Mark S. Johnson, MD MPH is Professor and Chair of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Howard University. He has previously been the Dean of the College of Medicine at Howard University. He is a graduate of Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa where he earned a degree in Black Literature. He went to medical school at UMD (now Rutgers)-New Jersey Medical School (NJMS). He did his residency training at the University of South Alabama Medical Center in Mobile. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill. Prior to moving to Washington DC, he was Chair of the Department of Family Medicine at NJMS. Dr. Johnson has been the President of the Association of Departments of Family Medicine. He was a member of the United States Preventive Services Task Force, the NJ Task Force for the Prevention of Obesity and the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been a reviewer for NIH, HRSA, PCORI and AHRQ. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. He is a member of the Board on Health Care Services the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Health Information Technology Collaborative for the Underserved (NHIT). He is the PI of the Howard University Clinical Research Network for Health Equity. His research interests include obesity, health disparities, and family violence.
Abiodun Otolorin, M.D., M.S is an assistant professor at Howard University in the Department of Community and Family Medicine. He completed his family medicine residency training at Howard University. He completed his medical degree at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Prior to medical school, he obtained a Bachelor of Computer Science and Master of Bioengineering degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are at the intersection of primary care, data science, biomedical informatics, and health disparities. He was a scholar at the 2022 NIMHD Health Disparities Research Institute. He received an NIMHD administrative supplement award to study cardiovascular disease epidemiology and statin adherence among participants in the NIH All of Us research program. He served as a program coordinator for the AIM-AHEAD Professional Development Program at Howard University. He is a member of the 10th cohort of the NHLBI Programs to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research Cardiovascular Comorbidities, Genetics, and Epidemiology. He is completing a medical journal editorial fellowship with the Annals of Family Medicine. He is a member of the 2023 MedStar Research Scholars Program, a 2-year longitudinal program to enhance clinical and translational research scholarship. Through this program, Dr. Otolorin will have access to MedStar research facilities including clinical data repositories and protocols. Importantly, Dr. Otolorin is a co-Investigator and clinical informatics lead on the NIH-funded project to establish the Howard University Clinical Research Network for Health Equity. This project is focused on the development of a mobile-centric clinical trial management system to facilitate patient and investigator participation via cohort discovery using ambulatory care data extracted from Allscripts EHR. Dr. Otolorin is a member of the Adventist healthcare physician advisory board which is tasked with optimizing the use of clinical applications for improved clinical outcomes within the health system. He is working towards board certification in clinical informatics through the American Board of Preventive Medicine.
Finie Hunter-Richardson, PhD., MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine, with a broad background in public health and specialization in health communication. She has expertise and training in the conduct of clinical and community-based participatory research in medically underserved areas of the District of Columbia and neighboring communities with a community-engaged lens. As Director of Research, she provides critical research support to facilitate and implement departmental research addressing the impact of social determinants of health, and health disparities in primary care. She assists in the mentorship of Family Medicine residents and medical students supporting the Population Health course as well as clinical research activities. Simultaneously, she develops her own research in the areas of community outreach and cancer prevention. In addition, her contributions to our CTSA supported program, the Georgetown Howard University Center for Clinical and Translational Science (GHUCCTS), consists of supporting efforts to maintain liaisons with community practice research networks, and subsequently the formation and management of a Patient Advisory Board (PAB) and Community Advisory Board (CAB) for the Program. As a liaison, she regularly engages key stakeholders in bidirectional dialogues throughout the research continuum utilizing a bottom-up approach to support the conduct of research that results in salient patient-oriented outcomes of importance to the participants and the communities they represent. As a result of these previous experiences, she has the expertise, leadership, and training to develop the communication strategy plan and conduct community engaged research in support of the proposed research project.
Tywanda McLaurin, PhD. is an Associate Professor and an integrated primary care psychologist within a federally qualified health center. With specialized training in behavioral medicine as a clinician-scientist, her clinical and research experience reflect interest in mental health and substance use. Her experience as a clinician provides expertise in the mental health field for screening, diagnosing, and treating PTSD and related co-morbidities including depression, anxiety, and substance use. These experiences make me well-suited for selecting appropriate research measures for the proposed study. As a scientist, she has served as principal investigator of several university and foundation funded projects. Thus, she has laid the groundwork to conduct studies that examine an array of health behaviors including tobacco, alcohol, sleep, and condom use among minority populations. She has successfully administered projects by overseeing staffing, human research protections, budgeting, and collaborations with others. My previous experiences have taught me the importance of setting realistic research plans and timelines. The current project both builds and expands upon my current behavioral health research portfolio. Accordingly, she has the requisite expertise, training, leadership, and dedication to carry out the proposed research project.
