Dr. Labbok with several UNC Hospital clinical instructors and the students from the pilot year of the Mary Rose Tully Training Initiative.
2011 Graduates
Ellen Chetwynd, MPH May 2011
Ellen Chetwynd is in her second year as an MPH candidate in the Department of Maternal and Child Health and is working with CGBI as a graduate research assistant. She received the 2010 CGBI scholarship for her summer internship with the United States Lactation Consultant Association. She has worked as a lactation consultant (IBCLC) for 10 years, and in the field of maternal and child health for over 20 years. Her interests in birth and breastfeeding have taken her through work as a doula, a labor and delivery nurse, and most recently, with the UNC Department of Family Medicine as the Co-Director of their Maternal and Child Health Program.
During her career in Maternal and Child Health she has played a key role in implementing group care models into the UNC Family Medicine MCH Program (CenteringPregnancy and WellBabies), lectured on birth and breastfeeding in multiple local and national settings, taught physicians, residents, nurses, and midwives about breastfeeding care, started the UNC Family Medicine Lactation Service, chaired the UNC Women's Hospitals Patient Education Committee, and co-lead the Durham BEST for Babies African American Breastfeeding Support group. She returned to school to get a wider view of her areas of interest, and to learn more about research, grantsmanship, and program planning, implementation, and evaluation. After graduation, she hopes to continue to help young families, and to normalize, support and promote birth choices and breastfeeding on a wider level.
Rachel Scheckter, MPH May 2011
Rachel Scheckter is a second year master's student in Maternal and Child Health who first got interested in breastfeeding during her work as a perinatal educator and doula after college. She is currently enrolled in a clinical lactation consultant course and hopes to apply what she learns to a career in international family planning and reproductive health. Rachel is joining CGBI to work on the Breastfeeding-friendly Child Care project in Wake County.
2010 Graduates
Elizabeth Jensen, MPH May 2010
Elizabeth Jensen has over 10 years of experience working in the Maternal and Child Health field. She has worked in a variety of settings at both the direct-service and administrative level. Early in her career she provided case-management services to pregnant women and families with young children. Later, she provided quality assurance, technical assistance and program coordination to the statewide implementation of the Healthy Families Florida program. More recently she managed a $2 million dollar grant awarded the March of Dimes for birth defects prevention. She has served on state and national workgroups including the Florida Folic Acid Coalition, the Florida Prematurity Advisory Committee and the National Panel on Preconception Health. Currently, in addition to her graduate studies, Ms. Jensen is the Project Coordinator for a Community-Based Participatory Research Project seeking to increase breastfeeding among African American women in Durham County. Ms. Jensen has three children, all of whom were exclusively breastfed.
Hannah Pollet, MPH May 2010
Hannah Pollet is a first year MPH candidate in the Department of Maternal and Child Health and a graduate research assistant at the Global Breastfeeding Institute at Carolina. Her work at the Institute currently involves curriculum development for the professional lactation sciences master's degree, advocacy, and the development of a student organization to support and complement CGBI. Miss Pollet is a Registered Dietitian and taught nutrition in low-income elementary schools for 2 years in Durham, NC. It was her experience in public health education, a summer working at an orphanage in Uganda, and involvement in various breastfeeding programs that led her to UNC's Maternal and Child Health Department. She obtained a B.S. in Nutrition and completed her dietetic internship at Meredith College. Her main interests in public health are national and international breastfeeding promotion and education, and maternal and infant nutrition. After graduating in 2010, she would like to work with breastfeeding families as a lactation consultant, and on a broader scale to support and promote breastfeeding and maternal nutrition.
2009 Graduates
Pamela K. Dardess, MPH May 2009
Pamela Dardess is a 2nd year Master's student in the Department of Maternal and Child Health. She currently works for the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute as a Graduate Research Assistant. Her work with CGBI has included conducting research to explore differences in attitudes toward breastfeeding between African American and White women of higher socioeconomic status and consulting on the B.E.S.T. project, a project designed to promote and support breastfeeding among African American women in Durham, NC. Ms. Dardess's interests include disparities in breastfeeding, determining effective ways to promote breastfeeding, developing accurate, informative, and motivational breastfeeding educational tools, and qualitative research. Prior to joining CGBI, Ms. Dardess's work focused on developing and evaluating health-related informational materials for consumers and health care providers. Ms. Dardess has particular expertise in qualitative research, having conducted focus groups, in-depth interviews, and cognitive interviews with a variety of populations. Ms. Dardess holds a B.A. in Psychology from Oberlin College, with graduate training from George Washington University in survey design and data analysis. She has over 12 years of work experience, most recently as a Senior Research Analyst at the American Institutes for Research. She expects to graduate with an MPH in 2009, and aspires to obtain a position where she can promote and protect breastfeeding and support women in their efforts to breastfeed.
