and a master of public health; and working on participatory environmental justice projects in the southern United States. He plans to obtain a practical, multi-disciplinary doctorate in public health, incorporating frameworks and methods from multiple social sciences to teach, research, and advocate for progressive social change.

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Jennifer Kuzara, MA, MPH
Jennifer Kuzara is an ORISE research fellow on the alcohol and mental health review teams with the Guide to Community Preventive Services. She works with coordinating scientists to systematically review community-based interventions to reduce excessive alcohol consumption and related harms, and to evaluate the collaborative care model in treating depression. Ms. Kuzara completed a bachelor’s degree in anthropology at the University of Nebraska, and a master of public health in epidemiology from Emory University. She also has a master’s degree in anthropology from Emory University, where she is currently a doctoral candidate specializing in culture and mental health. Fieldwork on an Ojibwa reservation and in Southern Province, Zambia have given her practical insight into field assessment, and her background in anthropology provides behavioral context for developing analytic frameworks. Her training in global mental health and transcultural psychiatry has equipped her to evaluate and modify instruments cross-culturally.

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Magdala Labre, PhD, MPH
Magdala Labre is an ORISE research fellow on the health marketing review team at The Guide to Community Preventive Services. Currently, she is working with a coordinating scientist to conduct the initial phase of the review. Prior to this fellowship, Ms. Labre was a senior writer for Educational Services, Inc., where she developed proposals and served as a technical writer for various government-funded initiatives addressing the prevention of eating disorders, substance abuse, violence, and other health problems. Ms. Labre holds a doctorate in mass communication from the University of Florida, a master of public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, and a master’s degree in international communication from American University.

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Briana M. Lawrence, MPH
Briana M. Lawrence is an ORISE senior research fellow on the alcohol, asthma, and update review teams with The Guide to Community Preventive Services. Currently Ms. Lawrence is working with a senior coordinating scientist as co-leaders of a systematic review to investigate the effectiveness of youth development behavioral interventions in reducing sexual risk behaviors in adolescents. She has participated in all aspects of the systematic review process including: assisting with data management, and screening, assessing, and summarizing scientific evaluations. As part of disseminating the findings of Community Guide systematic reviews, Ms. Lawrence has made lecture and poster presentations at major public health meetings and has taken part in scientific panel discussions. She received her master of public health from the University of Southern California, and plans to pursue a doctorate in public health policy and administration. 

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Jennifer L. Cook Middleton, PhD, MS
Jennifer L. Cook Middleton is an ORISE research fellow on the alcohol review team at The Guide to Community Preventive Services. In this role she works closely with the coordinating scientist and a team of national and international experts to complete systematic reviews of a series of community interventions to prevent excessive alcohol consumption. She assists with managing the review process and helps to screen, assess, and summarize scientific articles. In addition, she assists with synthesizing findings and disseminating results through presentations and scholarly publications. She received her bachelor’s degree in human development, human services and master’s in human development, family studies from Virginia Tech University. She also holds a doctorate in child and family development from the University of Georgia. Before joining the Community Guide she worked as a graduate research assistant at the Center for Family Research at the University of Georgia.

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Jennifer Murphy, MSPH
Jennifer Murphy is an ORISE research fellow on the vaccine preventable disease review team at The Guide to Community Preventive Services. Currently Ms. Murphy is working with a senior coordinating scientist to update the existing reviews for vaccine interventions. She also is assisting with the youth development review team that is investigating the effectiveness of youth development behavioral interventions in reducing sexual risk behaviors among adolescents. Ms. Murphy received her bachelor’s degree in biology from South Carolina State University and her master of science and public health from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Kelly Pattillo, MPH
Kelly Pattillo is an ORISE fellow and public health analyst with the translation of interventions for dissemination and evaluations (TIDE) review team in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity. She currently works with the systematic review team in evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to prevent and control obesity. Her work includes conducting literature reviews, managing data abstractions, and assisting with the translation and dissemination of obesity intervention materials for community settings. Ms. Pattillo has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Georgia State University and a master of public health degree from Emory University. She has previously worked at the community level in Atlanta doing HIV prevention with sexual minority youth at YouthPride, Inc. and assisting in the rehabilitation of torture survivors at DeKalb County Board of Health.

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Sima Razi, MPH
Sima Razi is an ORISE research fellow on the worksite and pregnancy review teams at The Guide to Community Preventive Services. Ms. Razi is working with a coordinating scientist to complete a review of two interventions to reduce the number of pregnancies affected by neural tube birth defects: folic acid fortification and community-wide education campaigns to promote the use of folic acid among women of childbearing age. Her role includes conducting extensive literature reviews, critical evaluation of scientific articles, and summarizing findings from reviews through scientific reports. Ms. Razi holds a bachelor’s in psychology from Georgia State University and a master of public health in behavioral science and health education from Emory University. 

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Gia Rutledge, MPH(DNPAO)
Gia Rutledge is an ORISE fellow with the translation of interventions for dissemination and evaluations (TIDE) and obesity review teams in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity. She currently works with the abstraction, coordination, and expert systematic review team in evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to prevent and control obesity. Her work includes conducting literature reviews, preparing and disseminating materials for obesity, assisting with translation of materials, and keeping databases for the obesity settings. Ms. Rutledge previously served as a program evaluator for numerous federal grants and programs and worked on two federally funded programs as a research assistant: the Study of Children’s Activity and Nutrition (SCAN) and the Child and Adolescence Trial for Cardiovascular Health (CATCH). She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California San Diego, a master of public health degree from the University of Arizona, and she plans to pursue a doctorate in behavioral sciences and health education.

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Anil Thota, MBBS, MPH
Anil Thota is an ORISE research fellow on the mental health review team with The Guide to Community Preventive Services. Currently, he is working with a coordinating scientist on a systematic review to evaluate the effectiveness of the Collaborative Care model in addressing depression in the community. Dr. Thota has a degree in medicine (MBBS) from Manipal University in India and a master of public health from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Before coming to the Community Guide, Dr. Thota was a short-term consultant at the World Bank in Washington, DC. In this position, he worked on a review evaluating the effectiveness of health service delivery strategies in low-income settings and also participated in a World Bank systematic review looking at community empowerment strategies in low-income countries.