Injury Prevention Center Interns
We are excited to have 5 interns joining us this summer! These students will gain experience in an area of injury prevention that interests them, as well as provide valuable support to their faculty mentor. Read more about our interns below.
2023 Injury Prevention Center Summer Interns
Tim Mayer
MPH Candidate, 2024, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
MSW Candidate, 2024, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse, U-M School of Social Work
Mentors: Mr. Brent Miller
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Violence
Summer Project: This summer, Tim will be working with the National Center for School Safety, which is focused on preventing school violence and improving school safety by providing expert-led training and technical assistance. Tim will primarily be working on translating evidence into practical, actionable resources for school-based staff and their partners. Specifically, this will include the creation of a toolkit for school resource officer and mental health clinician co-response as well as the creation of a learning module for mental health and developmental disabilities best practices.
Karli Monahan
MPH Candidate, 2024, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentors: Dr. Gina Dahlem
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioids
Summer Project: Karli will be working on a project under the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, Substance Abuse Program (COSSAP) grant from the Department of Justice. She will primarily be working on analyzing interviews with community partners and evaluating opioid education and post-overdose interventions.
Qingui Cai
MPH Candidate, 2024, General Epidemiology, U-M School of Public Health
Mentors: Dr. Briana Mezuk
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Suicide
Summer Project: Qingyi will be working on the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) Pregnancy Transitions Project, which aims to use a mixed method to examine contextual and individual risk factors associated with current and recent pregnancy among female decedents.
Alexa Jones
MPH Candidate, 2024, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentors: Mr. Danny Wade & Ms. Pauline Hunter
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Cross-cutting
Summer Project: Alexa will be working with the CDC to help develop fully conversational experiences utilizing Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI). She will learn to utilize an accessible conversational AI that can possibly provide interactive exploration of data visualization techniques opportunities that will not only assist in providing real-time data to users but allow users to interact with the AI chatbots in real-time conversations concerning any questions they may have.
Sierra Perez
MPH Candidate, 2024, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentors: Ms. Kathleen Howe
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Violence, Opioids
Summer Project: Sierra will be working on the Detroit Vacant Lot Reuse & Firearms Violence Prevention Study, where she will collect data by interviewing residents engaged in these projects. Sierra will also work on an analysis of opioid legislation in the state of Michigan and develop a translational output.
2022 Injury Prevention Center Summer Interns
Mary Dwan
BA Candidate, 2023, International Studies with Sub-Plan in Global Environment and Health, U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Mentors: Dr. Gina Dahlem and Ms. Marie Snodgrass
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioids & Overdose
Ms. Dwan’s Summer Project: Improving, evaluating, and relaunching Facts Over Fear Opioid Awareness Curriculum for middle and high school students to optimize the program’s reach and provide in-person educational experiences within the community; on a separate project, evaluating the Recovery Opioid Overdose Team (ROOT+), a quick response team linking survivors to treatment and recovery support services in Washtenaw County.
Mackenzie Furnari
MPH Candidate, 2023, Epidemiology, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Hsing-Fang Hsieh
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Firearm Injury
Ms. Furnari’s Summer Project: Working on a research project titled, Understanding Racism, Firearm Injury Risks, and Resiliency Among Asian Americans, which aims to explore mental distress and firearm outcomes among Asian Americans relating to racism/discrimination.
Kamara Gardner
MPH Candidate, 2023, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: CDC, Ms. Akadia Kacha-Ochana
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Suicide, Overdose
Ms. Gardner’s Summer Project: Working at the Office of Strategy and Innovation (OSI) within CDC’s National Center of Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) to support projects on injury and violence prevention through data science application.
Claire Liu
MS Candidate, 2023, Physiology, U-M Rackham Graduate School
MPH Candidate, 2023, Health Behavior & Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentors: Dr. Patrick Carter, Dr. Rebecca Cunningham, & Ms. Lynn Massey
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Firearm Injury, Youth Violence
Ms. Liu’s Summer Project: Working as a research assistant for three studies focused on reducing the risk of youth firearm violence in various urban areas in Michigan; tasks involve developing assessments related to the implementation and outcomes of interventions administered in the ED, as well as collecting and analyzing study data.
Avery Moje
MPH Candidate, 2023, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Lisa Wexler
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Firearm Injury
Ms. Moje’s Summer Project: Working with the Family Safety Net Project, which seeks to increase the safety of youth in Northwest Alaska by providing information and resources to support families in storing firearms safely; tasks involve cleaning and analyzing survey data, writing reports and publications for the project’s stakeholders, and developing materials for community partners.
