Meet the Collaborative

Primary Investigator

Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, PhD

Bellwether Collaborative Lab Director

Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein is an Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences and core faculty the Department of Population Health Sciences and in the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. She is a national expert in examining how the criminal legal system impacts people, families, and communities. During the pandemic, she co-founded the COVID Prison Project, one of the only national data projects that tracks and analyzes COVID testing, cases, and deaths in prison systems across the country. She utilized the infrastructure of the COVID Prison Project to recently launch the Third City Project—a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded big data project that tracks and aggregates publicly available health and health policy data from carceral systems. Additionally, Dr. Brinkley-Rubinstein is the PI of several NIH and foundation grants focused on substance use, HIV prevention, and mortality.

In 2019, she co-edited a special issue of AJPH that explored how mass incarceration is a socio-structural determinant of health. More recently, she was invited by the National Academy of Medicine to attend its Annual Emerging Leaders Forum. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, CNN, Science Magazine, and other media outlets. Her work blends research and policy, which has recently culminated in providing expert consultation to Congress relevant to prison standards and data reporting.

Clinical Reseach Coordinators

Valery Arévalo, BA

Clinical Research Coordinator, SHINE

valery.arevalo@duke.edu

Valery R. Arévalo is a Clinical Research Coordinator for the Bellwether Collaborative for Health Justice. She received her bachelor’s degree in criminology & Interpersonal Communication with a Sociology minor. Her research interests pertain to racial and ethnic disparities in community policing and access to language justice and mental health accessibility in immigrant communities.

Margaret Bordeaux, BA

Clinical Research Coordinator, PIERS

margaret.bordeaux@duke.edu

Margaret is a North Carolina native and she resides in Wilmington with her small family. At the magical age of 33, Margaret graduated from Shaw University, where she double majored in Sociology and Psychology. A drug war survivor, Margaret's lived experiences, personal and familial, embolden her to advocate compassionately for people who are marginalized for their drug use and justice involvement. In her work, Margaret demonstrates a willingness to critically explore current practices through the lens of racial and health equity, and through strategic and thoughtful collaborations, working to develop promising strategies to promote health and well-being in racially minoritized and other historically marginalized communities.

Alice Cates, MS

Regulatory Coordinator

alice.cates@duke.edu

Alice Cates is a Regulatory Coordinator for the Bellwether Collaborative for Health Justice and the former Project Coordinator of the JCOIN PIERS project at UNC-CH. She received her bachelor degrees from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and a M.S. in epidemiology from the University of Texas Health Science Center - Houston School of Public Health in 2008. Over the past 15 years, Alice has held various and sundry roles on an assortment of public health research projects in Texas, the District of Columbia, and North Carolina. Her research interests include HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment and the impact of the criminal legal system on health disparities affecting individuals and their communities.

Hannah Camp, MSW, MPH

Clinical Research Coordinator; NOTRE

hannah.camp@duke.edu

Hannah Camp is a Clinical Research Coordinator for the Bellwether Collaborative for Health Justice. She received her master's in public health and social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2024, and her bachelor's degree from American University in 2019. Her research interests revolve around trauma and adverse childhood experiences and how they impact sexual and reproductive health equity.

Tasia Danns, MA

Clinical Research Coordinator, TCN PATHS

tasia.danns@duke.edu

Tasia Danns is an anthropologist who graduated with her M.A., with a Medical and Cultural Anthropology focus from East Carolina University in 2023. During graduate school, Tasia worked on an applied cultural project and developed her passion for community-based research. She is a Clinical Research Coordinator for the Bellwether Collaborative for Health Justice. Her interests include the impact of cultural determinants on various aspects, primarily through community-based research.

Kate Ehle Plyler, MSW

Clinical Research Coordinator Senior, 3rd City Project

katelyn.ehle@duke.edu

Kate Plyler is a Clinical Research Coordinator for the Bellwether Collaborative for Health Justice. She received her bachelor degree from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 2013 and a MSW from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. Her research interests generally share a common focus on the interactions between individuals and the institutions which purport to serve them - particularly the child welfare system and social safety net programs.

Margaret Roach, MPH

Clinical Research Coordinator Shine Study

margaret.roach@duke.edu

Margaret Roach is a Clinical Research Coordinator for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded community safety project. She earned her MPH in Health Equity, Social Justice, and Human Rights from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023 and her B.S. in Psychology from Wofford College in 2021. Her public health research interests are suicide, disability justice, alternative crisis response models, and the public health impacts of carceral health services. As someone who has survived psychiatric incarceration ("hospitalization"), she is committed to translating research into anti-carceral, community-led mental health systems.

