People

ADMINISTRATION

Mariano Rey, MD
Principal Investigator

Chau Trinh-Shevrin, DrPH
CSAAH Director
Director of Grants & Publications

Henrietta Ho-Asjoe, MPS
CSAAH Administrator
Director of Community Development

Nadia Islam, PhD
Deputy Director of Research

Advisors

William Bateman, MD
Sun-Hoo Foo, MD
Arnold Stern, MD, PhD

PROGRAMS

Asian American Hepatitis B Program

Chau Trinh-Shevrin, DrPH
Acting Director

Chris Cho, BS
Outreach Coordinator

Henry Pollack, MD
Research Principal Investigator

Mariano Rey
Administrative Principal Investigator

Alex Sherman, MD
Government Liason

Hillel Tobias, MD PhD
Senior Advisor

Thomas Tsang, MD MPH
Community Principal Investigator

 

 Project AsPIRE

Mariano Rey, MD
Principal Investigator

Rhodora Ursua, MPH
Director

David Erwin Aguilar, MA
Outreach Coordinator

Henry Soliveres
Community Health Worker

Romerico Foz
Community Health Worker

Chau Trinh-Shevrin, DrPH
Co-Investigator

Nadia Islam, PhD
Co-Investigator

 

DREAM

Nadia Islam, PhD
Director and Principal Investigator

Krittika Ghosh, MSc
Project Coordinator

Gulnahar Alam
Community Health Worker

Mamnunul Haq
Community Health Worker

Mariano Rey, MD
Co-Investigator

Chau Trinh-Shevrin, DrPH
Co-Investigator

 

Health Disparities Research Training Program

Tom Tsang, MD, MPH
Training Director

Kevin Lo, MPH
Coordinator

 

B Free CEED

Mariano J. Rey, MD
Principal Investigator

Henry Pollack, MD
Scientific Principal Investigator

Chau Trinh-Shevrin, DrPH
Co-Principal Investigator

Simona C. Kwon, DrPH, MPH
Director

Laureen D. Hom, MPH
Project Coordinator

Greta Elysée
Training Coordinator

Jaime Anno, MPH
Data Coordinator

Nadia Islam, PhD
Co-Investigator

 

Vietnamese Community Health Initiative

Chau Trinh-Shevrin
Coordinator

Biographical Sketches

David Aguilar, MA is currently the Outreach Coordinator for Project AsPIRE (Asian American Partnership in Research and Empowerment) at the New York University Center for the Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH). His role in the Project includes developing outreach strategies, building partnerships, fostering and strengthening relationships with various Filipino-American communities and faith based organizations, civic and professional associations, and health providers, as well as coordinating health screening events and managing the research data base. David has more than 10 years of combined experience in management of faith & community based organizations. He received a Graduate Degree on Management of Non-Profit Organization from Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey , holds a Master's degree in Canon Law from the Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, and a Bachelor of Arts degree major in Philosophy. He also holds a National Trainer Certificate from the Community Anti Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) and has an extensive experience in coalition training and substance abuse prevention.

 

Gulnahar Alam is a Community Health Worker ( CHW ) at the DREAM Project.  She works to educate Bangladeshi community members about diabetes and also helps them access to health care and other resources.  She is also the founder of Andolan - ( Organizing South Asian Workers ) a not-for-profit, membership-based group that organizes and advocates on behalf of low-wage, immigrant South Asian workers in New York. Nahar Alam has been an organizer in the United States and Bangladesh for almost 20 years. Nahar works towards a vision in which all workers are treated with respect and their rights are enforced. She has been organizing South Asian immigrant workers in New York City since 1993 through several grassroots Asian-Pacific Islander community organizations.

 

William B. Bateman, MD is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the NYU School of Medicine and Directs the Sino-American Health Care Exchange Program for the Institute for Urban and Global Health at NYU. Dr. Bateman has an unequaled record of health services to Asian Americans and he is an expert in health disparities and barriers to access of health care in the Asian American Community. He recently was awarded with a Service Honor Award in 2001 from the group: Asian Americans for Equality. His current focus includes improving health and access to care for the uninsured working poor, studying and expanding the use of a remote, simultaneous medical interpreting system, the reengineering of ambulatory service delivery through workforce retraining and using workplace-based learning as a vehicle for improving the quality of healthcare services and the quality of life of healthcare workers.

