Research Staff

Jalissa Shealey is a Research Associate in the department of Population Health Sciences and project director for the Represent ATL research project housed within the National Institutes of Health’s RADx-UP initiative. Within this role, she partakes in community engaged research and conducts primary data collection among black communities in Atlanta. 

Prior to joining Georgia State, Jalissa worked as a Team Lead for the COVIDVu Qualitative Study at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. As the Team Lead, she managed a six-member team of qualitative data collectors as they visited randomly selected households in metro-Atlanta to explore barriers to COVID-19 testing and vaccinations. 

Jalissa is passionate about reducing health disparities among low-income and minority populations as well as substance abuse prevention efforts. She is interested in multidisciplinary research focusing on the intersection between substance abuse and health disparities related to underserved populations. 

 

 

Dennis Reidy is an Assistant Professor in the department of Health Policy & Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. He is also the Director for Community Engagement and Outreach for the Center for Research on Interpersonal Violence at Georgia State University. 

Dr. Reidy worked as a scientist in the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years before coming to Georgia State in 2018. His research focuses on informing, developing, and evaluating innovative interventions to prevent violence and associated delinquency outcomes (e.g., substance use, risky sexual behavior, mental health, etc.) and promote health and well-being. He is particularly interested in investigating cross-cutting risk and protective factors to inform the development of prevention strategies that will impact multiple health outcomes. 

He teaches courses in research methods, statistics, evaluation, and measurement. 

 

Heather Bradley is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. She is an epidemiologist whose main research interests include HIV prevention and treatment outcomes, surveillance methodology, and the intersection of infectious diseases with the U.S. opioid epidemic. 

Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia State, Dr. Bradley worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in various divisions, including the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention and the Division of STD Prevention. From 2016-2018, she was the Associate Chief for Science for the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, where she oversaw the training and research of more than 50 epidemiologists in the Behavioral and Clinical Surveillance Branch. 

Dr. Bradley also worked a senior research associate for the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health from 2005 to 2010. During that time, she managed a multi-site research study evaluating integration of family planning and voluntary HIV counseling and testing services in Ethiopia. 

 

 

Dr. Natasha De Veauuse Brown joined the Department of Health Policy & Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health at Georgia State University as a Research Assistant Professor in January 2021. She also works in the Center for Leadership in Disability, whose mission includes translating research into sustainable community practices that lead to independent, inclusive, and productive lives for people with disabilities. 

Dr. De Veauuse Brown’s research focuses primarily on risk behavior reduction and improving the quality of life of children, adolescents, and young adults, with an emphasis on sexual behaviors, violence, mental health, and substance abuse. 

Prior to joining the faculty at the School of Public Health, Dr. De Veauuse Brown served as a public health consultant for over a decade and mostly recently as senior research administrator for the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Georgia State. She has worked with major research institutions, colleges, universities, K-12 school districts, area health education centers, rural health care facilities, youth- and faith-based organizations, and community development corporations. These endeavors yielded successful grant proposals that funded the implementation and evaluation of needs-based services, research, and education projects. 

De Veauuse Brown earned a Ph.D. in Public Health with a focus on Health Promotion and Behavior from Georgia State in 2019. She also holds an MPH in Epidemiology from UCLA as well as a B.S. in Chemistry from Xavier University of Louisiana. 

 

Dr. Veronica Newton is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Race at Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta, GA. She joined the Department of Sociology in 2018, as a race scholar who researchers and teaches race, intersectionality, and black feminisms. Dr. Newton’s ethnographic and qualitative work focuses specifically on how Black undergraduate women navigate both racism and patriarchy simultaneously at HPWIs. Her research serves to highlight the importance of examining interlocking systems of oppression within higher education and how they impact women of color’s college experiences. Her current projects include a forthcoming co-authored book with her Black feminist colleagues, titled: The Sociology of Cardi B.: A Trap feminist Approach set to be released in the fall of 2022 with Routledge Press. Dr. Newton is also a Co-PI for an NIH RADxUP grant in collaboration with GSU’s School of Public Health, where she serves as a Co-PI and qualitative, race scholar to help uncover challenges and barriers among COVID-19 testing for Black Americans. 

 

Chelsea Austin serves as a Research Scientist with the Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences, overseeing the implementation of several federally funded grants on violence prevention, health disparities, and infectious disease. In this role, she assists in the design and implementation of research instruments, stakeholder engagement, management of research teams, as well as synthesis and dissemination of findings. Chelsea previously worked as a Health Scientist within the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There she led the evaluation of local, state, and national programs focused on food and water safety, environmental health surveillance, and health adaptation to climate change. Additionally, she has worked as an evaluator across a range of nonprofits and community-based organizations focused on violence prevention, primary prevention of chronic disease, and food access. She has also served as a Lecturer with Yale’s School of Public Health, and a consultant to international public health programs. Her research interests include building a reflective practice within evaluation, using complexity and systems thinking to inform program designs, and implementation science