Staff

Jenifer Cartland, PhD, a research assistant professor at the Northwestern University Medical School, is the Director of CHDL and oversees its daily operations. Dr. Cartland is a public policy analyst with twenty years of experience working on child and adolescent health and welfare issues. Her areas of expertise include health care financing, community-based interventions and child and adolescent injury. She also provides consultation to the Children's Memorial Research Center (CMRC) and Children's Memorial Hospital investigators involved in child health research.

Karen Sheehan, MD, MPH, is an associate professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Medical School, is the Medical Director of CHDL. Dr. Sheehan is also the Medical Director of Children's Memorial Hospital's Injury Prevention and Research Center and the Injury Free Coalition for Kids. She is an attending physician in the Pediatric Emergency Department and also serves as the Associate Chair of Advocacy for the Department of Pediatrics. Her areas of interest are community-based injury prevention and youth development.

Maryann Mason, PhD, a research assistant professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine/Northwestern University is the associate director of CHDL and the Director of Research and Evaluation for the Center to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children (CLOCC).  Her work involves research on child and adolescent injury, school-based health interventions and the relationship between community characteristics and child overweight. Additionally, Dr. Mason has over ten years of experience in policy research primarily concerning the needs of low income individuals and families.

Antigone Kouvelis, BA, has several years of experience and training in data collection and analysis, with a criminal justice background. She came from the Epidemiology Program at the Chicago Department of Public Health, where she primarily did analysis and dissemination of vital records data. Before that, she worked on the Chicago Homicide Dataset Project at the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. She joined CHDL in March, 2005 to work on the IVDRS project. Her current responsibilities include collecting, summarizing and analyzing the IVDRS violent death data for the state of Illinois and Chicago.

Tracie L. Smith, MPH, is an epidemiologist at CHDL. She joined CHDL in September 2006. She has several years experience and training in diabetes research at the University of Chicago. She is responsible for summarizing and analyzing the child and adolescent injury data for the state of Illinois and Chicago.

Teresa Neumann is a research assistant at CHDL and assists with data collection, entry and cleaning, and qualitative research projects.

Holly Ruch-Ross, ScD, has extensive experience and training in applied research. Dr. Ruch-Ross is an experienced evaluator, and has worked extensively with youth-serving programs and program staff. She has worked on several projects in the public schools, including a study of risk-taking behaviors among high school students. Currently, Dr. Ruch-Ross is a consultant and/or a Co-Principal Investigator on several CHDL projects.

Davida R. Kay, joined CHDL in February, 2004 as an Administrative Assistant. Ms. Kay's background includes providing administrative support in a wide range of fields, including health care and fundraising.