 

Henry Chung, MD serves as the Mental Health Project Director. Dr. Chung is Senior Director for Research and Strategic Management at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at New York University’s School of Medicine. He has performed research and published articles related to the integration of mental health treatment in primary care, especially for racial and ethnic minorities. In this regard, he was the Founder and Project Director of the Asian American Primary Care and Mental Health “Bridge” program with primary funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In addition, he was Principal Investigator of the Older Adults/Mental Health and Substance Abuse Primary Care Outcomes Study, a multi-center study funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental health Services Administration. He has been recognized for this work as a winner of the Bureau of Primary Health Care Models That Work competition in 2002, which selected the Bridge Program for model replication. He is a member on the Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Minority Health, and a member of the Carter Center’s Leadership Group for the Integration of Mental Health in Primary Care.

 

Greta Elysée serves as Project Coordinator of B Free CEED to help manage all the daily activities for the B Free CEED. Greta also assists with the coordination of various research projects at the Institute of Community Health and Research as well as CSAAH. Greta recently worked as a Project Associate for the Center for Immigrant Health, at NYU School of Medicine. She conducted a wide variety of health outreach in the Caribbean community, which includes Tuberculosis and cancer education and prevention workshops in Haitian Creole and English. She had a weekly radio show on Radio Tropicale and participated in a wide variety of community forums. Greta also oversaw cancer-related educational media development targeting the Haitian community. She served as a research assistant for innovative pilot studies seeking to answer research questions related to barriers to care and health disparities and was a trainer for the Language Initiatives Medical Interpretation program. She is a member of the New York Urban League, a mentor for Year Up NYC and sits on the board of the Community Healthcare Network. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Brooklyn College, and is fluent in Haitian Creole.

 

Sun-Hoo Foo, MD is the Senior Medical Director of the Chinese Community Health Partnership and on the executive board of the Chinese American Medical Society. He is a respected health care provider, working extensively with NYU Downtown Hospital and has dedicated much of his professional and personal work in providing community service for underserved Chinese communities. Dr. Foo has expertise in developing appropriate outreach programs in the Chinese community and works collaboratively with community-based organizations from other Asian ethnic groups to tailor programs specific to each community.

 

Romerico Foz, MBA, is a community health worker (CHW) for Project AsPIRE (Asian American Partnerships in Research and Empowerment). He conducts educational workshops on hypertension and CVD; to link and negotiate participants’ access to a primary care physician; to assure adherence to medication and maintenance of medical appointments; and to provide social support beyond outreach and health screening. Mr. Foz is also the Executive Vice President of the board for the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON), a national, multi-issue alliance of Filipino organizations and individuals in the United States serving to protect the rights and welfare of Filipinos by fighting for social, economic, and racial justice and equality. He is also is a leader-organizer for Philippine Forum-New Jersey, a community-based organization devoted to helping Filipinos in the United States raise their social and historical consciousness, helping to organize Filipinos for their social and political rights and economic well-being. Mr. Foz is also a member of the Kalusugan Coalition, a multidisciplinary collaboration dedicated to creating a unified voice for improving the health of the Filipino community in New York and in New Jersey.