Jackson Mott
BS Candidate, 2023, Public Health Sciences, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Michelle Munro-Kramer
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Gender-Based Violence
Mr. Mott’s Summer Project: Working to develop a campus climate survey on gender-based violence to be utilized at eight universities in sub-Saharan Africa.
Alejandro Rivas
MPH Candidate, 2023, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Intimate Partner Violence
Mr. Rivas’s Summer Project: Analyzing and reviewing the CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System data on intimate partner homicides to publish a study characterizing risk factors for transgender individuals and how they may differ from those of cisgender individuals; also assisting in writing up a formal report on gender socialization and other barriers to sexual assault prevention, specifically for gender-minority college students and how they may differ from cisgender college students.
Hannah Schneider
MPH Candidate, 2023, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Julia Seng
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Ms. Schneider’s Summer Project: Working at the non-profit Growing Forward Together to develop a trauma-informed social studies curriculum for high-ACE high school youth.
2021 Injury Prevention Center Summer Interns
Brandon Bond
MPH Candidate, 2022, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
MSW Candidate, 2022, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse, U-M School of Social Work
Mentor: CDC, Dr. Greta Massetti and Dr. Gwendolyn Cattledge
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Child Maltreatment, Youth Violence, ACEs, & Global Injury Prvention
Mr. Bond’s Summer Project: Assist in conducting literature reviews of the experiences of violence among vulnerable populations and in high-risk settings, such as children in conflict settings and refugee populations. Also, help analyze complex survey data on violence against children and youth for reports and publications, including assessing the health impacts of exposure to violence in childhood and assessing the risk factors and health impacts of Adverse Childhood Experiences in diverse global settings.
Breann Edwards
MPH Candidate, 2022, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentors: Dr. Gina Dahlem and Dr. Sarah Stoddard
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Edwards’ Summer Project: Assist with evaluation and interviewing of ROOT+ members and others in the community who are involved in coordinating the ROOT+ referrals and services; and work on a project using peer recovery coaches in the community with adolescents to enhance linkage to treatment and prevention services.
Meredith Eis
MPH Candidate, 2022, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health; MPP Candidate, 2022, U-M Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Mentor: Dr. Cindy Ewell Foster
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Violence Prevention (firearms/suicide)
Ms. Eis’ Summer Project: Working with the FACTS project data to develop papers from the data on pilot messaging around suicide and firearm safety in rural communities
Nebiyat Girma
MPH Candidate, 2022, Epidemiology, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Sarah Peitzmeier
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Sexual Violence
Ms. Girma’s Summer Project: Assist in research on intimate partner violence (IPV) prevention among transgender and gender diverse people while also working towards interventions that seek to prevent sexual violence against transgender and nonbinary people across campuses.
Vishaka Kalra
MPH Candidate, 2022, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Sarah Stoddard
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Kalra’s Summer Project: Assist in research on opioid overdose, in implementation and expansion of a musical outreach program to educate middle and high school students in Michigan on opioids and their risks, and in evaluating Changing Lives and Staying Sober (CLASS) Agency’s substance use and opioid overdose prevention and response activities.
Michaela Murphy
MPH Candidate, 2022, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
MSW Candidate, 2022, Interpersonal Practice in Integrated Health, Mental Health, and Substance Abuse, U-M School of Social Work
Mentor: Dr. Justin Heinze
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Mental Health
Ms. Murphy’s Summer Project: Assisting with the Healthy Minds Study.
Mohammed Saqib
MPH Candidate, 2022, Health Behavior Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. JT Eckner
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Concussion
Mr. Saqib’s Summer Project: Working with the Michigan Medicine Neurosport team on identifying predictors of slow recovery from concussion injury.
Meghna Singh
BA Candidate, 2023, Community and Global Public Health, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Courtney Bagge
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Singh’s Summer Project: Developing and piloting a method to identify the warning signs for opioid overdose among adults.
2020 Injury Prevention Center Summer Interns
Areli Ariana Balderrama
MPH Candidate 2022, Health Behavior & Health Education, U-M School of Public Health; MURP Candidate, 2022; U-M Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning
Mentor: Dr. Sarah Stoddard
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Substance Abuse
Mx. Balderrama’s Summer Project: Assist with research on a summer program for at-promise youth and the impact of COVID-19 on a Peer Recovery Coach (PRC) program.
Ferhana Begum
Masters of Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology, 2021, University of Michigan School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Lisa Wexler
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Suicide Prevention
Ms. Begum’s Summer Project: Work on suicide prevention by means of safe firearm storage among indigenous and native peoples in rural and remote Alaska.
