Our Team

Dr. Lisa Cooper is a Liberian-born general internist, social epidemiologist, and health services researcher. As the Director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, Dr. Cooper leads the Institute in its mission to advance health and health equity across Baltimore City. Dr. Cooper is also the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine and Bloomberg Distinguished Professor for Equity in Health and Health Care in the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health. She is the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, where she and her transdisciplinary team work with stakeholders, from healthcare and the community implement rigorous clinical trials, identifying interventions that alleviate racial and income disparities in social determinants and health outcomes.

Dr. Cooper was one of the first scientists to document disparities in the quality of relationships between physicians and patients from socially at-risk groups. She then designed innovative interventions targeting physicians’ communication skills, patients’ self-management skills, and healthcare organizations’ ability to address needs of populations experiencing health disparities. She is the author of over 200 publications and has been the principal investigator of more than 15 federal and private foundation grants. She has also been a devoted mentor to more than 75 individuals seeking careers in medicine, nursing, and public health.

Dr. Cooper has received several honors for her pioneering research, teaching, and mentoring, including a 2007 MacArthur Fellowship, membership in the National Academy of Medicine, the Association of American Medical Colleges Herbert W. Nickens Award Herbert W. Nickens Award for outstanding contributions to social justice in medical education and equity in healthcare in the United States and theAmerican Public Health Association Helen Rodríguez-Trìas Social Justice Award. She has also been recognized by several community organizations locally and nationally for her community engagement and advocacy to address health disparities.

Email: urbanhealth@jhu.edu

Rebkha Atnafou-Boyer joined the UHI team in 2013 as our associate director for community engagement. As of recent, Mrs. Atnafou-Boyer now serves as the associate director of the Bunting Neighborhood Leadership Program, working alongside Dr. Bower to develop curriculum and provide Fellows with resources and mentorship. During her time with the UHI she has been involved in various research projects, including the Global Early Adolescent Study as the Baltimore site research coordinator, serving as co-investigator for the Colorectal Cancer Screening to Reduce Racial Disparities study, and research coordinator for the Family Cancer History project. In addition, she provides youth development training, programming, and research work for the Center for Adolescent Health. Rebkha’s focus is on youth development and sexual health training, systems and capacity building, leadership development, promoting evidence in health education and outreach, and illuminating sociocultural barriers to cancer prevention among urban African Americans. She is a certified national trainer for evidence-based youth sexual health curriculums and has worked with various cities around the country to plan city-wide afterschool systems, integrate youth violence prevention plans in state health departments, and youth sexual health plans in school districts. 

Prior to joining UHI Rebkha served for over a decade as the executive director for the After-School Institute. In this role she was charged with providing training, technical assistance, and systems building for afterschool programs throughout Baltimore and around the country. Rebkha has a BA in biology from Binghamton University and MPH from Columbia University.

Email: ratnafo1@jhu.edu

Faculty Appointment: Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing

As an associate director, Dr. Bower, alongside Dr. Purnell, will lead efforts to facilitate and recognize collaborations between communities, universities, healthcare delivery systems, government, and the private sector to build collective capacity for achieving health equity in Baltimore. Dr. Bower’s research and her public health nursing practice focus on the elimination of racial disparities in maternal and child and women’shealth. Using a social justice lens, she aims to deepen understanding of the underlying causes of racial disparities and inform interventions to promote equity and mitigate racial disparities. Her research examines the role of social determinants of health including racism and respectful maternity care. She also explores how interventions such as maternal, infant, and early childhood home visiting programs can be leveraged to address racial disparities. Dr. Bower applies a community-engaged approach to her research that comes from her 18 years of experience practicing as a public health nurse in Baltimore, including 10 years with the Baltimore City Health Department and the B’More for Healthy Babies Initiative. She has received funding from the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Scholars (NIH KL2) program, Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, and Health Resources & Services Administration. She earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where her dissertation focused on the relationship between residential segregation, food store availability, and racial disparities in obesity among women.

Email: kbower1@jhu.edu

Joining our core team as a program administrator, Katie will work with Nancy Edwards Molello and Natalie Wiggins on the administration and evaluation of the UHI grants programs and support new initiatives to help further the mission and goals of the UHI. In addition, she is the program administrator at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity working with Dr. Lisa Cooper. 

Katie has over a decade of experience in managing large, system-level clinical trials involving clinicians, clinical staff, behavioral interventionists, and community members in primary care settings. She has extensive experience in community-based participatory research, IRB and sponsor compliance, and disseminating research activities.