Sarah Davis, MPH May 2009
Sarah Davis is a second year MPH candidate in the Department of Maternal and Child Health and a graduate trainee at the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute. She graduated with a B.S. in biology from Mary Washington College and worked with Teach For America in the Mississippi Delta prior to enrolling at UNC-CH. Both experiences fundamentally shaped her perspective on the importance of access to care and health disparities. Her focus is on international women's health, and she is particularly interested in breastfeeding as it impacts women's health. Following graduation, Sarah hopes to work internationally in program implementation and assessment.
Elizabeth Miller, MSPH May 2009
Elizabeth Miller received her BA in Economics from New York University in 2000. After working for a few years in the financial industry she came to UNC to pursue a graduate degree. She is currently enrolled in a dual degree program studying Social Work and Public Health. Elizabeth hopes to spend her career working on health and welfare issues in an international setting.
Rebecca Swann, MSPH May 2009
Rebecca Swann is an MD/MSPH student in the Department of Maternal and Child Health. She was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina but left the state to obtain her bachelor's degree from Yale University before returning to the south to study at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Currently she is working on her master's degree in public health, and is conducting a research study with Dr. Miriam Labbok on the breastfeeding histories of children with autism spectrum disorders. After completion of her graduate degrees, she plans to pursue residency and fellowship training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
2008 Graduates
Brook Colgan, MPH May 2008
Brook Colgan received her MPH in the Department of Maternal and Child Health and is currently working with the the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute as a Research and Curriculum Associate. During the spring semester of 2008, Brook was the TA for the Survey Course on Optimal Infant and Young Child Feeding. Additional work involves participation in the North Carolina Safe Sleep Campaign and exploring the protective relationship of breastfeeding on SIDS. Before coming to UNC, Brook served in Teach For America as a middle school science teacher in inner-city Miami, FL. It was this experience, working with students who did not regularly have access to quality healthcare and health education, which prompted Brook to seek a degree in Public Health. Teach For America provided a greater awareness of the health needs of underserved communities, which is why Brook is working towards a Certificate in Health Disparities from the School of Public Health. Before joining Teach For America, Brook received an undergraduate degree in Zoology from North Carolina State University.
During the summer of 2007, Brook was an intern with the UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health and remains an active member of the team. Brook's main academic interests include breastfeeding promotion, infant health outcomes, maternal and infant nutrition, and health disparities.
Kavita Coombe, MPH May 2008
Kavita Dave' Coombe received her Master of Public Health in the Public Health Leadership Program with a focus in epidemiology and global health. Her interests are in infectious disease prevention, particularly HIV and HPV and cancer epidemiology. Kavita became interested in working with the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute after learning about the links between breastfeeding, reduced infant mortality and breast cancer prevention. While pursuing her MPH degree, Kavita worked on a project looking at the impact of improved breastfeeding rates among African American women in North Carolina on infant mortality. Before entering the MPH program, Kavita was involved in basic research for 5 years at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City and Lineberger Cancer Center at UNC-CH and clinical research for 2 years at Family Health International. After graduating, she hopes to work for an international public health organization in clinical research and would like to be in a position to assist with the translation of the latest research to practice in resource-limited settings.
Chetna Malhotra, MPH January 2008
Chetna Malhotra is a graduate with an MPH from the Department of Maternal and Child Health in Jan 2008. Her work at the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute involved a research study examining the impact of time of initiation of breastfeeding after birth on neonatal mortality using data from Demographic and Health Surveys from India.
Chetna is a physician from India with specialization in Community Medicine. Before coming to UNC, she worked as a resident in the Department of Community Medicine, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India. She then completed a one year fellowship from the same Department. During this period, she provided health services at various rural and urban health centers in Delhi and participated in the planning and implementation of various quantitative and qualitative research projects related to reproductive and child health issues. Her research interests are infant feeding and women's health issues in India.
