Meet Our Team
Meet our team of multidisciplinary faculty, staff, students, and affiliates
INSTITUTE FACULTY, STAFF & STUDENTS
The Institute for Healing Justice & Equity is an interdisciplinary collective of researchers that engages academic and practice stakeholders in developing strategies and partnerships to change policy, encourage stakeholder participation, and provide training to enhance the capacity of Saint Louis University and the broader community to eliminate inequities in health and well-being.
William P. Johnson
William P. Johnson, JD, is the Dean and a Professor at the Center for International and Comparative Law at Saint Louis University School of Law.
Willam Johnson is an Execute Sponsor for the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity.
Practice Areas:
Commercial transactions; contracts; international business transactions; international law; international product distribution; UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods; uniform commercial code.

AMBER JOHNSON
Co-founder,
Executive Director
Amber Johnson
As a scholar/artist/activist, Dr. Johnson’s research and activism focus on narratives of identity, protest, and social justice in digital media, popular media, and everyday lived experiences. As a polymath, their mixed-media artistry involves working with metals, recycled and reclaimed goods, photography, poetry, percussion, and paint to interrogate systems of oppression. Dr. Amber Johnson is an award-winning Professor of Communication and Social Justice at Saint Louis University. Notable awards include the Golden Anniversary Monograph Award for research on black masculinity and the performative possibilities of social media, the Norm White Award for Engaged Scholarship and Service by the Saint Louis University Faculty Senate, Dr. Terry Leet Researcher Award from Generate Health for scholarship that centers social justice, the Lilla A. Heston award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies for work on embodied pedagogies and social justice, the Faculty Excellence Award for Diversity and Social Justice, a Presidential citation for social justice work within and beyond the Communication discipline, and several article of the year and top paper awards. Dr. Johnson has published articles in several journals including Qualitative Inquiry, Critical Studies in Media and Communication, Text & Performance Quarterly, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Communication Teacher, and Communication Quarterly. Dr. Johnson is the author of two books, African American Communication: Examining the Complexities of Lived Experience and Gender Futurity, Intersectional Autoethnography: Embodied Theorizing from the Margins. Dr. Johnson’s forthcoming book, A Great Inheritance, uses memoir to highlight healthy forms of love and support for trans and non-binary folks alongside young adult fiction to speculate on gender futurity as a site of liberation.
As Executive Director and co-founder of The Institute for Healing Justice and Equity, Dr. Johnson specializes in humanizing equity and exploring the relationship between healing justice and equity. Humanizing equity is the process of making organizational equity work radically inclusive in action. This requires bringing those most impacted by systemic injustice into the fold and including them throughout the entire process. If organizations are not inviting those most marginalized to create policies that are intended to create equity for those most marginalized, then how will they know their policies are necessary? Additionally, if organizations are not assessing the impact their policies have on actual lived experience of those most marginalized, how will they know their efforts are working? Humanizing equity is the process of being radically inclusive in all of our equity practices to ensure that the work is conceived, devised, implemented and assessed by those most impacted by systemic inequity. This requires valuing people’s input, treating them as stakeholders in the outcomes, ensuring that they are co-creators through the process versus experimental groups, and including them throughout the entire process from idea, to implementation, to assessment. Humanizing equity also requires healing justice. We must put equal effort into healing from past injustices and preventing future injustices.
Dr. Johnson is also the founding director of The Justice Fleet ™, a mobile social justice museum that fosters healing through art, dialogue, pleasure, and play. Dr. Johnson created The Justice Fleet to experiment with mobile museums and social justice inquiry, ethnography, and art activism as methodologies to address social injustice and urban engagement. The mobile museums, housed inside of a box truck, go into different communities to talk about social justice, self-love, community, and healing through intergroup dialogue, play, pleasure, and art activism. The museum currently houses three exhibits, Radical Forgiveness, Radical Imagination, and Transfuturism—an art activism exhibit that projects Black trans and gender nonconforming people as super heroes in an effort to render visible the embodied heroic work of dismantling the gender binary.
Expertise:
Humanizing equity; narratives of identity; social justice in digital media, popular media, and everyday lived experiences; relationship between healing justice and equity.
Highlighted Work:
“African American Communication: Examining the Complexities of Lived Experiences

RUQAIIJAH YEARBY
Co-founder,
Director of Community Research Ethics
Ruqaiijah Yearby
Ruqaiijah Yearby, JD, MPH, is the inaugural Kara J. Trott Professor in Law at the Moritz College of Law and a faculty affiliate of the Kirwan Institute at The Ohio State University.
Expertise:
Health inequities; civil rights law; health injustice; structural, political, and social determinants of health; bioethics; racial equity frameworks and tools.
Highlighted Work:
“Structural Racism in Historical and Modern US Health Care Policy”

KEON GILBERT
Co-founder,
director of Equity and Policy
Keon Gilbert
Dr. Keon Gilbert, DrPH, is an Associate Professor at Saint Louis University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice, in the Department of Behavioral Science and Health Education.
Expertise:
Health disparities; social capital; African-American men’s health; health promotion and disease prevention interventions for chronic diseases.
Highlighted Work:
“Racism: Science and Tools for the Public Health Professional”

KIRA BANKS
Co-founder,
Director of Healing Justice
Kira Banks
Kira Banks, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Saint Louis University, an APA-accredited Clinical Psychology doctoral program.
Expertise:
How discrimination impacts mental health; training models for helping professions to promote equity and cultural humility; intergroup relations.
Highlighted Work:
“Is Your Company Actually Fighting Racism, or Just Talking About It?”

