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SRJ Hub: Team Bios
Terry McGovern
Senior Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs
Terry McGovern, JD, is a human rights lawyer, advocate, and academic who is internationally recognized for her work in health and human rights, sexual and reproductive rights and health, gender justice, and environmental justice. McGovern previously served as the Harriet and Robert H. Heilbrunn Professor and chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to joining Columbia in 2002, McGovern served as senior program officer in the Gender, Rights, and Equality Unit of the Ford Foundation, where she oversaw global and domestic programming relating to HIV, gender, LGBT, and human rights.
In 1989, McGovern founded the HIV Law Project, where she served as executive director until 1999. While there, she successfully litigated numerous cases against federal, state, and local governments including S.P. v. Sullivan, which forced the Social Security Administration to expand HIV-related disability criteria so that women and low-income individuals can qualify for Medicaid and Social Security benefits; and T.N. v. FDA, which eliminated a 1977 FDA guideline banning women of childbearing potential from early phases of clinical trials.
McGovern’s research focuses on health and human rights, forced migration sexual and reproductive rights and health, gender justice and environmental justice, with publications appearing in journals including Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, the British Medical Journal, Health and Human Rights, and the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Lynn Roberts
Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Alumni Relations
Assistant Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences
Lynn Roberts has a BS in human development from Howard University (1984) and a PhD in Human Services Studies from Cornell University (1991). Between 1998-2016, Dr. Roberts was a faculty member in the Urban Public Health Program and affiliated faculty member in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY). In 2016 she joined the faculty in the Community Health and Social Sciences Program of the unified CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, where she now serves as Associate Dean of Student Affairs & Alumni Relations.
Prior to CUNY, she oversaw the development, implementation and evaluation of several programs for women and youth in NYC, including a comprehensive program for substance using mothers and their families in Harlem. She is an emeritus board member of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective and co-edited with Loretta Ross, Erika Derkas, and Whitney Peoples an anthology, Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique (Feminist Press, November 2017).
Dr. Roberts’ current activism and scholarship examine the intersections of race, class and gender in adolescent dating relationships, juvenile justice and reproductive health policies; as well as the impact of models of collaborative inquiry and teaching on civic and political engagement. Between 2015-2019, she served as primary consultant to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in support of their efforts to integrate a Sexual and Reproductive Justice framework in their work and currently sits on the New York State Advisory Council on Maternal Mortality and Morbidity. She is honored to be the mother of four amazing human beings and is in constant awe of her six grandchildren.
Diana Romero
Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences
Director of the Maternal, Child, Reproductive and Sexual Health Specialization
Dr. Diana Romero has engaged in research and evidence-based advocacy related to reproductive, maternal and child health over the past 20 years. From her early research on factors affecting contraceptive decision-making and continuation among women of different racial/ethnic backgrounds, to the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pregnant persons in NYS, she has focused on these experiences among marginalized groups by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic and related structural factors. Dr. Romero serves on the NYC DOHMH Advisory Board for the CDC Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) survey, and she has served on the FDA Obstetrics and Gynecological Devices Advisory Panel, as well as on the Board of Directors of several non-profit research and advocacy organizations addressing reproduction, gender and health. She teaches graduate courses in research methods, community health, and reproductive and sexual health policy.
Clarisa Bencomo
Project Director for Gender Justice
Clarisa Bencomo works at the intersection of human rights, governance, and philanthropy, with an interest in how global, national, and hyper local systems and practices can be reimagined to promote greater equity. Before joining CUNY SPH, she was the Associate Director for Global Health Justice and Governance at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and previously taught International Development in Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. From 2010 through 2018 she developed and led governance programming for the Ford Foundation’s MENA Regional Office in Cairo. Her programming at Ford included support for participatory planning and budgeting to address spatial inequality; research and capacity-building to advance accountability for service provision; documentation and advocacy for policies that are inclusive of migrants and refugees; and regional learning networks and platforms around law and society, post-conflict recovery, and equitable urbanism. In addition to her work in philanthropy, she had a long career as a researcher and advocate on human rights and aid effectiveness, including more than a decade as a researcher at Human Rights Watch based in Cairo and New York.
Sabrina Das
Senior Scholar
Sabrina Das, MB ChB, MRCOG, PGDip (BA), supports the SRJ Hub as a Senoir Scholar. Previously a UK Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice with the SRJ Hub in 2024-2025, her fellowship project explored innovations and harm reduction strategies used by formal, grass roots, and civil society efforts to support abortion access for minoritized people in New York.
Das maintains a clinical practice as a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London, specializing in high-risk pregnancy and complex intrapartum care. She also works for NHS England as a National Maternity Improvement Advisor in the Maternity Safety and Support Programme, the highest level of intervention for maternity units across England. She also works as an abortion surgeon for Marie Stopes International and has worked for Médecins Sans Frontières as a women’s health specialist in conflict zones.
