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PhD Faculty

Students in the PhD in Public Health Sciences program have the opportunity to work with faculty participating in locally, nationally, and globally recognized research and studies on both the Danforth and Medical School campuses. Their areas of interest range from data analysis to community outreach to AI modeling for positive health outcomes. Learn more about our faculty community and how you can be a part of building a better present and future.

Browse Our PhD Faculty

Peg Allen

Peg Allen

Research Assistant Professor

  • 314-935-0116
  • pegallen@wustl.edu

Peg Allen's focus is applied research to learn how best to support state and local health departments and their partnering organizations in capacity-building for evidence-based chronic disease prevention. The goal is to support public health departments in instituting management practices to support such capacity-building, including practices in leadership support, workforce development, organizational climate and culture, and partnerships.
Ruopeng An

Ruopeng An

Associate Professor

  • 314-935-3202
  • ruopeng@wustl.edu

Ruopeng An conducts research to assess environmental influences and population-level interventions on weight-related behaviors and outcomes throughout the life course. In particular, his work assesses socioeconomic determinants and policies that affect individuals’ dietary behavior, physical activity, sedentary lifestyle, and adiposity in children, adults of all ages, and people with disabilities. His research aims to develop a well-rounded knowledge base and policy recommendations that can inform decision-making and the allocation of resources to combat obesity.
Ellis Ballard

Ellis Ballard

Assistant Professor of Practice

  • 314-935-3072
  • eballard@wustl.edu

​Ellis Ballard’s research and teaching focus on advancing participatory approaches to system dynamics modeling with communities to advance health access and social justice. He is director of the Brown School’s Social System Design Lab in which role, he innovates group model building practice methods in cross-cultural contexts, trains future cohorts of social work and public health practitioners to apply system dynamics modeling in their work, and cultivates the growing global community of community based system dynamics practitioners.
Abigail Barker

Abigail Barker

Research Associate Professor

  • 314-935-3513
  • arbarker@wustl.edu

Abigail Barker is the faculty lead for data and methods at the The Center for Advancing Health Services, Policy & Economics Research at the Institute for Public Health. Her role includes helping social science and clinical researchers add cost and cost-effectiveness analyses to their work to increase policy relevance, as well as creating data visualizations to allow stakeholders to interactively understand the tradeoffs of various health policy choices.
Ana-Baumann

Ana A Baumann

Assistant Professor of Surgery

  • 314-747-9109
  • anabaumannwalker@wustl.edu

Baumann’s research agenda focuses on identifying strategies to facilitate the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions in low-resource settings nationally and globally. She is a co-director of the Dissemination and Implementation Research Core (DIRC), a methods core at the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) that provides methodological expertise to advance translational research to inform and move efficacious health practices from clinical knowledge to routine care. Through DIRC, she has supported numerous investigators in receiving federally studies aiming to accelerate the use of evidence-based interventions or guidelines in different settings of care.
Derek Brown

Derek Brown

Associate Professor

  • 314-935-8651
  • dereksbrown@wustl.edu

Derek Brown’s research focuses on costs, access to care, quality, and disparities among Medicaid populations—including physician payment, housing instability, and child maltreatment. He also uses discrete choice experiments to analyze preferences for health care and outcomes, such as screening and vaccination. His goal with this work is to improve valuation of health outcomes and policies and to promote better economic evaluation of public health policies.