Email: kdietz4@jhmi.edu

As a Communications Coordinator, Tomozia Graves is responsible for executing and monitoring the Urban Health Institute's (UHI) communications strategies. Further, she will be responsible for managing UHI's marketing communications in order to help advance the mission and goals of the organization. 

Prior to joining the UHI team, Tomozia worked for Harford Community College (HCC) in advising and for My College Success Network (MCSN) where she supported, empowered, and encouraged minority students. To further support students on their academic journey, Tomozia co-created the Mentoring Program at HCC. She holds an A.A. in Communications from HCC, a B.S. in Communication Studies with a minor in Business Communications from Towson University, and is now pursuing her M.S. in Communication Management from Towson University. 

Email: tgrave18@jhu.edu

Faculty Appointment: Assistant Professor in Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Kendrick Gwynn, MD, MPH is a primary care physician at the Johns Hopkins Community Physicians Remington practice and is the assistant medical director for the Care, Coding and Revenue Enhancement (C-CARE) Team within the Office of Johns Hopkins Physicians. Dr. Gwynn is board certified in both internal medicine and public health and general preventive medicine. A Baltimore area native, Dr. Gwynn holds a faculty position within the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as a part time Assistant Professor in Medicine, where he teaches medical students and residents. As a physician, Dr. Gwynn’s career interests involve health policy and delivery system reform as they relate to eliminating health disparities and addressing the social determinants of health. He has worked in both the state and federal governments on projects pertaining to policy development and project implementation. Dr. Gwynn earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, completed residency at Emory University School of Medicine, followed by a combined general internal medicine fellowship and preventive medicine residency at Boston University/Boston Medical Center. He received his master degree in public health with a concentration in health policy and management from Boston University School of Public Health.

Email: kgwynn3@jhmi.edu

As Program Administrator, Lydia Hickey supports the UHI's funding opportunities and community-capacity building initiatives, including Baltimore Health Equity Impact Grants, UHI-SOURCE Student Grants, and the Bunting Neighborhood Leadership Program. Lydia brings over a decade of experience in education to the team, both as an early childhood special needs teacher in Washington, D.C., and a higher education coach and operations specialist supporting Simmons University MSW and DSW programs, and George Washington University MHA.  Lydia holds a master's degree in education policy and leadership from American University.  

Email: lhickey4@jh.edu

Faculty Appointment: Associate Professor, Department of Health, Behavior, and Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

As an associate director, Dr. Jones will lead efforts to mobilize resources in support of promising strategies to achieve substantial gains in the health and well-being of Baltimore residents. In addition to her role with UHI Dr. Jones works at the nexus of research and practice to reduce injuries by applying social and behavioral science theories and research methods to create, implement, and evaluate behavior change programs. Her program of research and practice activities addresses both unintentional and intentional injuries among vulnerable populations of children, adolescents, and older adults. She has specific expertise in older driver research, youth development and violence prevention, and child injury prevention.

Email: vjones@jhu.edu

Sadiya Muqueeth, DrPH, MPH, joined the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management in April 2023 as an assistant scientist and the Chief Health Policy Officer for the Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD). Dr. Muqueeth plays an essential role in developing BCHD’s health policy agenda and advances BCHD’s Public Health 3.0 initiative. She also supports the missions of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative and the Institute for Health and Social Policy. Dr. Muqueeth is a public health practitioner with background in health equity, community engagement, and policy advocacy. Dr. Muqueeth has prior work experience in federal government, local government, non-profit sector, healthcare, and philanthropy. She completed her BA in Public Health Studies from Johns Hopkins University, her MPH in Health Behavior from UNC-Chapel Hill, and her DrPH with a Concentration in Humanitarian Studies, Ethics, and Human Rights from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Paraguay.

Email: smuqueeth@jhu.edu

Mary A. Spiro is a Communications Associate at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She provides media relations and communications support to Dr. Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH. Her responsibilities include developing the communications strategy and supervising the communications teams at the Center for Health Equity and the Urban Health Institute. Mary has a master’s degree in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University and is studying for an Executive MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology.

Email: maryspiro@jhu.edu

Through comprehensive program planning and implementation, Natalie Wiggins coordinates the day-to-day administration and procurement of the existing flagship programs, initiatives, and activities that further the mission and goals of the UHI; manages logistics of the Bunting Neighborhood Leadership Program and UHI grant programs; serves as the main point of contact and cultivates relations with professional and community partners. 

Prior to joining our team, Natalie was a program coordinator and a graphics designer at A.R.I.E.L., one of the largest Russian American centers in the DMV tristate area. She received her first B.S. in Government and Business Administration from Belgorod State University, Russia, and her second bachelor’s degree in Web Design from the University of Maryland Global Campus.

Email: nwiggins@jhu.edu