LYDIA BULLOCK
Program Director
Lydia Bullock
Lydia Bullock, EdD, is a Student Affairs Practitioner and an alumna of Saint Louis University’s School of Education. Dr. Bullock earned her Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Education with a minor in Sociology from Austin Peay State University. She went on to earn her Master of Arts in Higher Education from Western Kentucky University. Dr. Bullock also holds her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Saint Louis University. Dr. Bullock is a 2x award winner from Saint Louis University of the Phil Lyons Outstanding Staff Advisor Award and the Rising Star Award presented by the Division of Student Development, the winner of the Outstanding Graduate Student Award from Western Kentucky University, and a 2x award winner of the Unsung Champion award from the Division of Student Affairs at Austin Peay State University.
Expertise:
Highlighted Work:

KJ SCHAEFFNER
Web Developer & Designer
KJ Schaeffner
KJ Schaeffner, MA, is a Web Developer for the Institute of Healing Justice & Equity. He is an alumnus of Saint Louis University, graduating from the English Department with concentrations in Rhetoric, Writing & Technology as well as Research Intensive English. He earned his masters in Rhetoric at the University of Texas at Austin, focusing on web accessibility as well as digital literacies and literatures.
Expertise:
Web accessibility; usability; digital literacies and literatures.
Highlighted Work:
“Archiving Our Own: The Digital Archive of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Texas at Austin, 1975-1995″
FACULTY AFFILIATES
PUBLIC HEALTH

CRYSTAL LEWIS
Crystal Lewis
Crystal Lewis, JD, MPH, has several years of social justice and legal experience. She is currently working on projects with the Institute which include: Racism as a Public Health Crisis, Worker Rights during the COVID-19 pandemic, Pregnancy Discrimination in the workplace, and Wage Pass Through laws for Direct Care workers.
Expertise:
Public health law; policy surveillance and legal epidemiology; legal research; multidisciplinary collaboration.

ELIZABETH A. BAKER
Elizabeth A. Baker
Elizabeth A. Baker, PhD, is a Professor at Saint Louis University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice, in the Department of Behavioral Science and Health Education.
Research Interests:
Community-based participatory research; social determinants of health and health equity; social support and control.

ELLEN K. BARNIDGE
Ellen K. Barnidge
Ellen K. Barnidge, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor at Saint Louis University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice, in the Department of Behavioral Science and Health Education.
Research Interests:
Community engagement; environment and policy change; health equity; household food insecurity; social determinants of health.

KIMBERLY R. ENARD
Kimberly R. Enard
Kimberly R. Enard, PhD, is an Assistant Professor is a Professor at Saint Louis University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice, in the Department of Health Management and Policy.
Research Interests:
Cancer screening and treatment; community-based participatory research; health disparities; health system improvement; safety net populations; shared decision making; social determinants of health.

KATIE STAMATAKIS
Katie Stamatakis
Katie Stamatakis, PhD, MPH, is a Professor at Saint Louis University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice, in the Department of Behavioral Science and Health Education.
Research Interests:
Chronic disease epidemiology; implementation research in public health settings; sleep and metabolic determinants of chronic disease.

RHONDA BELUE
Rhonda BeLue
Rhonda BeLue, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Health Management and Policy Program at Saint Louis University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice.
Research Interests:
Global health care; health care disparities; health care safety net; population health management.

KEMBA NOEL-LONDON
Kemba Noel-London
Dr. Kemba Noel-London is a Social Epidemiologist and a Certified Athletic Trainer. She is also a health equity researcher with an interest in exploring the social determinants of health and policy level impacts on minority health specifically within the intersection of allied health and public health. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health Studies and a post-graduate certificate in Geospatial Health from Saint Louis University’s (SLU) College for Public Health and Social Justice. She also holds a Masters of Athletic Training.
Research Interests:
Public health policy; health care disparities access to health care including allied health and athletic training; adverse childhood experiences, disparities in sport participation and physical activity; trauma informed sport and sport medicine.
ARTS & SCIENCES

LIZ CHIARELLO
Liz Chiarello
Liz Chiarello, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Saint Louis University with courtesy appointments in Law and Health Care Ethics.
Research Interests:
Sociological theories of organizations and medicine; socio-legal theories of criminality and frontline work; medical sociology; socio-legal theory; frontline decision-making; organizational theory; collective behavior and social movements; opioids; substance use; harm reduction; pain; reproductive justice.
Highlighted Work:

RICHARD HARVEY
Richard Harvey
Richard Harvey, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Industrial-Organization Program and Experimental Program at Saint Louis University.
Research Interests:
Collective identity and its relations to a variety of social group related and organization-related phenomena; strategic planning; diversity development; organizational development; program evaluation.

