PHES StaffRajiv Bhatia, MD, MPH is the Director of Occupational and
Environmental Health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health and
an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California
at San Francisco, and is responsible for developing, implementing, and evaluating the City's environmental health policy. Under Dr. Bhatia's leadership, the Department has new initiatives that broaden the scope of environmental health and justice. These initiatives span issues ranging from land use and transportation planning to urban food systems and worker rights, and all efforts involve collaboration with public agencies, universities, and community organizations. As part of these initiatives the Department is developing, applying and evaluating new tools for interdisciplinary planning and health impact assessment (HIA), including the Healthy Development Measurement Tool and the Pedestrian Environmental Quality Index. Dr. Bhatia teaches a course on HIA at UC Berkeley. He is also an advisor to Sambhavna People's Health and Documentation Clinic and a member of the Health and Social Justice Committee for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. Karen Cohn, MS, CIH manages the Children’s Environmental
Health Promotion unit. From its inception in 1993, she has worked with Citizen Advisory
Committees, community and city agencies to reduce lead hazards to children, through legislative
initiatives, reports and hearings evaluating city agencies’ efforts and recommending policy.
Since 1998, Ms. Cohn has involved herself and staff in reducing children’s asthma morbidity via
culturally-specific media outreach, home-based education, environmental assessment and research
on obstacles to improving housing conditions, educating patients at SFGH asthma clinics and
managing a 4-year state grant collaborative focused on children under five. As the Department’s
representative to the SF Asthma Task Force, charged with implementing a strategic plan, she
chairs its Environmental Committee, currently advocating for better housing conditions for
Housing Authority tenants. Ms. Cohn also manages a Child Passenger Safety program and with DPH
home visiting staff, promotes resources for healthy homes and the reduction of toxic exposures
to children. Cynthia Comerford Scully, MA is Senior Health Program Planner for the Environmental Health Section.
Cynthia's work focuses on planning and developing public health programs and providing technical assistance to incorporate public health considerations into local planning decisions. Programmatic areas of focus include environmental policy, land use planning, transportation, open space, food security and spatial analysis. Cyndy's newest project is managing a community based transportation planning effort for Treasure Island. She is also working on the Eastern Neighborhoods Health Impact Assessment and has collaborated on the design of the Healthy Development Measurement Tool. Her research includes working on developing several pedestrian models which are aimed at translating environmental variables into a set of provisions crucial for a healthy pedestrian environment and developing a geographic sound propagation model to be used for emergency response planning. She also serves the Blue Greenway Task Force and the Open Space Task Force/Greenway Network. Lili Farhang, MPH is the coordinator of the
Healthy Development Measurement
Tool (HDMT), an innovative and ground-breaking evidence-based practice to consider health in land use planning and decision-making. Prior to that, she coordinated the Eastern Neighborhoods Health Impact Assessment (ENCHIA), an 18-month collaborative, consensus-based process convened to assess the health benefits and burdens of development in several San Francisco neighborhoods. Through her work, Lili brings experience in understanding the relationships between the built environment and health, the application of health impact assessment methods, program and tools development, coalition and consensus-building and process facilitation. Prior to joining the Department, Lili worked on reproductive justice issues in New York City, focusing on reducing infant and maternal mortality and increasing contraceptive access. Megan Gaydos, MPH is Planning and Policy Analyst for the Program on Health, Equity, and Sustainability.
Megan works with the Program on Health, Equity, and Sustainability (PHES) on projects related to the social determinants of health. Working with others on the Healthy Development Measurement Tool (HDMT) team, Megan supports development, maintenance, and applications of the
HDMT, specifically in the areas of public infrastructure and social cohesion. Megan also works with PHES staff to advance research, policies and interventions that promote and protect workers' rights and healthy working conditions, including the evaluation of
the Jornaleros Unidos con el Pueblo Project, a 3-year participatory research project with day laborers and local community-based organizations. Over the past year, Megan
served as the SFDPH coordinator for screenings of the new documentary Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (www.unnaturalcauses.org) Prior to her work with SFDPH, Megan worked on a number of health and social justice-related research and advocacy projects at organizations including the Berkeley Media Studies Group, Physicians for Human Rights, and the Miriam Hospital-Immunology Department. Michelle Kirian, MPH is Coordinator for the San Francisco Bay Area
Cryptosporidiosis Surveillance Project at the San Francisco Department
of Public Health Environmental Health Section. Cryptosporidiosis is a
waterborne disease that impacts children, the elderly, and those with
compromised immune systems. As part of the Water Epidemiology program,
Michelle works
closely on projects related to water and health. Alvaro Morales is the Program Coordinator for the Jornaleros Unidos con el Pueblo Project (Day Laborers United with the Community) project.