Das is passionate about using quality improvement, coaching, and leadership skills in improving the lives of the largest global group of disenfranchised people (women and girls). Her life mission is to use her clinical and nonclinical expertise to narrow the gap in clinical outcomes and quality of life for women of color, women in poverty, and others who have suffered systemic and historical disadvantage. Das has led projects in Yemen utilizing quality improvement methods to reduce hemorrhage rates, in ethnically diverse West London to coproduce interventions to build trust between formal health care institutions and the local community, and in coastal communities of England to develop equitable pathways of care access. She has published and spoken extensively about quality improvement and how to take policy into practice.
In 2022, Das was listed as one of “50 Leading Lights” by the Kind Leadership Revolution’s Kindness in Leadership Campaign. That year she was also a finalist for the MAMA Academy Healthcare Professional of the Year Award, for providing personalized, culturally competent care to women with breech-presenting babies in pregnancy and labor. In 2021, she was a runner-up for the Health Services Journal Clinical Leader of the Year Award. In her spare time, Das volunteers for her local triathlon club and is an accredited British Triathlon Federation (BTF) Coach. She won the 2019 BTF Award for Children’s Coach of the Year.
Christian Grov
Distinguished Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences
Co-Director, Development Core – Einstein-CUNY-Rockefeller Center for AIDS Research (CFAR)
Dr. Grov’s research centers on the health of sexual and gender minority individuals.
His work has explored substance use, sexual compulsivity, venues where individuals meet sex partners, sex work, HIV/STI prevention, and HIV care. His studies have been supported by both the NIH and CDC. He has co-authored 240+ peer-reviewed articles, as well as several book chapters. He co-wrote “In the Company of Men: Inside the Lives of Male Prostitutes” (Praeger), and co-edited “The Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society.”
Dr. Grov is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sex Research (2017 – Present) and on the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed journals. He served as Chairperson of the Department of Community Health and Social Sciences (2018-2024) and as a standing member of the NIH’s HIV/AIDS Intra- and Inter-personal Determinants and Behavioral Interventions (HIBI) Study Section (2020 – 2024).
He is former Editor-in-Chief of Sexuality Research and Social Policy, and was a member of the NYC Department of Health’s HIV Prevention Planning Group as well as on the Board of Directors of HOOK, a non-profit dedicated to improving the health and well-being of men who are involved in sex work.
In 2023, Dr. Grov was elected as a Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) in recognition of his significant contributions to research and scholarship in the science of sexuality.Collectively, Dr. Grov’s body of work seeks to inform HIV and STI prevention, education, and health policy.
Danielle Greene
Executive Director, State and Local Public Health Initiatives
Senior Advisor, NYC Preparedness & Response Institute
Dr. Danielle Greene has dedicated her public health career to enacting change at the intersection of scholarship, practice, and policy. Her expertise lies in building bridges across community, academia, government and healthcare institutions and breaking down silos. The breadth of her research and advocacy is diverse but the underlying commonalities are the social factors that impact marginalized communities, particularly women and children. She has served in senior roles in academia and governmental agencies.
In addition to her work with the SRJ Hub, Dr. Greene currently leads government relations, public health practice, and public health preparedness efforts at CUNY SPH.
Meredith Manze
Associate Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences
Community Health and Health Policy Doctoral Program Director
Meredith Manze, MPH, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health and Social Sciences at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, where she also directs the Community Health and Health Policy Doctoral Program. Rooted in a reproductive justice framework, her applied, equity-driven research seeks to support people across the reproductive continuum- those who do and do not wish to become pregnant, as well as those raising children, with a particular focus on public institutions, including health clinics and colleges.
A mixed-methods researcher, Dr. Manze examines the integration of reproductive health services into primary care, critiques existing measures of pregnancy “intentions,” and is developing alternative metrics centered on reproductive autonomy. She also studies how colleges can better support student parents. Her current work focuses on expanding access to medication abortion on college campuses.
Spring Cooper
Associate Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences
Spring C. Cooper is an Associate Professor at CUNY’s Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH). Her research is focused on adolescent sexuality and sexual health, with broader themes of addressing sexual stigma, improving sexuality communication, and promotion of healthy sexuality through educational and public health interventions, including HPV vaccination.
As 2020 began to shift how we think about the University in various ways, her research has also adopted new interests: exploring antiracist practices in the classroom and collecting oral histories of students and faculty on how COVID and Black Lives Matter (BLM) have impacted (and should impact) the teaching of Public Health.
Heidi Jones
Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Dr. Heidi Jones is an epidemiologist with over 25 years of research focused on identifying and testing ways to improve sexual and reproductive health. Her research has centered patient autonomy during clinical care for sexual and reproductive health.
Currently she and Dr. Suzanne McDermott are leading an NIH-funded randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of a socialization and sex education curriculum for young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Dr. Jones has over 100+ publications and serves on the Editorial Board for the Contraception journal and the Journal of Sexuality Research and Social Policy.