TIM HUFFMAN
Tim Huffman
Tim Huffman, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Saint Louis University.
Research Interests:
Social justice, nonprofit organizing, homelessness, compassion, community, pragmatic and relational epistemology, participatory and community-based research.

CHARNELL PETERS
Charnell Peters
Charnell Peters, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Saint Louis University.
Research Interests:
Critical science and technology studies; critical interpersonal and family communication; Black digital media studies

BRYAN SOKOL
Bryan Sokol
Bryan Sokol, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology and the director of the Center for Social Action at Saint Louis University. He was trained as a developmental scientist at the University of British Columbia in Canada where he focused on the psychological and social factors that promote positive youth development. He has been a faculty member at SLU since 2007. His current research is directed toward applied contexts that enhance young persons’ sense of agency, empathy, purpose and spirituality.
Research Interests:
Constructivism; social development; child and adolescent social development.

CHRISTOPHER TINSON
Christopher Tinson
Christopher Tinson, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Director of African American Studies at Saint Louis University.
Research Interests:
Histories of Africana radical traditions; Black protest movements, U.S. ethnic studies; incarceration; race and sports.
LAW

ROBERT GATTER
Robert Gatter
Robert Gatter, JD, is Director of the Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University School of Law and a Professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the College for Public Health and Social Justice at Saint Louis University.
Practice Areas:
Public health law; informed consent law; end-of-life decisions; conflicts of interest; theoretical descriptions of health law.

ELIZABETH PENDO
Elizabeth Pendo
Elizabeth Pendo, JD, is the Joseph J. Simeone Professor of Law at the Center for Health and the William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law at Saint Louis University School of Law.
Practice Areas:
Disability law; healthcare law; bioethics.

SIDNEY WATSON
Sidney Watson
Sidney Watson, JD, is the Jane and Bruce Robert Professor of the Center for Health Law Studies and Center for International and Comparative Law at Saint Louis University School of Law.
Practice Areas:
Racial and ethnic disparities in health care; health reform; Medicaid; health care for those who are homeless.

PRASHASTI BHATNAGAR
Prashasti Bhatnagar
Prashasti Bhatnagar, JD, MPH is a Law/Public Health Post Doctoral Scholar at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and a Sociology PhD student at Vanderbilt University. Originally from New Delhi, India, Prashasti holds a BS in Sociology, summa cum laude from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with minors in Social Justice and Public Health; MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with a Certificate in Health Disparities and Health Inequalities; and JD from Georgetown University Law Center.
Expertise:
Immigration; health justice; law; social/structural inequities; medical-legal partnerships; structural public health interventions; social justice and antiracism.
FORMER FACULTY, STAFF, & AFFILIATES

MICHELLE ROLFSMEYER
FORMER Program Director
Michelle Rolfsmeyer
Michelle Rolfsmeyer has extensive experience in non-profit and social service work, both as a frontline worker and program manager. She has dedicated her career to supporting vulnerable communities, and is excited to be a part of the Institute’s work and mission.
Expertise:
Program administration, development and collaboration; child and family services; frontline worker selection, support, and training.

CHARYSSE GIBSON
FORMER BIOstatistician & Web Developer
Charysse Gibson
Charysse Gibson, MPH, MA, works in the areas of data, statistics, programming, geographic information systems, and technology to inform solutions that serve and empower marginalized and vulnerable communities.
Expertise:
Biostatistics and epidemiology; geographic information systems; community development and racial reconciliation; intercultural relations.

ANA SANTOS RUTSCHMAN
Faculty Affiliate: Law
Ana Santos Rutschman
Ana Santos Rutschman, SJD, is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Health Law Studies and Center for International and Comparative Law at Saint Louis University School of Law.
Practice Areas:
Health law; intellectual property; food and drug law.

CHRISTOPHER PRENER
Faculty Affiliate: Arts & Sciences
Christopher Prener
Christopher Prener, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Saint Louis University.
Research Interests:
Health and wellness; mental health; social stratification; urban sociology work; research methods; mobile data collection tools.

DENISE
HOOKS-ANDERSON
Faculty Affiliate: Medicine
Denise Hooks-Anderson
Denise Hooks-Anderson, MD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Saint Louis University.
Practice Areas:
Obesity; women’s health; primary care provider.

AUTUMN JONES
GRADUATE ASSISTANT

AUBRA LADD
GRADUATE ASSISTANT

NIA SUMPTER
GRADUATE ASSISTANT
IN MEMORIAM

JONATHAN SMITH
Jonathan Smith
Remembering Dr. Jonathan Smith (1959-2021)
Jonathan Smith, PhD, is a Founding Executive Sponsor of the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity.