Jennifer Wood

Jennifer Wood

Professor

Department of Criminal Justice

Temple University

Jennifer Wood is a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA. She received her doctorate in criminology at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining Temple, she served as a Fellow at the Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet) at the Australian National University.

Jennifer is a criminologist with expertise in policing and regulation. Her previous work examined the ways in which public and private entities link together and function to produce order and security. Her current work focuses on the public health dimensions of everyday police work. Her research seeks to describe and explain the ways in which officers manage behavioral health-related encounters as well as the contexts of their decision-making. She is also engaged in collaborative projects designed to identify and assess pre-arrest interventions for navigating people toward behavioral health and social services.

Evan Anderson

Evan Anderson

Senior Lecturer

Department of Behavioral Health sciences 

School of Nursing

University of Pennsylvania

Evan Anderson is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches in multiple schools and programs. Dr. Anderson is a Public Health Law Researcher. With doctoral training in law and public health, his research blends doctrinal legal analysis and epidemiologic methods. His most recent work explores pre-booking diversion programs, “drug courts” and other specialized court programs, and drug consumption rooms. Dr. Anderson was formerly the Senior Fellow at the Public Health Law Research program, a National Program Office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which supports empirical research on the health effects of laws and legal processes.

Kurt August

Assistant Director of Diversion and Deflection at City of Philadelphia

Scott Burris

Scott Burris

Professor and Director

Center for Public Health Law Research

Beasley School of Law

Temple University

Scott Burris, J.D., is a Professor of Law at Temple Law School, where he directs the Center for Public Health Law Research. He is also a Professor in Temple’s School of Public Health.

Burris began his career in public health law during the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He was the editor of the first systematic legal analysis of HIV in the United States, AIDS and the Law: A Guide for the Public (Yale University Press, 1987; New Guide for the Public published 1993), and spent several years lobbying and litigating on behalf of people with HIV as an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. Since joining the Temple faculty in 1991, his research has focused on how law influences public health and health behavior.  In 2009, he founded the Public Health Law Research Program for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has supported over 80 empirical studies of the impact of law on health, as well as LawAtlas, an innovative policy surveillance portal, and a comprehensive resource on scientific health law research methods.

He is the author of over 200 books, book chapters, articles and reports on issues including urban health; discrimination against people with HIV and other disabilities; HIV policy; research ethics; and the health effects of criminal law and drug policy. He has been particularly interested in developing theory and methods aimed at promoting effective local health governance. His work has been supported by organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Department for International Development, AmfAR and the Trust for America’s Health, the Drug Policy Alliance, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He has served as a consultant to numerous United States and international organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Institute of Medicine and to the producers of the Oscar-winning film Philadelphia. He is a founder of Legal Science, LLC, a private company dedicated to the social mission of improving access to legal information and the supporting of the practice of policy surveillance. He has been a visiting scholar at RegNet at the Australian National University, and a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Cape Town Law School. He is affiliated with the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale, and serves as an advisor to the Tsinghua University AIDS Institute, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Research Center for HIV/AIDS Public Policy and the Program in Bioethics at Monash University.

In 2014, he was the recipient of the American Public Health Association Law Section Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2018 he was the recipient of the Jay Healey Health Law Professors award. Professor Burris is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis (A.B.) and Yale Law School (J.D.).

Jamie Clover

Jamie Clover

Staff Sergeant, Edmonton Police, Canada
GLEPHA Fellow

Michael Diberardinis

Michael Diberdinis

Professor of Practice

Fels Institute of Government

University of Pennsylvania

Michael DiBerardinis joined Fels as a full-time Professor of Practice in January 2018. Prior to this role, he served as Managing Director for the City of Philadelphia under Major James Kenney since January 2016. As Managing Director, he played a critical role in the Kenney administration, overseeing and coordinating activity across most major operating departments of the city’s government.

Locally, some of Mike’s prior posts have included serving as Deputy Mayor for Environmental and Community Resources overseeing the operations of the city’s recreation events, facilities and programs; Commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation managing all of the city’s 63 parks in the Fairmount Park System; and special advisor to the Free Library of Philadelphia.