 

Krittika Ghosh, MSc, is the Project Coordinator of the Diabetes Research, Education, and Action for Minorities (DREAM) Project at CSAAH. She oversees the activities of the project which is to develop, implement, and test a Community Health Worker Program designed to improve diabetes control and diabetes-related health complications in the Bangladeshi community in New York City. Krittika has been working in the immigrant Asian community on issues such as domestic violence, workers rights and post 9/11 hate crimes against South Asians and Muslims. She has worked for several New York City based community based organizations including Sakhi for South Asian Women, Workers Awaaz, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. She was most recently the Coordinator of the Community Empowerment Program at CONNECT where she worked to educate youth, communities of faith, LGBT and immigrant communities on how to prevent and respond to intimate partner violence. She is also a board member of Andolan, a not-for-profit, membership-based group that organizes and advocates on behalf of low-wage, immigrant South Asian workers in New York City. Ms. Ghosh’s contribution to the Asian immigrant community was recognized in 2002 when she received an Emmigrant Award citation for “demonstrating outstanding service to community” and in 2007 when she received the Filipino Women’s Network’s Vagina Warrior Award honoring inspirational work on ending violence against women and girls. Ms. Ghosh graduated Magna cum Laude from Simmons College with a Bachelors degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies and received her MSc in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

 

Mamnunul Haq is a Community Health Worker (CHW) at the DREAM Project.  He is also a founding member  of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) and worked on the development  of NYTWA from its inception  until today to organize over 11,00 dues paying members through community outreach, media campaigns and political/legal advocacy.  He has a long history as an organizer and leader of community organizations which has enabled him to develop positive working relationships and numerous linkages and key contacts within the Bangladeshi community.

 

 

Henrietta Ho-Asjoe, MPS is the Administrator and the Director of Community Development for the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health. As the Center’s Administrator, Henrietta directs the development and operation of program activities; provides fiscal oversight and management; collaborates with community-based partners; markets the Center’s services and programs, as well as organizes seminars and conferences. As the Director of Community Development, she oversees the outreach activities and partnerships building with the community-based organizations, local and national healthcare agencies, and government entities. Formerly, Ms. Ho-Asjoe was the Director of the Chinese Community Partnership for Health at New York Downtown Hospital. She led a multi-culturally diverse professional team that was committed to assisting Chinese Americans overcome barriers to healthcare access and addressed the special needs of the Chinese community. In addition, Ms. Ho-Asjoe’s contribution to the community at large has been recognized by the following awards. She received the 2002 California Pacific Award for Excellence in Patient Education and in 1998; she was awarded a proclamation from the New York Manhattan Borough President’s Office for her dedication in the field of health care.

 

Laureen Hom is the Project Coordinator for B Free CEED. Her role in the center is to help oversee B Free CEED, including coalition building with partners and managing the development and implementation of all of the activities, including educational, training, and dissemination strategies. Her past work experience includes HIV/AIDS and breast cancer disparities research and has experience in qualitative and quantiatitve research, program planning, and program evaluation. She also has worked with mental health advocates to advocate for affordable housing policies in San Francisco. Ms. Hom received a BA in Anthropology and Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MPH from the Sociomedical Sciences Department at Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, with a specialization in Urbanism & the Built Environment. While attending Mailman, Ms. Hom was awarded the Gorman Public Health Humanitarian Award for her work with Gulf Coast Recovers (now Group for Community Recovery) in helping promote awareness of the health and human rights concerns surrounding the events following Hurricane Katrina and the gentrification and displacement issues occurring in New York City.

 

Nadia Islam, PhD is the Deputy Director of Research within the Center for the Study of Asian American Health. Ms. Islam specializes in community based participatory methods and health disparities research within Asian American and immigrant communities, and has had extensive training in qualitative methods, cancer control research, and access to healthcare issues. Prior to working at CSAAH, Ms. Islam directed the New York site of AANCART, the Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research, and Training based at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. AANCART was a five-year National Cancer Institute funded project dedicated to developing leadership within and collaboration with community-based organizations to address the needs of the medically under-served New York Asian American populations. Through her work with AANCART, Ms. Islam was actively involved in building a sustainable network of community based organizations, health professionals, and activists to conduct health research in the South Asian community. Ms. Islam has also worked as the Linkage Coordinator at the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (APICHA), where she was responsible for establishing formal linkages with providers and organizations around New York City which could serve as potential sites for referral of HIV/AIDS patients of AAPI descent. Ms. Islam has completed several fellowships and internships focusing on community health issues, and is committed to community organizing around health issues for South Asian in NYC. Ms. Islam received her doctorate in Sociomedical Sciences at ColumbiaUniversity. For her dissertation, Ms. Islam conducted an ethnographic case study to understand how non-profit organizations serving South Asian immigrant workers in New York City engage in social movement strategies in the public health arena while simultaneously providing services to the community.

