FANNIE GASTON-JOHANSSON PROFESSORS

Jennifer Richards is the Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She obtained both her MPH in Maternal and Child Health and PhD in Health Behavior Health Promotion from the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. Jennifer is Ásh’hi (Salt Clan) born for the Oglala Lakota Oyate. Her maternal grandfather is Taos Pueblo and her paternal grandfather is Oglala Lakota. She joined the Center for Indigenous Health in 2013 in Tuba City, AZ on the Navajo Nation. With over 15 years of public health experience in Southwest and Northern Plains tribes, her research focuses on reducing American Indian (AI) health inequities through family and child health (FCH) approaches and Indigenous research methodologies. Since 2013, Jennifer has led various FCH initiatives including: early childhood home visiting, diabetes prevention, teen pregnancy prevention, adolescent health promotion, and fatherhood empowerment. Her research interests also include the role of Indigenous doulas in promoting maternal mental health and improving birth outcomes in rural AI communities.

Amanda M. Brown is the Fannie Gaston-Johansson Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at the University of California Riverside and obtained a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where she identified novel mycobacterial protein secretion pathways. She transitioned to the field of HIV pathogenesis through a postdoctoral fellowship at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York City. There she developed innovative tools to investigate HIV-human macrophage biology and viral persistence at the single-cell level. Today, her lab uses the latest innovations in humanized mice, cellular reprogramming, and single-cell technologies to uncover the cellular and molecular basis of pathologic neuroinflammation.