Center Leadership
Emily Ahonen, PhD is the PI and Center Director of the Utah Center for Promotion of Work Equity Research (U-POWER). She is Associate Professor in the division of Occupational and Environmental Health within Department of Family and Preventive Medicine (DFPM) at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Her research contributes to the promotion of health equity and social and environmental justice through improved environments and policies. Her primary focus is on the quality of employment and work, and the broader legal, social, economic, and political forces that shape work to support health to a greater or lesser degree. She uses qualitative and mixed methods in her work. Learn more about her research and scholarship here.
Dr. Ahonen is also Utah's PI for the project Discourses in Occupational Health about the Role of Power in Work Equity.
Camie Schaefer, PhD, is Associate Director of the Center and has day-to-day responsibility for operations. She acts as the hub for communications among stakeholders, investigators, and partners. She brings to the Center expertise in research development, technical writing, and research administration, which she leverages to manage the Research Pilot Project Program and Center communications. In addition, she offers technical writing assistance and writing group facilitation along with other Center support services.
Dr. Schaefer also serves as a Co-I on Discourses in Occupational Health about the Role of Power in Work Equity.
Email: camie.schaefer@utah.edu
Outreach Core
Lisa Gren, PhD is Associate Professor in Public Health and director of the Center for Research on Migration and Refugee Integration and for the University of Utah Primary Care Research Network. She is involved in a variety of academic-community partnerships and brings to U-POWER her expertise in adult learning methods, having developed content for in-person and online learning in her education roles with the DFPM and School of Medicine, and has authored a manuscript on experiential learning for adult learners. Read about her research and scholarship here.
Dr. Gren also serves PI on Incorporating Worksite Interventions in Safety and Health: Building Capacity for Total Worker Health and is on the Center Internal Advisory Committee.
Ivette López, PhD, MPH is Professor in Public Health and Deputy Director of the Utah Area Health Education Centers (AHEC). Her research and service have focused on engaging minority communities in finding solutions to their health burdens, including AIDS, diabetes, and obesity, as well as health assessments of Latino populations. Dr. López brings to the Outreach Core her extensive experience in community-based participatory research and expertise in collaboration with Community Health Workers (CHWs) and organizations with a focus on underserved populations. Read more about her research and scholarship here.
Internal Advisory Committee
Rachael Jones, PhD, CIH is a member of the IAC, Lead of the Research Pilot Project Program (RPPP), and the founding director of U-POWER. She is Professor and Chair of the Environmental Health Sciences Department at the University of California – Los Angeles, and Director of the Southern California Education and Research Center. Dr. Jones is an industrial hygienist and an internationally recognized expert in exposure science, particularly in the area of infectious diseases. Learn more about her research and scholarship here.
Dr. Jones also serves as MPI of the research projects Towards Total Worker Health for Environmental Service Workers and Discourses in Occupational Health about the Role of Power in Work Equity.
Frank Drews, PhD is Professor in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Utah and heads the Behavior Centered Safety Lab (BCSL). Dr. Drews brings to the Center his expertise in applied cognitive psychology and human factors in safety. He has spent considerable time investigating human factors issues such as the limits of human performance and the impact of performance breakdowns on provider performance using mixed-methods research. Learn more about his research and scholarship here.
Dr. Drews also serves as Co-I on Towards Total Worker Health for Environmental Service Workers.
Megan Reynolds, PhD is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah. Her research seeks to broaden the analysis of health to include relevant state-level predictors. Her research interests broadly encompass the areas of stratification, medical sociology, labor and labor relations, work and occupations, political sociology and social policy. Drawing on theories of power relations, institutions, social policy, gender and immigration, she uses cross-sectional and longitudinal data within and across countries at both the individual and country levels to illuminate the processes whereby different social and political contexts affect health. Learn more about her research and scholarship here.
Angela Fraser, PhD is a Professor of Food, Nutrition, and Packaging Sciences at Clemson University. She has over 27 years of experience in the area of food safety/infectious disease control prevention. Much of her work centers around developing and evaluating food safety and infection control practices in commercial and institutional settings, including long-term care facilities. Her goal is to develop detailed procedures that inform practices that are grounded in high-quality evidence generated through well-designed, rigorously executed research studies. Learn more about her research and scholarship here.
Dr. Fraser also serves as PI on Towards Total Worker Health for Environmental Service Workers.
Center Investigators
Jeremy J. Biggs, MD, MSPH, FACOEM is PI of Incorporating Worksite Interventions in Safety and Health (IWISH): Building Capacity for Total Worker Health. In addition, he is Division Chief of Occupational and Environmental Health, Associate Professor, and board-certified occupational medicine physician. Dr. Biggs' involvement in the project draws from his experience working with various entities to ensure safety in the transition back to work, which has included engineering and administrative controls as well as the best practices for personal protective equipment (PPE).