Madelene Travis, BA

Clinical Research Coordinator Senior, TCN PATHS

madelene.travis@duke.edu

Madelene Travis is a Clinical Research Coordinator with the Bellwether Collaborative for Health Justice. She graduated from Colorado College in 2017 with a B.A. in Sociology, with a focus on the sociology of health and medicine. Broadly, her research interests include the social determinants of health, novel interventions for substance use and trauma, and the intersection between the criminal legal system and opioid use.

Clinical Research Coordinators

Postdoctoral Research Associates

David Cloud, PhD, JD, MPH

Postdoctoral Research Associate

david.cloud@duke.edu

David H. Cloud is a postdoctoral researcher in the BCHJ. He is a mixed methodologist who applies social-ecological theory, law, human rights, harm reduction, and environmental justice to a) confront how carceral systems imperil the health of individuals, families, and communities; b) mobilize rapid interventions reduce harm among currently and formerly incarcerated people; and c) promote life-affirming, anti-racist, and anti-carceral solutions to overdose, suicide, and violence in marginalized communities. He co-edited a special issue of AJPH in 2019 that examined mass incarceration as a socio-structural driver of health inequities. He has published papers on drug policy, harm reduction interventions, and the implications of Medicaid policy for people exposed to incarceration. More recently, he published the first paper linking extreme heat to suicide watch incidents in the Louisiana prisons and is increasingly focused on addressing climatological hazards in carceral settings. Dr. Cloud is also a national expert on the harms of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and serves on the Steering Committee for the National Unlock the Box Campaign. His work on these topics has been featured in The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, among other media outlets. He was previously the Director of Research for Amend at the University of California, San Francisco and a Senior Associate at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City. He has a Ph.D. in Social, Behavioral, and Health Education Sciences from Emory University, a J.D. from Villanova Law School, and an MPH from Columbia University.

Catherine Paquette, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Associate

catherine.paquette@duke.edu

Catherine Paquette is a postdoctoral researcher with the Bellwether Collaborative for Health Justice. She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on harm reduction interventions for physical and mental health among people who use criminalized drugs, including people affected by the criminal legal system. Dr. Paquette has over a decade of research and clinical experience in the fields of harm reduction and substance use disorder treatment. She previously managed harm reduction programs at a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C, and she has both conducted research and provided clinical services for people with substance use problems in multiple hospital settings, community-based addiction treatment centers, at the VA, and with community-based harm reduction organizations. Her recent work includes developing and empirically evaluating a harm reduction-focused behavioral intervention for substance use among people who inject drugs.

Graduate Research Assocates

Graduate Research Associates

Zaire Cullins, BA

Graduate Research Associate

zaire.cullins@duke.edu

Zaire Cullins is a PhD student who is interested in identifying health disparities within communities impacted by structural racism perpetuated through systems as the criminal legal system and the family policing system. She is interested in evaluating programs meant to reduce interactions with these systems. Prior to becoming a grad student, Zaire worked in the lab for 3 years, beginning as an undergrad RA and eventually becoming a full time research coordinator for the SHINE and LAI projects. Zaire graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2021 with BAs in Psychology and Political Science.

Luzan JadKarim

Graduate Research Associate

luzan.jadkarim@duke.edu

Luzan JadKarim is a PhD student at the lab interested in the crossroads of substance use/harm reduction and public health among justice involved individuals. Prior to joining the lab, she worked on multiple clinical trial interventions comparing various medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) among individuals who are involved with the criminal justice system at the Yale School of Medicine. Luzan earned her BA in Biology, Neuroscience, and Psychology from Coe College in Iowa and her MPH from the University of New Haven in Connecticut.

Melanie Mayfield, MS

Graduate Research Associate; SHINE Study

melanie.mayfield@duke.edu

Melanie is a graduate research assistant for the SHINE study. She is also a PhD candidate in public health sciences at University of North Carolina Charlotte. She graduated with a MS in criminal justice from North Carolina Central University in 2017. Her research centers on issues and policies that lie at the intersection of health and justice such as self-directed violence in correctional settings and mental health for justice involved individuals.

Staff

Sarah Morgan, MSW

Research Program Leader;

Bellwether Collaborative Lab Manager

s.bmorgan@duke.edu