Our Team
Principal Investigators
Lia Haskin Fernald, PhD
Dr. Fernald has been working in the field of global public health for over 20 years focusing specifically on infants and children in low- and middle-income countries, with the overarching goal of improving lives of vulnerable children through systemic, strategic, and effective interventions. Her research uses rigorous methodological approaches to design and examine integrated interventions to address inequalities, health disparities and child development outcomes.
Wendi Gosliner, DrPH, MPH
Dr. Wendi Gosliner leads research projects at the Nutrition Policy Institute. She has dedicated her career to understanding and working to improve policies and programs that affect population health and nutrition, with a focus on eliminating health disparities and improving federal food and nutrition programs. She has conducted and studied interventions in schools, childcare centers, WIC, SNAP, and SNAP-Ed, and is particularly interested in the nexus of research, public policy and community-based efforts to improve health. She has a doctorate in public health and is a registered dietitian.
Rita Hamad, MD, PhD
Dr. Rita Hamad is a social epidemiologist and family physician in the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Department of Family & Community Medicine at UCSF. She is the director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research Program. Her research focuses on the pathways linking social factors like poverty and education with racial and socioeconomic disparities in health across the life course
Research Team
Nicole Fernández-Viña, MPH
Nicole Fernández-Viña is a Policy Analyst at UC Berkeley. She recently graduated from UCLA with a Master of Public Health, where her research interests focused on health equity, environmental justice, and community science. She has lived experience working with diverse populations both nationally and internationally. In her free time, Nicole enjoys practicing yoga and hiking with her three dogs.
Kaitlyn Jackson, MPH
Kaitlyn Jackson is a Research Analyst at SPHERE and the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. Since completing her Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of California Berkeley, she has worked on a diverse portfolio of research projects focused on addressing socio-economic and environmental determinants of chronic disease within vulnerable populations, including investigating chronic kidney disease incidence in Jalisco, Mexico, and the implementation of a Randomized Controlled Trial among chronic uveitis patients at UCSF. Her research interests include evaluating the impacts of health policies on chronic disease outcomes within Latin America and domestically. Kaitlyn loves to go backpacking in the Pacific Northwest and northern California, cook, and spend sunny afternoons in Golden Gate Park with friends in her free time.