Isabelle Michaud-Létourneau, MPH May 2008
Isabelle Michaud-Létourneau is a nutritionist from Quebec, Canada, who graduated in May 2008 with a Master of Public Health from the Department of Maternal and Child Health. As a Rotary World Peace fellow, she has also pursued studies in peace and conflict resolution. Her work has mainly related to malnutrition and food insecurity in developing countries including Bolivia, Brazil, Senegal and Mozambique. Within the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute, she has carried out a quantitative study to explore the use of the WHO Growth Standards using an existing dataset of Chilean infants with different feeding patterns: exclusively breastfed for a full 6 months and exclusively breastfed for shorter durations. She hopes to dedicate herself towards ensuring food security to vulnerable populations.
Elizabeth Roberts, MPH May 2008
Elizabeth Roberts received her MPH in the Department of Maternal and Child Health in May 2008. She worked with the Institute Director to develop a distance learning curriculum for health care professionals that focuses on breastfeeding. Though her background is in HIV/AIDS and human sexuality her future career interests are in environmental sustainability and the farm to table movement.
2007 Graduates
Sheryl Abrahams, MPH May 2007
Sheryl Wallin Abrahams received her MPH degree in Maternal and Child Health in May 2007, and worked as an Institute graduate research assistant from 2006-07. While at the Institute she completed a research project to assess the impact of the international Baby-friendly Hospital Initiative, supported grant-writing and proposal development, and conducted background research for state-level advocacy efforts. She has presented CGBI research at the 2007 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting and the 2007 NC Public Health Association Annual Educational Conference. Before coming to UNC, Sheryl served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkmenistan from 2002-04. She is currently a full-time research assistant with the Department of Maternal and Child Health, where she supports the work of the Center and of the Economic Assessment of Child Health research group.
Kelly Evans, MPH May 2007
Kelly E Evans is a graduate from the Maternal and Child Health department in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she focused on child health and health disparities. For her master's paper she investigated the relationship between the availability of breastfeeding promotion programs and racial/ethnic composition of participants in NC WIC offices. She is currently researching the economics of child health, including cost effectiveness of screening for developmental delay, costs of illness for survivors of childhood cancer, and taxometric analysis of ADHD diagnosis in children with Dr. E. Michael Foster. After receiving her undergraduate degree in biology and classics, she was a research technician in a biochemistry research lab that studied the ryanodine receptor, a calcium channel.
Kathryn Suyes, MPH May 2007
Kathryn Suyes graduated in 2007 from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Maternal and Child Health, with a Master's in Public Health. For her master's paper she conducted a survey on attitudes towards breastfeeding/expressing breastmilk in the work place, to determine the effect of comprehensive lactation services on employee morale. Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute partnered with employees of the SAS Institute in Cary, NC to complete this project, which also included an evaluation of SAS's lactation services as part of the survey. Kathryn is a native of Virginia and currently resides in Hopewell. Prior to enrolling at UNC-CH, she spent eight years as a public health nurse in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She has been a registered nurse since 1993. Kathryn currently works at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond as the coordinator for the state child fatality review team, a position that she has held since October of 2007.
Emily C. Taylor, MPH December 2007, CD (DONA)
Emily's work at the Institute focuses on five main areas: 1) cultivating financial resources for enhanced capacity; 2) building synergy among CGBI and related organizations and individuals for greater impact; 3) reducing constraints to exclusive breastfeeding in the United States (focusing on Child Care Centers and Hospitals in NC); 4) supporting the North Carolina Breastfeeding Coalition in their efforts to increase their organizational capacity, and to "Ban the Bags" from North Carolina hospitals; and 5) co-coordinating the annual Breastfeeding, Feminism, and Reproductive Rights Symposium.
Emily received her Master of Public Health degree from UNC School of Public Health's Department of Maternal and Child Health in 2007. Before attending UNC, her study of Medical Anthropology formed her perspectives on pregnancy, childbirthing, and mothering young children. Emily complements her theoretical knowledge base regarding these areas by practicing as a Certified Childbirth Doula (CD(DONA)). In other efforts to improve maternal and child health in the US, she served as the Health Literacy Coordinator for Middle Georgia Technical College, founded the Middle Georgia Health Literacy Taskforce, and continues to lecture on effective health communication to health professionals throughout the Southeast.
2006 Graduates
Leslie Echerd, MPH December 2006