On the state level, Mike served for six years as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation of Natural Resources under Governor Ed Rendell. The department protected more than 150,000 acres of Pennsylvania land and helped establish and develop the Pennsylvania Wilds.

Prior to his public administrator positions, Mike got his start in peace activism in the early 1970s, eventually moving on to grass-roots community organizing work in neighborhoods. He worked as a community organizer in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, later becoming a political organizer for Rep. Thomas Foglietta in the late 1980s. In 1991, Mayor-elect Ed Rendell offered him a city government position, and he took it with the Recreation Department, revitalizing Philadelphia neighborhoods throughout the 1990s. In 2003, he rejoined newly elected governor Ed Rendell to become the secretary of DCNR.

In DiBerardinis’ six years as secretary of DCNR, the department protected more than 150,000 acres of Pennsylvania land and helped establish and develop the Pennsylvania Wilds. He also helped expand TreeVitalize, a state-wide initiative to help plant 1 million trees in the metropolitan areas of the commonwealth. He received the Joseph Ibberson Government Award from the Pennsylvania Parks & Forests Foundation in 2007 largely as a result of these efforts.

As commissioner of Philadelphia’s Parks and Recreation Department, he worked alongside the City Planning Commission to update the comprehensive plan and develop Green 2015, a park planning project that provides parks and recreation resources within 10 miles of 75% of the city’s residents. This sustainability plan had a goal to add over 500 acres of new, publicly accessible open space, transforming overdeveloped and under-utilized areas of the city.

David Feldman

David Feldman

Assistant Provost for Academic Affairs

Thomas Jefferson University

Rosie Frasso

Rosie Frasso

Program Director, Public Health 

College of Population Health

Thomas Jefferson University

Dr. Rosemary (Rosie) Frasso is a public health researcher and educator. Dr. Frasso earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice, as well as two master’s degrees from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her current research focuses on health disparities, housing insecurity, health literacy and the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in projects designed to improve population health, healthcare quality and access to physical and mental health services for vulnerable populations.

Her expertise in qualitative methods includes traditional and alternative data collection approaches, including, but not limited to, walking interviews, photo-elicitation interviews, free-listing and consensus-deriving group approaches. Additionally, she has works on several cross-disciplinary projects with educators, artists and economists who are committed to using qualitative methods to enhance community collaborations, to support communities as they advocate for change and to amplify the voices of vulnerable populations.

Pat Griffin

Pat Griffin

Assistant Professor

Director of Criminal Justice Master’s Program

Holy Family University

Holy Family University, USA

Patricia is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Graduate Criminal Justice Program at Holy Family University (Philadelphia).  She received her doctorate in criminal justice at Temple University.  Pat began her career as a criminal intelligence analyst, followed by an appointment as Special Agent with the United States Office of Organized Crime and Labor Racketeering.  Prior to joining HFU, she held administrative appointments and lecturer positions at Saint Josephs University, Boston College, and Cabrini University. 

Patricias research has examined resilience in policing.  Using the methodology of Appreciative Inquiry, she has worked with police organizations to identify and strengthen pathways that support overall health and wellness of police and first responders.  Pats research has examined opioid use by police officers in the U.S., in particular how the physical and social availability of opioids has contributed to officersuse, as well as studying the impact of opioid use on workplace policy and practice. Most recently, Patricia served as the Senior International Research Consultant with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime in East Africa to study the use of alcohol and other substances by officers in the Kenyan National Police Service.  

Patricia regularly consults with the non-profit organization, Law Enforcement Health Benefits, Inc.  and the First Responders Addiction Treatment Program (FRAT), Livengrin Foundation, Inc. She is a member of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, Criminal Justice Advisory Committee.

John Hollway

John Hollway

Executive director

John F. Hollway (C’92, MAPP ’18) is Associate Dean and Executive Director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  His research helps organizations confront challenges and turn negative occurrences into opportunities for quality improvement.  He is a national thought leader on the use of root cause analysis in criminal justice, and is a frequent consultant to criminal justice agencies and corporations on quality improvement and measurement issues.

John is the author of numerous publications, including Conviction Review Units:  A National Perspective (2016),  A Systems Approach to Preventing Errors in Criminal Justice (2014), and Killing Time: An 18-Year Odyssey from Death Row to Freedom, winner of the National Independent Book Award for non-fiction in 2011, and one of the Chicago Sun-Times’ Best Books of the Year.