Mr. Morales has over 10 years experience working with communities in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties to increase
preventive health services knowledge, insurance coverage, and basic services.
In addition, he has over nine years of professional level management
and administration experience including operations, budget development and contract management, and extensive experience working
in clinic, educational and programmatic arenas, at both county and non-profit agencies,
including development of collaborations between non-profits, private and public organizations.
Jennifer McLaughin, MS is Health Program Planner for the
Environmental Health Section. Jennifer provides assistance on HDMT neighborhood plan applications, specifically focusing on open space and food access. Jennifer also provides Geographic Information Systems (GIS) support for the HDMT and all other programs in Environmental Health. Within the HDMT, she is involved in the development of a Neighborhood Completeness indicator to evaluate existing key public and retail services throughout San Francisco neighborhoods to identify potential resource gaps. Jennifer also works on a
community-based transportation project in Treasure Island, where her main involvement has been to help create a
Bicycle Environmental Quality Index to assess and identify the current bicycle facility environment. Tom Rivard, MS, REHS, is the Noise and Air Quality Program Manager for the Environmental Health Section. His work involves studying the relationships between traffic, air quality, and noise. In a joint research projects with the University of California at Berkeley and Portland State University he is studying the effects of traffic upon ambient noise levels, particulate matter, and nitrogen dioxide exposure. He co-authored a guidance document for planning and environmental review with Rajiv Bhatia titled, “Assessment and Mitigation of Air Pollutant Health Effects from Intra-urban Roadways.” He is the acoustics consultant to the newly installed DTIS/OES Outdoor Public Warning System for the City of San Francisco. His research interests include: noise and housing; noise levels as a predictor of air quality; and modeling air quality in the micro-environment.
June Weintraub, ScD is Senior Epidemiologist for the Program
on Health Equity and Sustainability, and manages the Drinking Water
Epidemiology Program. In addition to providing epidemiologic and management support to PHES, Dr. Weintraub works closely with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on health issues related to the drinking water supply. Her work includes research projects, public health education about water quality issues, regulatory support, emergency preparedness assistance and water borne disease surveillance. Dr. Weintraub was instrumental in supporting the City in the implementation of the
Healthy Products, Healthy Children Ordinance, the first U.S. ordinance to regulate the manufacture, distribution and sale of products containing phthalates. She has served on several advisory committees, including the National Water Quality Advisory Council to the SFPUC, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Synthetic Playfields Task Force, the Cruise Terminal Environmental Advisory Committee and the California Environmental Health Tracking Planning Consortium. Dr. Weintraub has over 20 years of professional and academic experience in environmental health from various perspectives, including research, engineering, and policy. Megan Wier, MPH is Epidemiologist for the Program on Health Equity and Sustainability.
Megan's work focuses on developing and applying quantitative health impact assessment tools. As a member of the HDMT team, her efforts are concentrated on sustainable and safe transportation issues. Her recent research has included developing an
area-level model to predict the number of vehicle-pedestrian injury collisions associated with environmental and demographic changes due to land use development in San Francisco. Megan previously worked on epidemiologic studies addressing health disparities and reproductive/family health issues including preterm birth, autism, and health care among the working poor in California. Before obtaining her MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC Berkeley, Megan directed research, evaluation and quality improvement activities for teen pregnancy prevention and young family support programs at a New York City non-profit agency. Karen Yu, REHS, MPH is a Senior Environmental Health
Inspector working in the Environmental Health Section. She has designed, conducted, and
evaluated occupational and environmental health training programs for city employees and
community members. Ms. Yu's current focus is on home environmental hazards and occupational
safety in low wage workers. Most recently she has participated in the development of the
environmental home assessment protocol and developed "Asthma Awareness" training class for
public health professionals and community-base outreach workers. She has also led efforts
to develop a health and safety collaboration with immigrant day laborers in San Francisco. |
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