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For the first time in the school’s history, three CUNY SPH faculty members have been selected for Fulbright U.S. Scholar awards. Distinguished Professor Denis Nash and Associate Professors Karen Flórez and Sean Haley were each selected for merit-based grants from the U.S. government’s flagship program of international educational and cultural exchange.
Dr. Nash has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright-Tocqueville Distinguished Chair Award for the 2025–2026 academic year. The award, one of the most selective in the Fulbright Scholars program, aims to “create, develop, and reinforce Franco-American cooperation in the disciplines essential to French and American society and to the mutual understanding of both peoples.” During the fellowship period, Nash will be based at Sorbonne University in Paris, where he will collaborate with French researchers on advancing research and training focused on the population health impacts of climate change and other large-scale exposures.
Nash will focus on strengthening transatlantic research collaborations and building capacity for public health scholarship in this emerging field. His work will bring together teams from Sorbonne University’s Institut Pierre Louis d’Épidémiologie et de Santé Publique (iPLesp), Université Paris Cité’s Centre Population et Développement (CEPED), and the University of Bordeaux’s Institut de Santé Publique, d’Épidémiologie et de Développement (ISPED), along with partners in New York and across the U.S.
“This award is a tremendous honor and an exciting opportunity to collaborate more deeply with colleagues in France who already are, or are interested in, working at the intersection of climate and population health,” says Nash. “The world is facing a rapidly evolving global challenge, and it’s essential that we develop innovative, interdisciplinary strategies to better understand, respond, and adapt to the health threats posed by extreme weather events.”
Dr. Flórez will spend six months at the Universidad del Norte (Uninorte) in Barranquilla, Colombia, researching the burden of chronic kidney disease in the country among people with Type 2 diabetes mellitus by exploring the community and interpersonal factors that may work synergistically with individual-level outcomes like quality of life. Along with a team of researchers from Uninorte and the Clínica de la Costa, Flórez will conduct key informant interviews with providers and stakeholders to assess the landscape of kidney disease care in Colombia and probe for opportunities for integration.
“My partners at Colombia’s Universidad del Norte are pioneers in Type 2 diabetes prevention,” says Flórez. “Their work is a key reason Barranquilla is, per the Ministry of Health, a national demonstration area for diabetes prevention, as it catalyzed significant changes to the built environment to promote physical activity. This award will allow us to draw attention to chronic kidney disease prevention as an achievable priority for low- and middle-income countries worldwide.”
Dr. Haley will spend three months at the University of Queensland (UQ) in Brisbane, Australia, seeking to improve methods for coding digital alcohol advertising on social media. Along with researchers from UQ and the Australian Ad Observatory, Haley will assess the validity and reliability of digital advertising data instruments used in the U.S. and Australia. The team will develop a single instrument to analyze and interpret digital ad data content and begin to develop a machine learning version, thereby improving the efficiency of digital ad coding. The revised instrument will help assess vast amounts of ad data, increasing the ability to understand if digital alcohol advertising exposure is related to early age of initiation.
“Little is known about the patterns of digital ads – including how such ads may be tailored to young social media users,” says Haley. “Closing the gap in the research is critical given that some researchers have asserted that alcohol advertising is causally associated with early youth alcohol use and future patterns of excessive alcohol use.”
This is Dr. Haley’s second Fulbright Scholar award. He also received an award in 2018 for his research into the attitudinal and resource barriers to alcohol screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment implementation in primary care community health clinics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In 2016, Professor Levi Waldron was given a Fulbright award to spend six months at the Center for Integrative Biology at the University of Trento (UniTrento) in Italy. His project “Applied Statistics for High-throughput Biology; Enhanced Estimation of the Cancer Proteome from Transcriptome Assays” sought to bridge gaps between high-throughput biology and public health, and forged a long-lasting relationship between CUNY SPH and UniTrento.
Associate Professor Elizabeth Geltman received a Fulbright Scholar Award to serve as the 2021-2022 Visiting Research Chair in Environmental and Economic Policy at the Smart Prosperity Institute of the University of Ottawa in Canada. For the project, Dr. Geltman examined laws and policies that address environmental pollutants that contribute to adverse health effects in disadvantaged populations.
“We are tremendously proud of our Fulbright recipients for the 2025-26 cycle,” says CUNY SPH Dean Ayman El-Mohandes. “The fact that three of our faculty were selected for this esteemed award speaks to the breadth and quality of the research being put forth by our institution in the barely 10 years since its inception as an independent school within CUNY. We wish these scholars great success as they embark upon this exciting new chapter of their careers.”