Hollway holds a BA from Penn in Diplomatic History with a minor in East Asian Studies, a JD with honors from the George Washington University Law School, and a MAPP degree with Distinction from Penn.

Melissa Jardine

Melissa Jardine

International Policing Consultant

Dr Melissa Jardine is an international policing consultant undertaking research and capacity building activities across the globe, with current projects in Afghanistan, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia and Africa.

Melissa is the Regional Research Lead to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women in relation to gender, policing, border control and transnational crimes in ASEAN. The project included a research collaboration with INTERPOL.

She has written and/or delivered a range of international police training packages regarding HIV prevention, harm reduction approaches to drug use and sex work, police-public health leadership, gender-sensitive analyses of human trafficking, people smuggling, terrorism and violent extremism, among others.

Melissa was a Victoria Police officer for 10 years (2001-2011) working at the frontline and in criminal investigations and is a current member of the Strategic Planning Committee for the International Association of Women Police (IAWP).

In Victoria Police, she worked in general duties, criminal investigations, the Asian Squad (disbanded), drug taskforces and trained as an undercover operative.

She served on the Board of Directors for the Global Law Enforcement & Public Health Association between 2017-2020. She is the Gender Advisor for the Centre for Law Enforcement & Public Health.

She started studying Vietnamese at Monash University in 1997. In 2005, she was the recipient of a scholarship to study Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, from the Victorian Multicultural Commission while working for Victoria Police and is noted as a ‘Major Event’ of 100 years of women in policing in Victoria.

She has a long term interest in the development of policing and security in Asia and completed her PhD on policing in Vietnam at the UNSW Law School. She is featured by UNSW Sydney as an example of an ‘outstanding higher degree researcher and alumni’.

She is on the Board of Directors of the Australia-Vietnam Young Leadership Dialogue which aims to nurture the bilateral relationship through development, education and trade. In 2017, Melissa was selected as an Asia 21 Young Leader by the Asia Society through a competitive process which identifies ‘dynamic individuals who will impact global affairs over the coming decades’.

Katie Kenney Johnson

Katie Kenney Johnson

American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

Conference and Membership Director

Katie Johnson manages all ASLME conferences and meetings. She is also responsible for Continuing Medical and Legal Education projects. She has been with ASLME since 2002. Prior to ASLME, Ms. Johnson worked as a fundraiser/special event planner at a Boston area hospital. She was also employed for several years with the Greater Washington Board of Trade in Washington, DC, where she coordinated various networking events for the business community. Ms. Johnson has a degree in Communications from the University of New Hampshire. 

Donna Nickitas

Donna Nickitas

Dean and Professor

School of Nursing

Rutgers University – Camden

Donna M. Nickitas- a noted health policy scholar, an energetic visionary regarding the future of health care and nursing education in America, and an accomplished administrator –is the new dean of the Rutgers School of Nursing- Camden.

A retired major in the U.S. Air Force Nurse Reserve Corps, Dr. Nickitas assumed the deanship after a distinguished career at the City University of New York’s Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing and The Graduate Center, where she was a professor, the executive officer of the nursing science Ph.D. program and as the specialty coordinator of the dual degree in nursing administration/public administration. She played a critical role in growing enrollment and enhancing the school’s national profile.

Dr. Nickitas’ long history of advocacy for equitable health care, expertise in academic nursing education, and proven ability to foster a culture of cross-sector engagement positions her to lead the dynamic growth of the Rutgers-Camden nursing school. She is building on its tradition of preparing nurses to serve society and do public good by advancing health, driving public policy, and promoting access to quality, patient-centered care.

She is widely published and has authored, co-authored, or co-edited peer-reviewed books related to the nursing profession such as Public Policy and Politics for Nurses and Other Health Professionals released in 2019. Her scholarship and research consistently appear in peer-reviewed publications. Since 2008, she has served as the editor of Nursing Economic$, a journal dedicated to advancing nursing leadership and innovation.

