This summer the MPH Program will welcome five new faculty and staff. These hires expand the depth and breadth of our program’s capacity and expertise and we are exited for you to meet them!

Lorraine Francis, DrPH, MHA, is a native of Trinidad and Tobago with a passion for public health that spans over 18 years. She has previously worked in a public health laboratory and more recently in the Surveillance Division of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), formerly the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC). Her training and experiences include – epidemiology, surveillance, emergency and outbreak response, laboratory systems, environmental health, tourism and health and research. She has a keen interest in Infectious Disease and Environmental health research given the challenges with climate change especially on Small Island Developing States. She will be appointed as a Lecturer at Cornell and will co-teach the Public Health Practice courses on Monitoring & Evaluation and Planning, and a new Infectious Disease course.

Elizabeth Fox, PhD, is a nutritionist and social scientist whose work focuses on improving the design and implementation of nutrition policies such that they effectively reach intended beneficiaries in culturally sensitive ways. She completed her PhD in International Nutrition from the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University in 2016. She is currently a Hecht-Levi Postdoctoral Fellow in the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program at Johns Hopkins University’s Berman Institute of Bioethics, where her research investigates value tradeoffs across the food system to support healthy and sustainable diets. She will be appointed as a Lecturer at Cornell and will co-teach the Public Health Practice courses on Monitoring & Evaluation and Planning, and a new Food Systems course.

Elizabeth Goldberg has joined the MPH team as Assistant Director of Operations and Special Projects. She was previously the Senior Program Manager for the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences. In this role she managed programs to support faculty collaborations and community including the Cornell Dairy Center of Excellence and the Antimicrobial Resistance Research and Education Initiative, worked very closely with the Director of Business Operations on departmental administrative management and supervised staff. Prior to moving to Ithaca she was the HR Administrator for the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. She is a graduate of the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Karla Hanson, PhD, has been at Cornell for 14 years as a Senior Research Associate in the Division of Nutritional Sciences. She studies issues of food insecurity, food access, and dietary quality, and she works with Cornell Cooperative Extension and other community partners. Currently, she is the co-PI of a randomized intervention trial to estimate the effectiveness of cost-offset (subsidized) community supported agriculture for low-income families with children. She joins the program as  Senior Lecturer and will co-teach the Public Health Practice course on Monitoring & Evaluation, and a new course for Food Systems.

Yihong Li, DDS, DrPH, MPH, received her DDS from the Peking University School of Stomatology, China, MPH, DrPH, and Postdoctoral Fellowship in molecular epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the understanding of the connection between malnutrition and the human tooth developmental defects. Her postdoctoral research project focused on maternal factors that could influence cariogenic bacterial transmission from mother to infants. Over the years, she has expanded her research focus on oral disease risk assessment and epidemiology of oral microbiota associated with dental caries and other chronic diseases. Before coming to Cornell, Yihong was a Professor of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology at the New York University College of Dentistry. She has served as the principal investigator and co-investigator of several NIH-funded projects, published 88 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, and mentored more than 70 dental and graduate students’ research projects during her tenure at the NYU College of Dentistry. Many of her publications are recognized worldwide by colleagues in the field. Her students have received a variety of research awards. She also served on several national and international scientific review committees, and a reviewer for several peer-reviewed scientific journals. She will join the program as a Senior Lecturer and will teach Biostatistics, and another new course.