Suzanne McDermott
Professor of Environmental, Occupational, and Geospatial Health Sciences
Suzanne McDermott is a maternal/child health and environmental epidemiologist who studies issues related to preventable and modifiable risk factors during pregnancy that are associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes in children AND the intersection of disability and health. Dr. McDermott and her colleague Dr. Heidi Jones are currently conducting a NIH funded Randomized Intervention Trial to test the efficacy of a curriculum for socialization and sexual education for 16–27-year-olds with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She is also investigating maternal exposure to chemicals during pregnancy associated with epigenetic changes in New York City mothers and newborns. And she is investigating the causal association between maternal exposure to hundreds of chemicals emitted from Toxic Release Inventory sites in New Jersey with the outcomes of autism and intellectual disabilities in the child.
Dr. McDermott has over 150 publications and she has been continuously funded by the CDC, EPA, and NIH since 1991.
Juliana Bol
Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management
Dr. Juliana Bol works on health system strengthening approaches to improve the quality of maternal and child health services in fragile and conflicted-affected settings. She worked in South Sudan between 2009-2014 with local and international non-governmental organizations focusing on monitoring and evaluation and quality improvement of maternal and child health programs.
Her current research involves assessing the effectiveness of health systems strengthening programs using routine health facility data and localizing the humanitarian response to provision of reproductive health and family planning services through institutional capacity-strengthening initiatives for refugee-led organizations (RLOs) and women-led organizations.
She has also supported feminist climate justice movements in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific through a Global Fund for Women localizing support for feminist climate justice movements initiative.
Naana Dei
Administrative Executive Assistant
Naana Dei, MPH, is an alumna of the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. During her time as a student, she explored addressing maternal mortality rates among Black American women and period poverty as a public health issue. As an Alcohol Policy Fellow at the Alcohol Action Network, she is interested in exploring the intersection of alcohol use disorder and pregnant people of color. She is passionate about leveraging her experience as a Black, immigrant woman, to uplift and uphold reproductive rights and justice.
Naana is a former community organizer of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute and was the Chair of the Ontario Drug Policy and Research Network in Toronto, Canada. She is currently the Administrative Executive Assistant for the Senior Associate Dean for Student and Academic Affairs and supports the SRJ Hub in various areas including project management and coordination, curriculum support, and event planning.
Mollie Braaten
Academic Affairs Manager
Mollie Braaten is the Academic Affairs Manager at CUNY SPH, where she brings deep program management expertise, global health experience, and a strong grounding in student engagement and nonprofit operations. Prior to joining CUNY SPH, Mollie held multiple project management roles at ICAP at Columbia University and Global Health Corps. As a Senior Project Portfolio Manager at ICAP, she managed CDC-funded research and evaluation projects focused on HIV prevention and treatment across 10 countries on three continents. Mollie managed the implementation of a multi-year project evaluating an integrated model of care providing family planning counseling and services to women at six HIV clinics in Lusaka, Zambia. Findings from the project assessed patients’ self-reported unmet need for family planning services, with implementation recommendations shared with the Zambian government and partners for potential scale-up.
Mollie holds an MS in Global Health and Public Policy from the University of Edinburgh and a BA in Sociology with a concentration in Social and Health Advocacy from SUNY Purchase. During her time in Edinburgh, Mollie consulted for Waverley Care and conducted a project evaluation of their community-based outreach program for people living with Hepatitis C in Glasgow.
Sumana Chandra
Director of Communications and College Relations
Sumana Chandra is a seasoned communications professional with over a decade of experience in the non-profit sector and a strong commitment to advancing social justice. She currently serves as Director of Communications and College Relations at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH), where she oversees media, editorial, and stakeholder engagement efforts. Prior to joining CUNY SPH, she worked with the Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center, addressing urban poverty issues in preparation for the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review of the United States.
An alumna of CUNY SPH, Sumana holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and completed her Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies from the University of Michigan.
Chloe Lecat
Academic Program Project Specialist
Chloe Lecat is the Academic Program Project Specialist for the SRJ Hub at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. With a background in trauma-informed research, program evaluation, and project management, her work is rooted in social justice and collective liberation. Her professional experience spans Tribal-led initiatives aimed at strengthening child welfare systems and advancing Tribal sovereignty, as well as community-driven evaluation and capacity-building efforts in higher education settings.
At the SRJ Hub, Chloe contributes to curriculum development, leads event coordination, and manages key administrative and operational processes. She is committed to fostering health equity and advancing systems change by uplifting the power of community—cultivating spaces where people can come together, lead with their own knowledge, and build on their inherent strengths to thrive. Chloe is especially passionate about ensuring personal autonomy and challenging the systems of oppression that stand in the way of collective wellbeing.