Public Health Week Faculty Panel

Panelists:

Dr. Kristin Brig-Ortiz, Lecturer in Public Health & Society

• Dr. Kristin Brig-Ortiz is a historian of environment and public health in southern Africa, with a focus on coastal communities and urban life.

Dr. Froggi VanRiper, Lecturer in Environmental Studies and Co-Director of the Sustainability Exchange

• Dr. Froggi VanRiper is a systems scholar, working on questions of sustainability at the intersection of social, environmental and technical systems.  

Debbie “Dada” Dada, doctoral student in Public Health Sciences

• Passionate about global health justice, implementation science and decolonial thought, her research interests are in improving access to infectious disease prevention and care services among marginalized populations in Sub-Saharan Africa using participatory implementation science and addressing epistemic injustices within the field.

Dr. Mohammed Abba-Aji, Lecturer in Public Health & Society and Special Projects Manager, School of Public Health

• Dr. Mohammed Abba-Aji is a physician–population health scientist with more than a decade of clinical practice and population-based research. His research focuses on how violence, displacement, and other social determinants shape mental health in the United States and worldwide.

Part of National Public Health Week 2026.

Learn more about the Public Health & Society Student Ambassador program.