Chandria Jones, PhD, MPH

Principal Investigator and Evaluation Lead

NORC at the University of Chicago

Chandria D. Jones, PhD, MPH, NORC Senior Research Scientist, leads public health research studies and evaluations for the federal government and foundations in the areas of behavioral health, health equity, and evidence-based practices. With an emphasis on culturally responsive and equitable evaluation, she brings a lens of racial equity, diversity, and inclusion to her research and evaluation work with a particular commitment to use-oriented approaches leading to social justice and systems change. In addition to this work, she currently works on ESCALATE (Ending Stigma through Collaboration And Lifting All To Empowerment), a HRSA-funded training and capacity building initiative specifically designed to address HIV-related stigma that creates barriers at multiple levels of the HIV care continuum. For ESCALATE, she leads a Learning Collaborative to pilot and evaluate new strategies and tools to address stigma and assess cultural humility at the organizational level.

Sarah Hodge, MPH

Project Director

NORC at the University of Chicago

Sarah Hodge, MPH, NORC Principal Research Analyst, has experience conducting and managing a variety of evaluation activities. Her work has included research with vulnerable populations including victims and survivors of human trafficking and young men who have sex with men. She has conducted qualitative research and analysis on a range of public health topics including HIV risk and avoidance behaviors, mental and behavioral health needs for farm and ranch families in rural communities, opioid prevention, and hospital community benefit practices. In addition to this work, she currently manages quarterly reporting activities for the Office on Women’s Health Prevention Awards grantees and a longitudinal survey assessing the ability of screening tools to predict falls in community-dwelling older adults.

David Rein, PhD

Cost Lead

NORC at the University of Chicago

David Rein, PhD, NORC Program Area Director, specializes in health economics and outcomes research with a particular focus on burden of disease studies and cost-effectiveness methodology and simulations. He is currently the PI of a four-year CDC project to evaluate the cost effectiveness of Stopping Elderly Accidents, Deaths, and Injuries (STEADI) older adult fall prevention in Primary Care settings. His past work includes directing the BEST-C Project for CDC's Division of Viral hepatitis, an experimentally randomized study of the impact of birth cohort testing for hepatitis C. It estimated the effectiveness and cost of a hepatitis C virus screening strategy that targets all individuals in the birth cohort born between 1945 and 1965 as compared with the current risk-based HCV screening approach. He has published 22 cost-effectiveness papers on topics ranging from hypertension, to visual impairment, to viral hepatitis.

John Schneider, MD, MPH

Subject Matter Expert

University of Chicago

Schneider is an infectious disease specialist and network epidemiologist in the Departments of Medicine and Public Health Scientists at the University of Chicago, Director of the Chicago Center for HIV Elimination, and Medical Director of Howard Brown Health. He currently leads service teams in two Ryan White Care supported sites, at an FQHC where he cares for over 300 BMSM, and in an academic medical center where he provides specialized BMSM anal care services. His research program has been singularly focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating culturally-appropriate HIV prevention and treatment interventions specifically for BMSM. He also leads the Black LGBT toolkit components as part of a larger team developing and disseminating roadmaps/toolkits through a national disparity initiative supported by the Robert Wood Johnson’s “Finding Answers” Program, and a recently funded AHRQ program on shared decision-making among LGBT minority populations.

Russell Brewer, DrPH, MPH

Subject Matter Expert

University of Chicago

Brewer has more than 19 years of experience in program development, evaluation, and public health research in a variety of public health settings (e.g., non-profit, governmental public health, and philanthropy) and levels (e.g., local, state, and national). Before joining the University of Chicago, he served as the Director of the HIV/STI Program at the Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI) in New Orleans, leading several prevention, care, and treatment initiatives for persons living with and at risk for HIV (funded by AIDS United and the HHS OMH). He also piloted various models to reduce the socio-structural barriers (e.g., HIV stigma) to services among this population.