Fellowship Research

• Project Goals: Determine if there is a causal relationship between SDH and rates of the four (or five) relevant underlying conditions and determine how important is experience/treatment in the health care system in affecting Black people’s health in ways that are relevant to understanding mortality from Covid, determine any theories of law that could provide adequate remedies
• Responsibilities: Investigate the racial health disparities in treatment, access and quality and engaged in legal analysis to determine what legal recourse could be available to those impacted by the disparities 

• Project Goals: Determine the counter majoritarian role of judges; the extent to which efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic have had an impact on religious freedom; and whether religious freedom should supersede the protection of other rights, even during a pandemic.
• Responsibilities: Engaged in a legal analysis of policies adopted to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, as well as courts’ decisions at the federal and state level. 
• Outcomes: Manuscript submitted. 

• Study: Effect of human, institutional, and environmental factors within EDs and EMS on hand hygiene compliance and OAI. Project Goals: Collect and analyze data to demonstrate the importance of hand washing and hygiene as part of an infection control model for ED and EMS workers. 
• Responsibilities: Reviewed previous outbreak case studies and analyzed hand hygiene compliance factors and data.
• Outcomes: Manuscript submitted. 

• Project Goals: Provide insights on the current state of the field, as well as guidance to a new generation of biosafety and biosecurity professionals and policymakers. 
• Responsibilities: Interviewed biosafety and biosecurity subject matter experts for publication on CGHSS website.
• Outcomes: Publication posted. 

Medical Research

• Project Goals: Review the development of VPL shunt, pleuropulmonary physiology, VPL shunt insertion techniques, complications associated with VPL shunts, and novel strategies to improve VPL shunt tolerance. 
• Responsibilities: Review of literature on acetazolamide to reduce CSF production and ventriculo-bipleural shunting 
• Peer Reviewed Publication: Wong T, Gold J, Houser R, Herschman Y, Jani R, Goldstein I. Ventriculopleural shunt: Review of literature and novel ways to improve ventriculopleural shunt tolerance. J Neurol Sci. 2021;428:117564. doi:10.1016/j.jns.2021.117564 

• Project Goals: Collect and analyze data on opioid prescriptions and use in patients with >2 years follow up.
• Responsibilities: Reviewed patient charts and assembled database using Excel. 

• Project Goals: Evaluate the relationship between magnitude of affective response and quantity of cocaine consumed in order to clarify the affective components that drive drug use in a preclinical mode. Examined single NAc core and shell neuron changes in firing rate 200ms before and after the onset of a cue which signaled drug availability.
• Responsibilities: Recorded ultrasonic vocalizations and monitored rat self-administration of cocaine.  Performed complex laboratory work, such as sampling, testing, compiling, analyzing and interpreting results.  Provided technical assistance with animal treatments and health monitoring.  Completed aseptic surgical techniques for DA depletion in the Basal Ganglia & Motor Cortex stimulation

Additional Research                            

• Project Goals: ATTASH project seeks to deliver to analysts and policymakers in several DHS components a sustainable capability to identify problematic emerging technologies within each component’s mission area, prioritize the actor-related threats involving these technologies, and locate opportunities for interdiction and prevention before these emerging technologies cause harm to the homeland. The results of the research will be implemented in a user friendly tool for incorporation into the operations of DHS components and other elements of the Homeland Security Enterprise 
• Responsibilities: Combination of horizon scanning methods with the further development and validation of a novel socio-technical model of terrorist technology adoption. 

• Responsibilities: Conducted literature review for Extremism Report. 

• Project Goals: To conduct legal research on pandemic zoonoses, such as COVID-19. 
• Responsibilities: Evaluated court documents to determine affiliations, charges, and material support for United States Jihadist cases from 2018 to 2022. 

• Project Goals: To conduct legal research on pandemic zoonoses, such as COVID-19. 
• Responsibilities:  Identifying, compiling, and cataloguing all relevant EU and ASEAN regional instruments that directly govern the prevention and response to pandemic zoonoses, especially in contexts of human-animal interactions (e.g., wildlife trade).  Engage with legal epidemiology as part of an analysis of the governance of Emergency Pandemic Zoonoses.

• Project Goals: Create a publicly accessible interactive map of global labs and biorisk governance. 
• Responsibilities: Scope the National laws, regulations, standards, policies and guidance on biosafety, biosecurity, and DURC oversight in BSL4 countries; Create national governance scorecard. Develop biorisk management oversight topology. 
• Outcomes: Website which provides a publicly accessible interactive map of global labs and biorisk governance. 

• Project Goals: Joint project of UNDP, WHO, UNAIDS and the O’Neill Institute to help states establish and implement strong legal frameworks to manage the pandemic. 
• Responsibilities: Evaluated legal documents from around the world to create reports to support resource and literature library. 
• Outcomes: Website which provides vital legal information and support for the global COVID-19 response. 

• Responsibilities: Partner with SME leads to identify appropriate references as NETEC assets are being created and reviewed.  Assist with the review of educational best practices and strategies to implement. 

• Project Goals: Collect, compile, and provide rapid access to training materials, checklists, and other resources for development and strengthening of public health emergency management capacities, with an emphasis on EOC. Provide resources for the collection initiative at www.epidemic-em.org, an initiative funded by Talus Analytics, the CDC Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to provide immediate accessibility of training materials, checklists, and other crucial resources relating to the establishment and fortification of public health emergency management capacities. 
• Responsibilities: Review use of intra-action reviews during COVID-19, create country profiles of intra-action use, and synthesize case studies.  
• Outcomes: White paper and resources published www.epidemic-em.org. 
• Peer Reviewed Publication: Houser R. Intra Action Reviews as a New Tool in Public Health Emergency Management and Pandemic Response: A Summary of Uses and Applications, 2020-2021. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. March 2022:1-3. doi:10.1017/dmp.2022.48 

• Responsibilities: Created training modules for the public health and emergency management training. 
• Outcomes: Trainings posted to www.epidemic-em.org and delivered to personnel

Investigator-Initiated Research