Our Team
Our Team
Center Leadership
Emily Ahonen, PhD is the PI and Center Director of the Utah Center for Promotion of Work and Employment Research (U-POWER). She is Associate Professor in the division of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Her primary focus is on the quality of employment and work, and the broader contexts that shape work to support health to a greater or lesser degree. She uses qualitative and mixed methods in her work.
Dr. Ahonen is also Utah's PI for the project Discourses in Occupational Health.
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.
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.
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 communities in finding solutions to their health burdens, including AIDS, diabetes, and obesity, as well as health assessments. 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 populations who have unbalanced access to resources needed to support and sustain health.
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.
Dr. Jones also serves as MPI of the research projects Towards Total Worker Health for Environmental Service Workers and Discourses in Occupational Health.
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.
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 social and political contexts that affect health. Drawing on theories of power relations, institutions, and social policy, 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.
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).
Talula Pontuti is a current Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at the University of Utah studying food systems, 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 the environment. 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.
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