Miranda Gali
MPH & MSW Dual Degree Candidate, Health Behavior & Health Education, U-M School of Public Health, U-M School of Social Work
Mentor: Dr. Patrick Carter & Dr. Gina Dahlem
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Violence Prevention, Opioid Overdose Prevention
Ms. Gali’s Summer Project: Work on Project IntERact (Dr. Carter), which aims to implement health coaching and smartphone app technology to help promote gun safety and mitigate violence among 16-24 year-olds in Flint, MI. Also work on Project A.C.T.I.O.N (Dr. Dahlem), which is a tool used to help educate community laypersons, first responders, and more on naloxone and opioid overdose reversal.
Eskira Kahsay
MPH Candidate 2021, Epidemiology, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Laura Thomas, LMSW, MPH, CCRP
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Kahsay’s Summer Project: Work on the Prescription Opioid Wellness and Engagement Research in the Emergency Department (PowerED) study led by Dr. Amy Bohnert, a randomized control trial on the efficacy of an adaptive mobile health intervention to reduce non-medical opioid use following emergency room discharge.
Valerie Micol
MPH, MS, PhD Candidate, 2022, Clinical Science, U of M Department of Psychology
Mentor: Dr. Ewa Czyz
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Youth Suicide Prevention
Ms. Micol’s Summer Project: Development of Motivational Interviewing-enhanced text-based support for parents of teens who have visited the emergency department for suicidal ideation or attempt.
Dalia Saif
MPH & MPP Dual Degree Candidate 2022, Health Behavior & Health Education (U-M School of Public Health) and International Policy (U-M Ford School of Public Policy)
Mentor: Susan Franzen, MS & Dr.Justin Heinze
Injury Prevention Focus Area: ACEs & Suicide Prevention
Ms. Saif’s Summer Project: Work on the Flint Youth Injury Study-3, which aims to understand how the intergenerational transmission of substance use is affected by Cannabis legalization. Assist with literature reviews, codebooks, online surveys, conducting and analyzing interviews.
Keara Sullivan
Master of Public Health, 2021, School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Jason Goldstick
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Sullivan’s Summer Project: Work with the System for Opioid Overdose Surveillance (SOS), a system providing near real-time overdose data to community stakeholders to assist in their timely response and tracking of potential overdose hot spots.
2019 Injury Prevention Center Summer Interns
Charlotte Burnett
MPH & MSW Dual Degree Candidate 2020, Health Behavior & Health Education, U-M School of Public Health and U-M School of Social Work
Mentor: Laura Thomas, MPH
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Burnett’s Work: Work on the Opt-In Project, that aims to test an opioid intervention with the distribution of naloxone. Assist with recruitment, conducting quantitative and qualitative research methods with participants and site staff, tracking data, and evaluating the program to measure for impact.
Christine Callahan
MS 2019, Movement Science, U-M School of Kinesiology
Mentor: Dr. Steven Broglio
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Concussion
Ms. Callahan’s Work: Assist with research on assessment diagnoses, long-term effects, and treatment of sport-related concussion.
Janie Felton
MPH Candidate 2020, Health Behavior & Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Quyen Ngo
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Youth Violence
Ms. Felton’s Work: Lead a qualitative study about hope, mindfulness, and gainful activity among people who report partner and non-partner violence. Also, recruitment for the Mind and Voice Project in Flint, and help with other studies about sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and firearm injury.
Ashley Rapp
MPH Candidate 2020, Epidemiology, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Christopher Harper
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Violence
Ms. Rapp’s Work: Onsite at the National Injury Prevention Center at the CDC, to help conduct a discourse analysis of media narratives regarding violence against transgender women.
Jane Smith
MPH Candidate 2020, Health Behavior and Health Education, U-M School of Public Health, Certificate in Injury Science
Mentor: Jenna Kirschenman
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Multiple
Ms. Smith’s Summer Project: Onsite at CDC to assist in setting up a grant program, identifying grantee needs, providing technical assistance, doing strategic planning for coalition activities, and helping prepare manuscripts.
Pnina Tranen
MPH Candidate 2020, Health Behavior and Health Education, U-M School of Public Health; and MSW Candidate 2020, Interpersonal Practice Mental Health, U-M School of Social Work
Mentor: Dr. Justin Heinze
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose and Youth Violence
Ms. Tranen’s Summer Project: Work on program evaluation of community partners, including evaluation of an opioid overdose prevention program. I will also be working on projects through Michigan’s Core State Violence and Injury prevention Program and activities may include assisting in grant writing and creation of materials for community partners.
