Student Highlights

Meet our students and explore the inspiring projects they're working on across various degree paths. Discover their unique interests, backgrounds, and the innovative work they're creating.

Emmanuel Adediran, MPH

Emmanuel Adediran, MPH, is a final year doctoral student in public health at the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. Emmanuel also earned his master's in public health degree at Saint Louis University in Missouri. His scientific focus and research area are broadly described as improving hypertension management and prevention with an emphasis on leveraging primary care institutions, electronic health records (EHR), and community-capacity building. His research also addresses hypertension disparities in racial and ethnic minority populations, in particular, hypertension management in Black/African American individuals. Emmanuel is currently involved in several research projects at the institution, including investigating culinary medicine interventions for improving chronic health outcomes in racial and ethnic minority populations, exploring postpartum blood pressure screening in primary care, investigating hypertension management challenges in Black/African American adults with hypertension, and understanding the relationship between cancer and new-onset diabetes mellitus. For future career work, he will continue to develop innovative primary care-focused approaches to address hypertension disparities. His research will build upon strategies such as mobile health, barbershops, faith-based institutions, grocery store establishments, and community support groups.

Skyler Crouch, MPH, CPH

Skyler is a public health PhD student who is interested in incorporating health equity principles into epidemiology. He is currently a graduate research assistant for the ForeSITE Center and the instructor for the Public Health Nutrition course. Previously, Skyler has served as a health equity epidemiologist for the Department of Family & Preventive Medicine, a manager for the U of U COVID-19 Contact Tracing Team, and the COVID-19 vaccination coordinator for the main U of U campus. He has a B.Sc. in Nutritional Science from Brigham Young University and an MPH from the University of Utah. Skyler is actively involved with the Utah Public Health Association and has served the organization in many roles, including Board President, Conference Chair, and President of the Student Assembly. He is also an LGBTQ+ subject matter expert for the Rocky Mountain Public Health Training Center and an active member of the Healthy West Jordan Committee. He is an avid gardener and amateur botanist, a classical music fanatic, and an advocate for xeriscaping and incorporating native Utah plants into landscapes.

Kristina Gale

Kristina Gale is a Public Health PhD student with a research focus on global malnutrition. She serves as a CDC lifestyle coach, delivering Prevent T2 Together courses, and contributes to data quality initiatives at the HEART Lab. Passionate about pedagogy and workforce development, Kristina recently collaborated with Dr. Lisa Gren on a CDC/ASPPH-funded project examining community colleges as a pathway to certification in disease intervention. Highlights from this work can be found here. Her dissertation explores growth trajectories and long-term health risks in children experiencing concurrent stunting and overweight. She is the mother of six children and loves spending all her free time in the mountains camping, backpacking, hiking, or snowshoeing.

Elena R. Gardner

Public health and primary care have many common goals, including health promotion and disease prevention. Elena Gardner, MPH, studies ways to bridge public health and primary care for improved disease outcomes. After learning about challenges long-COVID patients face in primary care, her dissertation aims to examine long-COVID using a socioecological approach (i.e., from an individual's symptoms to a health system's response) to inform the design of more acceptable, equitable, and sustainable interventions. At work, she evaluates an HRSA-funded project to strengthen mental and behavioral healthcare in family medicine through workforce education.

Md Imdadul Haque, BSS, MSS, MPH

Md Imdadul Haque is a current PhD student in the Division of Public Health, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. His research is focused on understanding tobacco use in the context of mental health. Specifically, he is interested in understanding how tobacco use disorder (TUD) differs across psychiatric conditions by understanding patterns of use (frequency/intensity) and options for treatment. While pursuing his MPH at Daffodil International University (DIU), Bangladesh, he developed skills in mixed methods research. His thesis focused on familial and sociocultural barriers to establishing tobacco-free homes. He also obtained a prestigious International Tobacco Control Research Grant from the Institute of Global Tobacco Control (IGTC), USA. Before joining the University of Utah, he worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health, DIU. He has seven years of job experience as a Senior Public Health Professional for both governmental (NIPORT) and international organizations (BRAC).

Kailey Mahoney

Kailey is a second-year MSPH student and works in the VanDerslice Lab within the Division of Public Health. She became interested in public health during her undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies; she's always been passionate about climate change, but her interest grew into a lifelong passion when she encountered the impact of climate on health and the intricate human connection between disproportionate adverse health outcomes and how natural phenomena like changing weather patterns affect those outcomes. She feels privileged to have studied this topic with Dr. VanDerslice. She is currently working on a project that investigates the potential impact of extreme temperature and air pollution on breast cancer survivors in Utah. She's developing a dataset for future analysis that will help researchers better understand how the components of weather, such as temperature and humidity, interact with each other and with the human body to inform an adverse outcome. In the future, I hope to attend medical school and further utilize this knowledge, both at the community level through a public health lens and in one-on-one patient interactions, creating a broad impact on the health-related climate sequelae.

Rachel Myrer

Rachel Myrer is a doctoral candidate in public health at the University of Utah, specializing in reproductive epidemiology. Her research focuses on conditions such as infertility, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and endometriosis. She holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Utah and a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Brigham Young University. Prior to her doctoral studies, Rachel gained extensive experience in public health program design, implementation, and evaluation, working with schools, universities, worksites, and nonprofit organizations. Her work has addressed a wide range of public health concerns, including physical activity promotion, chronic disease prevention, opioid harm reduction, and healthcare analytics using real-world data (RWD). Throughout her doctoral program, Rachel has collaborated with faculty in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine on projects examining environmental influences on child health, antimicrobial resistance through wastewater monitoring, and the connection between endometriosis and cardiovascular disease. In addition to her research, Rachel teaches courses in program planning and evaluation, health policy, and research methods at Westminster University. Upon completing her doctorate in 2025, she plans to continue teaching and conducting research on women’s and reproductive health.

Josh Oliver

Education in public health has unique needs due to the variety in content taught, the constantly changing landscape of public health, and the increasing demand for public health degrees. To better understand the factors affecting this education, Josh is doing a survey of public health professors at the five CEPH-accredited institutions in Utah, along with classroom observations on a subset of survey respondents. He hopes that his survey findings will precipitate the removal of barriers to effective teaching and learning and train a more capable public health workforce that will skillfully navigate an increasingly complex public health landscape.

Megan R. Petersen

The COVID-19 pandemic and measles outbreak have fostered increased interest and discussion related to vaccines and immunizations. My mixed methods research is focused on understanding and measuring vaccine hesitancy in rural Intermountain West communities, with specific emphasis on the COVID-19 vaccine. Megan's research looks at the unique cultural ideologies, community dynamics, and frontier mentality that exist in the Intermountain West. The goal of this research is to help public health and healthcare providers better engage in messaging at the community and interpersonal levels. Overall, the results will help advance productive discussions with rural communities, better protect individuals, and increase the health and well-being across the region.