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Marisa Espinoza, MPA
Marisa (she/her/ella) holds a Master of Public Affairs degree from the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Science from Portland State University. Prior to joining BHHI, Marisa spent years working in the nonprofit sector, in roles ranging from legislative advocacy, community organizing, fundraising, communications, and direct services. Most recently, she has worked with communities experiencing housing instability and homelessness in the Portland, Oregon metro area. As the descendant of migrant farmworkers and displaced people experiencing poverty, she is passionate about centering the voices of people with lived experience of homelessness, developing
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Mark Hawes, MSW, PhD
Mark Hawes, PhD, MSW, is a mixed methods social work researcher focused on eliminating barriers to tobacco and substance use treatment among unhoused communities and those living in permanent supportive housing. He holds a joint appointment as a post-doctoral fellow at the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (BHHI) and the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE). Dr. Hawes is currently working on a mixed-methods study with permanent supportive housing residents that seeks to understand treatment needs centered on the co-use of tobacco with other substances. The goal is to increase the availability of services that integrate tobacco
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Maya Vijayaraghavan, MD, MAS
Dr. Vijayaraghavan is a practicing general internist at the San Francisco General Hospital and a researcher in tobacco control with a focus on populations experiencing homelessness. Dr. Vijayaraghavan's intervention research stems from collaborations with community organizations. As PI of two grants (22XT-0020, 25CP-0002) from the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, she collaborated with homeless shelters and supportive housing programs to implement interventions to increase access to cessation services and smoke-free policies among homeless clients. As co-investigator (PI Satterfield, DA034253-04) on an implementation and dissemination grant on a randomized controlled trial of computer-facilitated delivery of 5As for smoking cessation, she worked
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Meghan Morris, PhD, MPH
Dr. Morris’ professional activities are grounded in engaging diverse partners in the development of evidence-based policy change to reduce social inequalities and improve health among underserved communities. As an Associate Professor, Dr. Morris’ research focuses on applying epidemiological methods to study the impact of individual, social, and structural factors on disease transmission within marginalized populations. In particular, her work has focused on using qualitative and quantitative methods to examine social determinants of health within people who use drugs, including HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, worldwide. Internationally Dr. Morris has collaborated with researchers to carry out HIV and HCV
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Michael Duke, PhD
Michael Duke is a medical anthropologist whose ethnographic and mixed method work focuses primarily on theimpact of contemporary and historical trauma on the physical and mental health of Latinx and Pacific Islander immigrant communities, particularly regarding drug and alcohol use, anxiety and depression, stress, and housing precarity.After receiving his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, he was a researcher at the Hispanic Health Council in Hartford, CT, where he directed several studies on HIV risk among heroin injectors, and was the PI for a series of NIH-funded binational studies focusing on drinking, masculinity, and HIV risk among US-based
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Michelle Ochoa
Michelle S. Ochoa is an administrative assistant in the Housing Division for the City of Roseville, California. She is passionate about working with the community and connecting people to the housing resources that they need. She experienced homelessness from ages 14-30. During this time, she longed for resources to help her get rehoused but didn’t know where to look. This lived experience inspired her to seek out employment with the government to help others navigate housing. Beyond her work with the City of Roseville, Michelle also sits in on board meetings for the Continuum of Care, is an active member
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Norma Guzman, BA
Prior to joining BHHI, Norma was a research assistant and outreach worker where she worked on various projects focused on homelessness at the University of Southern California. Norma graduated from UC Merced with a BA in Public Health. There, she became part of the Health Science Research Institute where she assisted on various research projects addressing the needs for successful asthma and diabetes management home visitation programs in the San Joaquin Valley. She hopes to explore the risk factors that contribute to disparities in health care and mental health among undocumented Latino immigrants.
