New faculty join Brown School, Law School

Several new faculty members have joined the Brown School and the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis this academic year. Below are details about their backgrounds.

Brown School

Derek Brown, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Brown teaches courses in the Master of Public Health curriculum. Brown is also a scholar in the Washington University Institute for Public Health, a faculty affiliate in the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention, and senior research fellow at Duke Global Health Institute’s Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research. Brown is conducting research on the economics of child maltreatment, in particular among Medicaid populations using an innovative linkage of Medicaid claims and survey data. Begun with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) support, he continues this work as co-investigator of major grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. His research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Child Abuse and Neglect, Preventive Medicine and Vaccine. Brown is an active member of the CDC’s “Healthy People 2020” work group guiding federal health surveillance on health-related quality of life.

Sheretta Butler-Barnes, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Previously, Butler-Barnes was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at University of Michigan’s School of Education affiliated with the Center for the Study of Black Youth in Context. She conducted research on how individual-level factors connected to black youths’ cultural backgrounds (for example, racial identity beliefs and religiosity) and ecological risk and resources (such as community violence, family and peer support) influence their achievement and psychological well-being outcomes. She also was a research assistant with North Carolina Central University’s African American Faith Communities Project. In this role, she investigated ways that faith communities support families and how families teach their children about their cultural heritage, examining such constructs as racial identity, racial socialization and theological orientation within black Protestant faith communities.

Amy A. Eyler, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Her research interests include cancer prevention, health education and behavior, as well as health politics and policy. Eyler conducts research as part of the Prevention Research Center (PRC) in St. Louis. She is principal investigator and coordinator of the Physical Activity Policy Research Network, integrating the work of 10 research sites studying the nature and extent of physical activity policy in a variety of settings. She is responsible for evaluation activities for core PRC projects and serves as collaborative investigator on cancer prevention and dissemination grants while procuring external research funding. Eyler received the Article of the Year Award in 1998 for Health Education and Behavior. Her most recent research has been featured in the American Journal of Health Education, Physical Education and Health and Health Politics Policy Law, among others. Eyler also has been tapped to edit and update the chapter on exercise and fitness in each new edition of the long-running introductory health text Access to Health.

Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, is an associate professor and is associate director of the Center for Social Development.
Grinstein-Weiss is a leading expert and researcher in the asset-building field and is an influential voice in the design of innovative savings policies, both in the United States and internationally. She is the leading researcher of the Refund to Savings initiative, the largest savings experiment in the United States, and is principal investigator of the first federal evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education’s GEAR UP program. Grinstein-Weiss also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as a research associate for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and as a fellow for the Center of Community Capital. She previously was an associate professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Molly Metzger, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Metzger’s research explores the ways in which public policies interact with social structure and developmental factors to shape cities and lives. Metzger’s work focuses on affordable housing policy, racial segregation and the deconcentration of poverty in American cities. Her recent work includes a community-based participatory research project in which she partnered with residents of the Julia C. Lathrop Homes, the last major public housing on Chicago’s north side.
Her work also extends to other areas of social welfare, including education policy and early childhood development. She has contributed to the growing body of literature demonstrating the long-term health benefits of breastfeeding, particularly with regard to preventing obesity. And while working at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies, she managed data collection for an early-childhood intervention based at 35 Chicago Head Start sites. She has experience with Chicago’s urban poverty as a researcher, service provider and citizen and uses that experience in her research and teaching.

David A. Patterson, Silver Wolf (Adelv unegv Waya), PhD, is an assistant professor.
Patterson has provided clinical, addiction-related services for more than 15 years and currently is an associated researcher with the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions and the Buffalo Center for Social Research. His research focuses on barriers to best-practice implementation in human services organizations, specifically investigating worker and organizational characteristics and their roles in adopting proven practices. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has funded his research. Patterson’s other research focus is on Native American health and wellness, particularly on issues related to college retention. Some of his funded work has been directed toward adapting a Native American-specific HIV/AIDS risk reduction intervention. He is an Indigenous HIV/AIDS Research Training fellow and collaborates with University of Washington’s Indigenous Wellness Research Institute.

