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Duke University Department of Population Health Sciences

Kate Duchowny, Sameera Nayak

 

 

 

Tell us about your institution. What is the mission of the institution?

Duke’s commitment to population health has been both longstanding and widespread. To create a transdisciplinary setting for population health research and education, the Department of Population Health Sciences was launched in May 2017. Our mission is to produce important insights, guide them into practice, and prepare population health scientists well to improve the health of communities everywhere.

Why did you decide to make the connection between your program and IAPHS?

I was a founding member of the Population Health Leaders in Academic Medicine (PHLAM) working group and the connection to IAPHS was a natural alignment.

We’d love to hear more about the research your members engage in. What are some themes that run through the research in your program?

Population health sciences is a transdisciplinary effort that integrates many scientific fields. Our faculty have deep experience in quantitative, qualitative, and social sciences and focus primarily on three fields that form the foundation of population health improvement: health services research, implementation science, and measurement science.

Are there any recent research projects/grants/publications that you’d like to highlight?

There are so many exciting projects to choose from! I encourage readers to peruse our website (https://populationhealth.duke.edu) to learn about the range of work we do.

What makes your institution interested in interdisciplinary work?

The population health challenges we face are complex and require multi-faceted solutions—no single discipline has all the answers! Leveraging expertise across the disciplinary spectrum enables us to identify underlying determinants, design and test interventions, and implement solutions at scale.

If you do interdisciplinary work, what are the challenges? How would you like to see IAPHS support your institution’s interdisciplinary work?

The diversity of perspectives that defines interdisciplinary work can pose challenges because we don’t all speak the same language.

Would you like to say something about who is answering the questions? How would the interested IAPHS members be able to contact you?

Please contact us at PopHealthSciences@dm.duke.edu if you have questions and we’ll be sure to answer.

About the authors

Kate Duchowny
Kate Duchowny Kate Duchowny is a social epidemiologist and K99-funded postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Her overarching research goal seeks to bridge the social, environmental, and biological determinants of musculoskeletal health and physical functioning in older adults to inform interventions. Her current research is organized around two lines of inquiry: 1) Identifying which aspects of the built and social environment matter most in helping older adults maintain independence and physical mobility, and; 2) Examining life course sociobiologic mechanisms (e.g., viral infections, mitochondrial function) that drive disparate outcomes in physical disability especially related to neighborhoods.

Sameera Nayak
Sameera Nayak Sameera S. Nayak is a Population Health PhD candidate and a graduate researcher at the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at Northeastern University. She earned a BA in psychology from UCLA and an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University’s Teachers College. She uses mixed methods to study the social and political determinants of health and health inequities, and has conducted research globally in East Africa as well as domestically in the US. Her dissertation explores the impacts of immigration status, perceptions of the immigration policy climate, and contextual factors on domestic violence experiences, preterm birth risks, and mental health outcomes of immigrant women in the US. Sameera is an incoming Assistant Professor of Public Health at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

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