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Priest Martinez
Priest Martinez currently lives in Santa Rosa, California, and is a member of the Redwood Valley Rancheria Little River Band of Pomo Indian Tribe. Through his experience of homelessness with his family, Priest has learned to strive to find another way. Through education and the trial and error of everyday struggles, Priest has grown to believe that humbleness and having an open mind for learning are key to personal and community growth. His life work is centered on creating a path for members in the community dealing with trauma and hardship to find a way back to hopefulness. Wellness and
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Robin Craig, MS
Robin Craig, MS, is BHHI’s Communications Strategist. Prior to joining BHHI, Robin worked with a variety of public sector organizations as a communications manager and consultant. She has also worked with Central Valley families facing social services intervention get the resources and support needed to stay together or reunify after separation. Robin holds a MS in Strategic Communications and certificates in social psychology, content management, and change management.
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Robynne Rose-Haymer
Robynne Rose-Haymer is a Vice President at Capital Impact in Sacramento, California. Recently transitioning from the nonprofit world, Robynne joined Capitol Impact to utilize the over twenty years of workforce development, program development & implementation, and leadership experience to support organizations with their policy, strategy and professional development goals. Focused on economic justice, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, Robynne’s continuing passion is helping people obtain the education and skills they need to pursue their goals. Robynne began her career as an ‘on the ground practitioner’ working directly with low-income families and communities of color on health & well-being and education
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Ryan Assaf, PhD, MPH
Ryan Assaf, PhD, MPH is a second-year postdoctoral fellow with BHHI. He received his PhD in Epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Fielding School of Public Health where he also received his MPH and earned his BS at the University of California, Irvine. Ryan’s work applies community-engaged practices, social determinants of health frameworks, and epidemiological methods to examine the intersections of infectious diseases, substance use and drug-related overdose, and sexual health among people experiencing homelessness and sexual and gender diverse populations. Prior to joining BHHI, Ryan was an epidemiologist at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. With nearly a
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Sage Johnson
Sage Johnson is the Southern California Co-Chair for the BHHI Lived Expertise Advisory Board. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA and is currently a Peer Support Specialist in the Youth Services Department at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Sage’s work and passion is centered on tackling homelessness for Transitional-Aged Youth (TAY) in LA County, particularly Black and Queer youth. She has eight years of local, statewide, and national advocacy experience working for homelessness and housing rights in Los Angeles county. Sage experienced being unhoused from her teen years to early adulthood. Shortly after she lost her housing
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Sara Colom Brana, PhD
Prior to accepting the role with BHHI, Sara worked as a data scientist/statistician at Methods Consultants of Ann Arbor where she performed data/statistical analysis for various clinical research studies. She also worked as a research coordinator at Michigan Medicine where she contributed to the Infant Driven Feeding initiative aimed at improving the quality and quantity of oral feeds in premature babies. Sara obtained her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and certificate in Data Science at the University of Michigan, where she gained expertise in statistical programming, inferential/descriptive statistics, research design, data wrangling/transformation, data visualization, and machine learning techniques.
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Sila Adhiningrat, MPH
Sila completed a Master's in Public Health from Columbia University, where she specialized in sociomedical sciences with a certificate in health promotion research and practice. She has a Bachelor of Arts in public health policy and management from UC Irvine.
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Sonja Simmons, BA
Sonja Simmons has worked at UCSF since 2012. She is an administrative officer for the Center for Vulnerable Populations at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and provides administrative support to Dr. Margot Kushel. Her passion to support communities in need began when she started participating in neighborhood fruit picking and donating directly to distribution organizations. She is committed to supporting the work that brings about change for populations in need. Sonja graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in Clinical Psychology.
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Stephen King, BA
Steve has been with UCSF for 19 years. Most recently, he worked with the Lupus Outcome Study for ten years. Prior to that, Stephen had worked as a Project Coordinator for Urban Health Study for nine years, an organization devoted to the principles of harm reduction in preventing the spread of the HIV virus in drug using and homeless populations.
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Sye-Ok Sato, MA
Sye-Ok Sato is a Project Manager for the HOPE HOME Study, coordinating the longitudinal cohort study that examines the relationship between discrimination, stigma, medical mistrust, health utilization and health outcomes among homeless older adults in Oakland, California. She has made it a priority in her research endeavors to give a voice to communities that are overlooked, including people experiencing homelessness and drug users. She comes to the Center of Vulnerable Populations/Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative with experience and passion to implement creative research processes that provide meaningful and actionable findings. Sye-Ok hails from the Pacific Northwest and is currently residing