Twenty new faculty members have been recruited to CUNY SPH since our consolidation in 2016, and we continue to enjoy success in attracting talented new faculty, expanding our ability to conduct state-of-the art research and equip our graduates with the skills they need to compete successfully in a rapidly changing public health landscape. Three new tenure track faculty members joined us in the past year, enhancing our existing strengths in the domains of population health informatics and health economics.
Karmen Williams
DrPH, MBA
Assistant Professor in Population Health Informatics in the Department of Health Policy and Management
Dr. Williams joins CUNY SPH from Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. She is an experienced public health practitioner trained in public and population health informatics. She completed a DrPH in Public Health Leadership as well as an MBA from Georgia Southern University. She also received an MA in Sociology at Prairie View A&M University and an MS in Public Health at Meharry Medical College.
In 2019, she completed a post-doctorate fellowship in public and population health informatics at Indiana University and Regenstrief Institute. Her research focused on systemic informatics integration projects such as Patient Centered Data Homes and dental and medical record integration. Dr. Williams is also actively involved in the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), where she is the director of ‘For Your Informatics’, a podcast that explores the limitless world of medical informatics. This podcast is led by the Women in AMIA, which showcases people in science, technology, engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and informatics, and discusses topics relevant to success in these fields. Dr. Williams is passionate about increasing representation in STEM at the system level in all areas of informatics.
Jose Fernandez Florez-Arango
MD, PhD
Associate Professor in Population Health Informatics in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
Dr. Florez-Arango is a Colombian physician, private pilot, and health informatician with more than 20 years of experience as clinician, educator, researcher, opinion leader, innovator, and entrepreneur. He earned a PhD in Health Informatics from the School of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and MSc in Biomedical Sciences from the Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia, and his MD from the same institution.
Dr. Florez-Arango’s research explores the human-computer interaction and the use of information and communication technologies to enhance human performance in low resources environments as space missions, battlefields, and rural healthcare. His clinical experience has been in emergency medicine, with special training in prehospital care, critical air transport crew member, and disaster planning, and management. As educator, he is interested in curricular innovation, development, implementation, and evaluation.
Mustafa Hussein
PhD
Assistant Professor in Health Economics in the Department of Health Policy and Management
Dr. Hussein joins CUNY SPH from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He completed a PhD in health policy as well as a postdoctoral fellowship in epidemiology at the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. His training spanned health economics, public policy analysis, applied econometrics, social epidemiology, and urban health.
Dr. Hussein’s research has examined drivers of social inequality in health, particularly the role of healthcare and economic policies, as well as contextual and psychosocial mechanisms, in shaping the health and well-being of vulnerable populations in urban areas. His current research addresses health inequalities in three domains: urban economic policies and their effects on health and wellbeing in low-income populations, contributions of healthcare organization and insurance policies to health inequalities and socioeconomic stratification, and psychosocial mechanisms, such as chronic stress and psychological distress, underlying the high burden of cardiovascular disease and HIV/AIDS among low-income and racial/ethnic minority populations.