 

Simona Kwon is the Program Manager of B Free CEED, as well as a Research Scientist at the Center for the Study of Asian American Health. Prior to her work at B Free CEED and CSAAH, Dr. Kwon completed the 2-year W.K. Kellogg Community Scholars Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Health Behavior & Society. During her post-doctoral fellowship, Dr. Kwon was engaged in several community-based participatory research projects with ethnic minority populations in Baltimore, MD. These projects included working collaboratively with a multi-disciplinary team of researchers to develop intervention strategies to address the underserved health needs of the Korean immigrant population in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. metropolitan area, and assessing the environmental as well as the socio-cultural factors influencing tobacco use among non-college attending, urban African American young adults living in Baltimore. She earned her Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology at Yale University and her doctorate in the Division of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. While at the Mailman School of Public Health, Dr. Kwon oversaw the creation of a collaborative network with local community leaders and community-based organizations to design outreach, interventions and research projects to address the cancer health needs of the Korean and South Asian immigrant populations in New York City.

 

Kevin Lo serves as program manager for the Hepatitis B programs and serves as a Clinical Affairs Associate at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center. He manages several grants awarded to the Health Center to screen, vaccinate and treat patients for Hepatitis B. Mr. Lo also works with the Health Center’s Research and Evaluation Department and community partners to collect and analyze data on Hepatitis B in the AAPI community. He also serves as project manager for the of the B Free CEED at the Health Center. Formerly, he was the training coordinator of the Health Disparities Research Training Program. Prior to his work at the Health Center, Mr. Lo assisted with the Study of Asian Community Institutions (SACI) and several projects with the Social Work Leadership Institute at the New York Academy of Medicine. He is also a published journalist as well as a community organizer and activist with several community-based HIV/AIDS organizations. He recently received his MPH in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

 

Henry Pollack, MD serves as the Project Director and Principal Investigator of the Hepatitis B and Hepaticellular Carcinoma project. Dr. Pollack is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at NYUSoM and the Director of the Fellowship Program in Pediatric Infectious Diseases. Dr. Pollack is also Director of the NYC Pediatric Viral Hepatitis Network funded by the Speakers Fund of the City Council which coordinates the care of children with chronic HBV and HCV infection among almost 20 hospitals and community health care facilities in NYC. He is the founder and Director of the Pediatric Viral Hepatitis Clinic at Bellevue Hospital, NYU Downtown Hospital, Charles B. Wang Chinatown Health Clinic and Gouverneur Hospital. Dr. Pollack serves as a mentor to the outreach and training cores.

 

Mariano Jose Rey, MD is the Director of the NYU Institute for Community Health and Research as well as the Director of the NYU Centers for Health Disparities Research. He is the Principal Investigator of the National Institute of Health (NIH) P 60-funded Center for the Study of Asian American Health and the NCMHD-supported R24 Project AsPIRE on cardiovascular disease and hypertension. He is also the Administrative Principal Investigator of the New York City Hepatitis B Program- a public health initiative that is a national model.

Dr. Rey is one of the founding faculty members of the NYU’s Institute for Urban and Global Health and was its Executive Director from 2001 to 2004. He is the originator and Director of NYU’s International Health Program, where students and faculty participate in service and research activities in over 20 countries. Dr. Rey serves as the Course Director of both the Annual Latino Health Conference and the Annual Asian American Health Conference.

After graduating from Columbia College, Dr. Marino Rey received his M.D. from the NYU School of Medicine. He then completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiology at the NYU/Bellevue Medical Center. He has served as Director of the Bellevue Hospital Cardiology Clinic, as well as Director of the Nuclear Cardiology Laboratories at both Bellevue and NYU. An expert in cardiac physiology, he was director of the Physiology course for NYU first year medical students. At present, Dr. Rey is Director of the Joan and Joel Smilow Center for Cardiac Rehabilitation and Prevention at NYU.