Meghna Tummala
Joint BS MD student – BS 2021, Public Health, School of Public Health; MD 2025, School of Medicine, Brown University
Mentor: Dr. Jason Goldstick
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Tummala’s Summer Project: Work on the System for Opioid Overdose Surveillance (S.O.S) Project, collaborating with EMS, Emergency Departments, and Medical Examiner offices to collect data on nonfatal and fatal opioid overdoses across the state of Michigan. Worked on visualization and heat maps for the data collected. This project will result in a functional model system that can be implemented nationwide.
Cate Vreede
MPH Candidate 2020, Health Behavior and Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Jason Goldstick
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Vreede’s Summer Project: Work with Dr. Goldstick and the Washtenaw County Health Department on the SOS Washtenaw County Project, which utilizes SOS data to create real-time hot spot maps of opioid overdoses. The project team works with community stakeholders to determine how they can best utilize the SOS data to adjust their service delivery for people with opioid use disorders. Ms. Vreede assisted in the collection and analysis of qualitative interviews and focus groups with community stakeholders to inform the development of a toolkit on how community stakeholders can create a coordinated response to opioid overdoses based on the SOS data.
2018 Injury Prevention Center Summer Interns
Brianne Brenneman, BA
MPH Candidate 2019, Health Behavior & Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Erin Bonar, PhD (U-M Psychiatry)
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Sexual Violence
Ms. Brenneman’s main focus was a project where college students were asked what they want in a sexual violence prevention program. Another project she worked on was hot-spot mapping where she mapped areas in Ann Arbor that students had heard about sexual assaults happening or areas they thought were risky.
Laura Hollander, BA
MPH Candidate 2019, Health Behavior & Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Sarah Stoddard (U-M School of Nursing)
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Youth Violence, Substance abuse
Ms. Hollander worked with Dr. Sarah Stoddard on the Youth Empowerment Solutions for Positive Futures (YES-PF) Program. She assisted Dr. Stoddard with authoring a curriculum to increase the empowerment and future orientations of middle school students identified for being at risk for school dropout and drug use. Along with developing curricula, she planned and implemented orientation sessions for the teachers selected for this school-based intervention, and helped Dr. Stoddard gather baseline data from student participants.
Lauren Leslie, BA
MPH Candidate 2019, Health Behavior & Health Education, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Dr. Ashley D’Inverno (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention, Surveillance Branch)
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence
Ms. Leslie assisted in developing a syndromic definition for intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) by reviewing chief complaint data from IPV/SV emergency department visits from the CDC’s Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics (ESSENCE). Additionally, literature and other data sources were reviewed to identify ICD-10-CM codes that are used for IPV/SV medical visits. Syndromic surveillance provides trends of IPV/SV which be tracked over time and overlaid with social health determinants to inform best practice prevention and control efforts. Additionally, she supported the development of a paper examining the link between a state-level gender inequality index and state rates of sexual violence and intimate partner violence.
Amanda Mauri, MPH
PhD Student, Health Services Organization and policy; AHRQ Pre-Doctoral Fellow, U-M School of Public Health
Mentor: Rebecca Haffajee (U-M School of Public Health)
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
Ms. Mauri worked on multiple projects related to policy approaches to address opioid misuse and firearm violence. Along with her collaborators Dr. Rebecca Haffajee and Ms. Tarlise Townsend, she completed a scoping review of quantitative evaluations of state opioid misuse prevention policies. Dr. Haffajee and Ms. Mauri are also co-authoring a project that maps state-level adoption of opioid laws overtime. Ms. Mauri also participated in the FACTS policy workgroup and looks forward to continuing her involvement in the task force.
Tarlise Townsend, MPP
Joint PhD Student, Health Services Organization and Policy (U-M School of Public Health) & Sociology (U-M LSA)
Mentor: Rebecca Haffajee (U-M SPH)
Injury Prevention Focus Area: Opioid Overdose
National efforts to reduce prescription opioid dependence and misuse, an important element of the current opioid epidemic, have included the 2010 reformulation of OxyContin into an abuse-deterrent form and the 2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain, among others. Research has shown that OxyContin reformulation contributed to declines in OxyContin prescribing, and initial evidence suggests that the 2016 guidelines accelerated the ongoing decline in opioid prescribing for chronic pain. However, it is unclear whether these reductions have targeted the patients at greatest risk of misuse, addiction, and/or overdose, while preserving appropriate pain management for patients who need it. The study examines whether prescribing changes attributed to these two interventions varied by race/ethnicity and, if so, how this influenced racial/ethnic disparities in opioid prescribing. With Dr. Haffajee’s mentorship, Ms. Townsend spent the summer conceptualizing the study idea, design, and statistical analyses, conducting a literature review, learning SAS, and learning to work with medical claims data.