Shayna Cunningham, Ph.D., M.H.Sc.
Shayna Cunningham, PhD, M.H.Sc. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Her research focuses on promoting health equity, particularly related to maternal and child health, for structurally marginalized populations with an emphasis on community engagement. She has extensive expertise in the use of mixed methods and community-based participatory research approaches. Her current projects include the development and evaluation of interventions aimed at improving perinatal outcomes and addressing the rising burden of non-communicable diseases among women. She also provides leadership and support for several State-funded initiatives at the DMHAS Center for Prevention Evaluation and Statistics at UConn Health. In addition to research, Dr. Cunningham teaches graduate courses on social and structural determinants of health and public health research methods.
Email: scunningham@uchc.edu
Maria (Mayte) Restrepo-Ruiz, Ph.D.
Dr. Restrepo is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Public Health Sciences. She received her doctoral degree in Public Health in 2021 and her MPH in 2014, both from UConn. She also holds a master’s degree in International Studies. She received the Emergent Scholar award from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation (2020-2021) for her research on the Colombian armed conflict and its impact on women’s increased risk for intimate partner violence and mental health problems. In partnership with CPES, Dr. Restrepo is currently working on building a surveillance system for Adverse and Positive Childhood Experiences in Connecticut using publicly available and administrative data sources. Data from this system will be used to identify child populations at higher risk of adverse childhood experiences and gaps in the provision of prevention programs. She expects data from this system will be available to the public through a web portal in 2023. She is also collaborating with colleagues from Colombia and Puerto Rico on a project to better understand the role of potentially traumatic experiences in children’s mental health in socio-politically complex contexts. Dr. Restrepo is also one of the evaluators of the Partnership for Success 2022-2027 initiative and was the project director of the Family Stability Project social impact grant.
Dr. Restrepo’s goal is to advance her research in preventing adverse experiences in childhood by focusing on factors that have been found to promote positive health outcomes despite adversity. She invites students interested in global health, negative and positive childhood experiences, intimate partner violence, war/armed conflict, forced migration, and behavioral health to contact her at restreporuiz@uchc.edu.
Email: restreporuiz@uchc.edu