Caren Frost, MPH, PhD is a Co-I on Incorporating Worksite Interventions in Safety and Health (IWISH): Building Capacity for Total Worker Health. She is a Research Professor at the University of Utah's College of Social Work and the Director of the Office of Research Integrity & Compliance at the University of Utah. Her research emphasis is on women's health, specifically maternal and child health, cancer risk, and personalized genomics, as well as the health of women and youth from refugee backgrounds. She is dedicated to interdisciplinary research and will bring to the project her expertise in qualitative and mixed methods research. Learn more about her research and scholarship here.
Scott Benson, MD, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor in the Division of Public Health. His interest in global health was fostered by his environmental health research in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. This interest in the overlap between Public Health and the environment prompted him into medicine. He completed medical school, an internship/residency in Internal Medicine as well as a fellowship in Infectious Diseases. During his training, he conducted and participated in research in Ghana, Peru and India. He joined the Divisions of Public Health and Infectious Diseases where he teaches, continues to work abroad and consults with infectious disease patients and returning travelers in the University Infectious Diseases clinic. Dr. Benson is PI of the research pilot project Remote Women Staff in Academia.
Zachary Franzoni is a doctoral student studying social and political epidemiology, as well as population health inequalities related to race, gender, and migration at the University of Utah. He is PI of State-Level Power Relations and their Effect on Racial Disparities in Allostatic Load: A United States Multilevel Analysis, 2000-2020.
Eunice Han is a labor economist, specializing in labor relations and educational policy. Her research focuses on workers’ well-being and inequality. Because the goals of labor unions are aligned with these topics, many of her studies examine the relationship between unions and labor market outcomes in both the private and public sectors. She is also interested in understanding gender differences in labor market conditions, as well as identifying tools to close the gender gap. She is PI on What Unions Did for Workers’ Well-being and Labor Market Inequality During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Talula Pontuti is a current Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at the University of Utah studying food justice, agriculture, and climate change with goals of focusing on mixed methods, and community-driven research. She has worked on sustainability projects on a city level, worked for nonprofits doing urban agriculture, and has been involved with other community-based programs focusing on environmental justice. She is PI of Salt Lake City Agricultural Workers.
Contributing Scholars
Ryan Olson, PhD, is an Occupational Health Psychologist with a training background in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Applied Behavior Analysis and is a professor of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Utah. Dr. Olson brings to U-POWER his expertise as a founding investigator and former co-Director of the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center. His work has included studies of effective Total Worker Health® interventions for isolated populations, behavioral self-monitoring applied to workplace behavior change, and environmental and social motivational variables. His ongoing research projects are focused on supporting the health and job success of new bus operators and an intervention to prevent injuries and improve the lives of home care workers living with chronic pain. Learn more about his research and scholarship here.
Steven Lacey, PhD is a Professor in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Prior to Utah, he was Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Science at the Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis and earlier served as Director of the CDC/NIOSH-funded Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Safety programs at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Lacey earned an MS in Industrial Hygiene from Texas A&M University, a PhD in Industrial Hygiene from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is a graduate of the Executive Leaders Program at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security. A Certified Industrial Hygienist and Certified Safety Professional, Dr. Lacey is a former President and a Fellow of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. Read more about his research and scholarship here. Dr. Lacey advises on U-POWER outreach efforts to employers and professional associations of occupational safety and health professionals.
Dr. Eric Crosbie is a political scientist at the University of Nevada Reno who examines commercial determinants of health and public health policy. His research focuses on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and examines how commercial industries (tobacco, food and beverage, alcohol, pharmaceutical and fossil fuel) are a key driver of the NCD epidemic and how they influence public health regulations. Dr. Crosbie has both local and international experience collaborating with health organizations and health advocates to educate and disseminate academic research findings to policymakers, including publishing research in Spanish to reach wider audiences. Overall his research is multi-disciplinary combining elements of public health, political science, international relations, economics, law, and business to examine public health policy both locally and globally. Dr. Crosbie is PI of the project Concealing the truth: An inside look into the fossil fuel industry’s ability to suppress the public health and environmental effects of benzene. Learn more about his research and scholarship here.
Center Evaluation
Andrea Rorrer, PhD, director of the University of Utah Education Policy Center (UEPC) is the Evaluation Director of U-POWER. The UEPC is an independent, not-for-profit research center that is part of the University of Utah College of Education, and is a recognized leader in providing rigorous research and evaluation services and evidence-based support to leaders, K-12 and higher education organizations, policy makers, and affiliate agencies to inform decisions, policies, practices and programs. Dr. Rorrer and her team have developed a tailored evaluation plan that will use multiple methods for formative and summative assessment.
Ellen Altermatt, PhD, is a Senior Research Associate at the UEPC and the primary evaluator of U-POWER. Dr. Altermatt has over 20 years of experience conducting basic and applied educational research and teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels
Rachel Barnett, PhD, is a Research and Evaluation Associate at the Utah Education Policy Center. She has over 7 years of experience in higher education which includes leading qualitative research projects as well as facilitating professional development trainings and workshops for faculty, staff, and students.