Edith Parker, DrPH - Center Director/Principal Investigator

Dr. Parker is Professor and Head of the Department of Community and Behavioral Health in the College of Public Health. Dr. Parker's research interests include the development, implementation, and evaluation of community-based participator interventions to improve health status. Her research has focused on community-based participatory research projects centering around women’s and children’s health and on childhood asthma and issues of environmental justice. Dr. Parker’s work also focuses on methods to gain a better understanding and operationalizing measures of community social dynamics, such as community capacity and community competence. Dr. Paker is a director of Community Engagement on the University of Iowa Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) enterprise.

edith-parker@uiowa.edu

Linda Snetselaar, RD, PhD - Associate Director

Dr. Snetselaar is a Professor of Epidemiology. Her research interests include nutritional epidemiology, diabetes, CBPR and the relationship between cardiovascular disease and diet. Dr. Snetselaar's work in the town of Muscatine, Iowa provides an example of working closely with community members on health issues of importance to them. Dr. Snetselaar and her Nutrition Center (of which she is the founder and Director), have spent the past several years working with the school district and a community coalition they have formed in Muscatine to address the problem of childhood obesity. An extensive planning process was conducted and the group is now engaging in a variety of intervention activities. linda-snetselaar@uiowa.edu

Kathleen Janz , MA, EdD - Associate Director

Dr. Janz is a Professor in the Department of Health and Human Physiology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and has a secondary appointment in the Department of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health. Her research interests include physical activity and physical fitness as determinants of health outcomes, electronic monitoring and longitudinal tracking of physical activity particularly in children and adolescence. Current projects include a longitudinal cohort study to examine how genetics, diet, and physical activity influence bone strength in children and adolescents, and a longitudinal multi-state cohort study examining the determinants of childhood and young adult obesity. kathleen-janz@uiowa.edu

Faryle Nothwehr, MPH, PhD - Investigator

Dr. Nothwehr is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health in the College of Public Health. Her research interests include health behavior change among adults, especially behaviors related to diet, exercise, and other cardiovascular risk factors. Dr. Nothwehr is the principal investigator of the PRC restaurant intervention study, one of the center's core research projects. Through discussion with a working group of our community partners (CHAP) in Sigourney, Iowa the PRC-RH learned of their concern about the availability of healthy menu choices in local restaurants. Working closely with five rural restaurants, an intervention has been developed that has proven acceptable to restaurant owners, and has had an impact on the ordering behavior of customers. The next phase of this research will focus on dissemination of the program across the state of Iowa. faryle-nothwehr@uiowa.edu

Robert Wallace, MS, MD - Investigator
Dr. Wallace is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health, and the Director of the Center on Aging. He is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar on health and aging issues. His research interests include the epidemiology of aging, cancer epidemiology and control, clinical preventive medicine, survey research and the prevention of disability.

robert-wallace@uiowa.edu

Helena Laroche, MD - Investigator
Dr. Laroche is an Associate of the General Internal Medicine faculty with a secondary appointment in the Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Laroche is interested in diabetes, obesity prevention and treatment, and community-based intervention programs to promote health. Dr. Laroche has a pilot grant with the Wellmark Foundation that involves improving the food choices in high-school sports concession stands in Muscatine, Iowa. This project is a collaboration involving the Nutrition Center (Dr. Snetselaar) and the PRC-RH. In addition, she is part of the team assisting the Muscatine coalition with the evaluation of a set of school-based interventions. helena-laroche@uiowa.edu

Julie Andsager , PhD- Investigator

Dr. Andsager is a Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She studies media framing of health information and effects of message construction, especially in terms of how gender affects coverage. She also conducts research on audience interpretation of health-related messages.

julie-andsager@uiowa.edu

Vanessa Simonds, ScD- Investigator

Dr. Simonds is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral health in the College of Public Health. Dr. Simonds primary area of research interest is in developing and implementing disease prevention and management interventions among low-income, minority populations. She is particularly interested in using Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approches to develop, implement, and evaluate community-based interventions that are culturally-based and are adapted from evidence-based startegies to fit community-based settings. She has been a member of several research teams implementing CBPR projects. For the past 10 years she has worked in Native communities, (mostly in Montana), implementing CBPR projects on health topics including cancer and diabetes. She also recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for Participatory Research at the University of New Mexico where she collaborated on a study examining community-academic partnerships in a national sample of CBPR projects to bettter understand barriers and and facilatators to effective partnerships.

vanessa-simonds@uiowa.edu

Heidi Haines, MS - Center and Project Coordinator, Center Evaluator

Ms. Haines is the Project Manager and coordinator for the center in addition to performing research tasks. She is the evaluator of the center and is responsible for maintaining the PRC-RH's web site. heidi-sahr@uiowa.edu

Robert Svetly, MBA- Administrator

Mr. Svetly is the grants manager and human resources coordinator for the Department of Community and Behavioral Health and is Administrator for the PRC-RH. In particular, he assists  with budget development and management, and advises on fiscal issues.

robert-svetly@uiowa.edu

For the diagram of the UI PRC-RH's organizational chart click here