Dr. Rey has published numerous articles and book chapters in his field of cardiology, as well as in the international health, and in medical education and its interaction with the humanities. His most recently completed manuscripts address general health disparities in New York City and differences in the treatment of HIV-positive patients with protease inhibitors. He has been an Investigator in several multi-center NIH or National Cancer Institute grants, in which he served as a Core Laboratory Director or as the Principal Investigator at the NYU site. His efforts in these endeavors have resulted in numerous publications: peer-reviewed cardiology and public health journals, as well as the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

Henry Soliveres is a community health worker (CHW) for Project AsPIRE (Asian American Partnerships in Research and Empowerment). In this role, he conducts outreach activities in the Filipino community in Queens, NY to recruit and follow up hypertensive participants, linking them to health resources they need, and educating them on how to manage their blood pressure.   Before joining CSAAH, he was a community organizer at the Philippine Forum, a Filipino grassroots and advocacy organization based in New York with a focus on advocacy, recruitment, and involvement on immigration issues and related concerns for several years. His past experience also includes working with a wholesale club company where he organized a labor union with assistance from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union local 1500.  This involved house to house campaigns, organizing meetings, and organizing opportunities at other branches. Likewise in the Philippines, he organized a labor union for the supervisors and staff of a multi-national tire and rubber company. Mr. Soliveres is also a member of the Kalusugan Coalition, a multidisciplinary collaboration dedicated to creating a unified voice for improving the health of the Filipino community in New York and in New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Nueva Caceres in Naga City, Philippines with a Bachelor of Science in Commerce degree major in Accountancy.

 

Chau Trinh-Shevrin, DrPH is the Director and one of the original founders of the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health.  Dr. Trinh-Shevrin is also the Director of the NYU-Health and Hospitals Corporation Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s Office of Community Engagement, a co-PI of the NYU Health Promotion and Prevention Research Center, and Assistant Professor of Research at the NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Trinh-Shevrin is a co-investigator on several NIH, city-funded, and foundation grants that aims to understand and reduce health disparities in Asian American and other underserved communities. Currently, she develops community-based participatory research and research training initiatives focusing on Asian American and other underserved communities, mentors junior faculty and medical students and residents on community-based research, and provides research support in data analysis and evaluation. She also chairs the Patient Care and Community Outreach Group on the Dean's Council for Institutional Diversity at the NYU School of Medicine and previously served two terms on the Board of Directors for the Public Health Association of New York City. Dr. Trinh-Shevrin is a social epidemiologist with a Doctorate in Public Health from Columbia University and a Masters in Health Policy and Management at the State University of New York at Albany.  Dr. Trinh-Shevrin is co-editor of two textbooks Asian American Communities and Health (Jossey Bass Publishers, 2009) and Empowerment and Recovery: Confronting Addiction during Pregnancy with Peer Counseling (Praeger Press, 1998).

 

Thomas Tsang, MD, MPH is the Training Core Director for the Center. Dr. Tsang is also the medical director of the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center (CBWCHC). Dr. Tsang is committed to conducting community-based primary care and expanding research at the CBWCHC with the goal of reducing health disparities in the Asian community in general, and specifically in the Chinese community. He recently received an MPH from the Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and is currently a clinical instructor at NYU School of Medicine.

 

 

 

Rhodora Ursua, MPH received a Masters in Public Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health with a focus in Population and Family Health in May 2004. At the Center, she is the Director of Project AsPIRE (Asian American Partnerships in Research and Empowerment), a community-based participatory research project that aims to improve health access and status for cardiovascular disease (CVD) among Filipino-Americans in New York City and New Jersey.  Ms.Ursua also serves as the Project Coordinator of Kalusugan Coalition which is a Filipino health coalition she co-founded and the community partner for Project AsPIRE.  In addition, Ms. Ursua provides general support for the Center’s activities.