Zorimar Rivera-Núñez, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Rivera-Núñez teaches courses in the Master of Public Health program.
Previously, Rivera-Núñez completed post-doctoral training with the National Academies Research Associateship Program at the Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati. As part of this training, she examined exposure assessment tools related to drinking-water contaminants. This research has applications to epidemiological studies of adverse health outcomes. She also participated in forums to provide technical assistance on community based-efforts. In addition, she was part of a team examining how best to evaluate cumulative risk at the community level. At the University of Michigan, Rivera-Núñez was awarded a National Cancer Institute fellowship under the Comprehensive Minority Biomedical Branch to investigate urinary arsenic species as biomarkers of arsenic exposure through drinking water. She also participated in air pollution research projects such as “Air Pollution, Inflammation and Preterm Birth in Mexico City.” Rivera-Núñez is interested in the temporal and spatial variation of environmental contaminants and the effects of those contaminants on women’s and children’s health.

Jean-Francois Trani, PhD, is an assistant professor.
Previously, Trani was a senior research associate at the Leonard Cheshire Disability and Inclusive Development Centre in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. His work lies at the intersection of mental health, disability, vulnerability and poverty, with a focus on conducting research that informs policy and service design for individuals living in conflict-affected fragile states and other low-income countries, such as Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Sudan (Darfur). For example, Trani’s research has contributed to the policy papers of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Health in Afghanistan regarding disability issues. Trani’s research has been funded by a number of organizations, including the U.K. AID/Department for International Development, European Commission, U.N. Mine Action Center in Afghanistan, Handicap International, UNICEF and the World Bank.

School of Law

Goldburn P. Maynard Jr., JD, is a visiting assistant professor of law.
Maynard is a rising scholar in tax law and trusts and estates. His co-authored article in the Tulane Law Review, “To Pay or Delay: The Nominee’s Dilemma under Collection Due Process,” won the John Minor Wisdom Award for best lead article in the volume. Before joining the law faculty, he served as an estate tax attorney for the Internal Revenue Service in Oakland, Calif. He also was a tax associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Chicago. At the University of Chicago Law School, he was a staff member of the University of Chicago Law Review. He served as an intern at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and at the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago. Following law school, he earned his LLM in taxation with honors from Northwestern University School of Law. Maynard is a member of the Illinois bar.

Elizabeth Sepper, JD, is an associate professor of law.
Sepper is a health law scholar whose work explores the interaction of morality, professional ethics and law in medicine. Her most recent article, forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review, challenges the standard account of the role of conscience in health-care delivery, which limits conscience to medical providers who refuse to deliver controversial treatments. She also has published in the areas of human rights, women’s rights and international health law. Her articles have appeared in the Texas International Law Journal, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law and New York University Law Review. She has clerked for Judge Marjorie Rendell of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced at Human Rights Watch and at New York University School of Law’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

Andrew F. Tuch, SJD, is an associate professor of law.
Tuch is an accomplished scholar in the fields of corporate law, securities regulation and the regulation of financial institutions, especially investment banks. His scholarship has appeared in the Virginia Law Review, as well as in peer-reviewed journals in the United Kingdom and Australia. His article “Multiple Gatekeepers” was named among the “Ten Best Corporate and Securities Articles of 2011” by Corporate Practice Commentator. He earned an SJD degree from Harvard Law School, where his research was twice awarded the Victor Brudney Prize for the Best Paper in Corporate Governance. Tuch clerked for Justice G.L. Davies of the Queensland Court of Appeal, practiced corporate law at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and London, and was a member of the law faculty at the University of Sydney. Tuch is a member of the New York bar and is qualified to practice in Australia, England and Wales.