Dr. Nickitas is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, a fellow of the National Academies of Practice, and a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. She has a Ph.D. in Nursing Research from Adelphi University, an MA from New York University, a BSN from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and an AAS from Kingsborough Community College. She is a board member of the New Jersey Department of Health, Preventative Committee on Health and the treasurer for the Eastern Nursing Research Society.

Mariah Petsas

Mariah Petsas

CLEPH Research and Communications Assistant 

Mariah Petsas is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Criminology and Psychology at RMIT University. Mariah has a clear understanding of the criminal justice system as well as psychology. Throughout her studies she has taken subjects in crime prevention and law enforcement and will continue to learn more about these issues over the next few years. Through this she has a genuine engagement with CLEPH’s vision.

Cyndi Rickards

Cyndi Rickards

Associate Teaching Professor of Criminology & Justice Studies

Lindy Center for Civic Engagement Faculty Fellow

College of Arts and Sciences

Drexel University

Cyndi Rickards, EdD, comes to higher education with over a decade of experience in the criminal justice field as an administrator of an alternative school. Her graduate research explored racial disparities in urban juvenile drug use patterns. More recently, her research has examined the emergence of 21st-century skills as a result of democratic engagement within community-based learning courses.

Rickards teaches community-based learning courses in the department of Criminology and Justice Studies. She regularly teaches courses within the Philadelphia Prison System and brings together Drexel students and incarcerated students for and Inside-Out course. In partnership with the University’s Lindy Center for Civic Engagement, she co-developed UConnect – an urban extension center model that brings students and community members together to navigate the city’s complex social service system.

In addition to her interest in community-based learning, Rickards is interested in the relationship between technology, alternative assessment and ePortfolios as tools for student success.

Jane Siegel

Jane A. Siegel

Rutgers-Camden University

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education

Professor of Criminal Justice

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Jane A. Siegel serves as department chair (2015-2018) and has taught a range of courses in criminal justice, including the introductory course, juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice, statistics, white collar crime and corrections.  In Fall 2015, she will be teaching a course at South Woods State Prison in which students from the Rutgers campus will be learning alongside individuals incarcerated at South Woods, the first time that Rutgers–Camden will conduct an Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program course.

Dr. Siegel’s research interests include children of incarcerated parents, families and crime, the long-term consequences of child maltreatment and juvenile justice.  Her research in these areas has been supported by grants from  the National Institute of Justice, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect and the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission, and has been published in numerous journal articles.  She is currently conducting a large-scale survey of visitors to and individuals incarcerated in a large urban jail system, focusing on family visitation.  The project also includes in-depth interviews with children with an incarcerated family member.  Dr. Siegel is also engaged in a follow-up study of the children interviewed for her book Disrupted Childhoods: Children of Women in Prison (Rutgers University Press, 2011).

Bill Stronach

Bill Stronach

Bill Stronach spent 18 years as the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Drug Foundation which is one of Australia’s leading non-government organisations concerned with the prevention and reduction of drug related harms. Prior to this position, he was Director of Grassmere Youth Services located on the outskirts of Melbourne, working with juvenile offenders, homeless and sexually abused young people and their families. For twelve years before this he taught in secondary schools in the state of Victoria and the UK.

He was a Founding director and treasurer of Harm Reduction International (formerly the International Harm Reduction Association); a Director of the International Consortium on Alcohol and Harm Reduction and a member of the Victorian Child Death Review Committee. Hel has chaired the Boards of Anex (Association of Needle and Syringe Programs), Harm Reduction Victoria and the City of Melbourne’s Safe City Licensees Accord Monitoring Committee.

He was previously a member of the Victorian Premier’s Drug Prevention Council, the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Prevention Council, the Victorian Government’s Alcohol Strategy Planning Group and the Advisory Committee for the Centre for Harm Reduction at the Burnet Centre, Melbourne, Australia

Bill was Chairman of the Organising Committees for the 3rd (Melbourne), 7th (Hobart) and 15th (Melbourne) International Conferences on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm and LEPH2012 & LEPH2014. He brings extensive conference organising and management experience both within and beyond the public health sector.

He has been a consultant and advisor on many policy matters and projects in Australia and overseas, and contributed chapters to a number of public health, drug prevention or harm reduction publications.

Monika Witt

Stepping Up Initiative Project Manager-Office of Criminal Justice at City of Philadelphia

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