About G-Span

Christina Bernhardt

• Ph.D., University of Central Florida
• M.S.W., Florida State University
• B.S.W., Florida State University

Biography

Christina Bernhardt is the Nutrition Manager and the Evaluation Co-Lead for the Georgia State Physical Activity and Nutrition initiative at the Georgia Health Policy Center. Her expertise includes cross-sector alignment of organizations, patient and health care provider comfort with food insecurity screenings, and patient-centered care.

Bernhardt’s experience includes working with community organizations on collaboration efforts and evaluation plans, specifically those related to food and nutrition security. For example, Bernhardt led the evaluation plan of the Screen and Intervene program, a health collaborative initiative that aimed to connect food insecure patients with community resources.

Kelli Burgos

• M.B.A., Hofstra University
• B.B.A., Hofstra University

Biography

Kelli Burgos is the director of communications at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC). She is responsible for GHPC’s internal and external communications, including its overall marketing strategy, branding, public relations, and digital marketing. Burgos serves on GHPC’s executive team and provides communications guidance to leadership in a number of areas including strategic direction, client relations, and knowledge management. Kelli has expertise in marketing and communications, project management, strategic planning, social media, and advertising.

In addition to overseeing the center’s overall communications strategies, Burgos provides communications leadership for several of the center’s projects, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-sponsored national initiative, Aligning Systems for Health: Health Care + Public Health + Social Services.

Jimmy Dills

• M.P.H., Emory University
• M.U.P., University of Louisville
• B.S., Emory University

Biography

Jimmy Dills is a senior research associate at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC), where he works to improve public health by advancing a Health in All Policies perspective of decision-making. His areas of expertise are systems thinking, health impact assessment (HIA), and healthy community design.

At GHPC, he leads the community design for physical activity components of the Georgia State Physical Activity & Nutrition project, as well as other initiatives that aim to inform plans and policies to best support health and well-being. These include a recent HIA of planning decisions in Tacoma, Wash.; developing health action plans for affordable housing preservation projects, in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners in California; and a collaboration between the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development to promote healthy aging. Jimmy also leads GHPC’s partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on maternal and child health projects, including the National MCH Workforce Development Center and National Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center. Dills has also served on advisory committees for MARTA, the SOPHIA (the national network of health in all policies practitioners), and the Georgia Healthy Homes Coalition.

Debbie Kibbe

• M.S., Georgia State University
• B.A., Hiram College

Biography

Debra Kibbe is an assistant project director at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC). For more than two decades she has been exploring how to prevent and manage childhood obesity and support physical activity and nutrition behaviors in systems serving children, such as schools, health care, communities, worksites, and faith settings.

At GHPC, Kibbe serves as co-principal investigator on the Georgia State Physical Activity and Nutrition initiative, a five-year cooperative agreement funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, focused on policy, systems and environmental change strategies in nutrition, physical activity, breastfeeding, and early care and education obesity prevention. She is a subject matter expert on systems thinking and supports the Veteran’s Health Administration Modeling to Learn, a national initiative that provides resources for front line mental health care teams to improve local care quality to better serve their community.

Kibbe also conducts community health needs assessments, supports meeting design,facilitation and strategic planning services, and provides training and technical assistance on topics such as motivational interviewing, sustainability, and health equity. Kibbe was a faculty for 10 years for the American Dietetic Association Commission on Dietetic Registration’s certificate program on childhood and adolescent weight management and was a member of the education sub committee of the U.S. National Physical Activity Plan that created the Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program framework.

Alyssa Lowe

• M.P.H., Emory University
• B.A., Bennington College

Biography

Alyssa Lowe is a senior research associate at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC) supporting the center’s work in population and global health. Lowe has professional experience in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Americas. Her areas of expertise are in technical support and training; monitoring and evaluation; research design, coordination, and implementation; qualitative data collection, analysis and reporting; and global program development and management.

Lowe’s current projects include evaluation of The Carter Center’s Public Health Training Initiative in Sudan and Nigeria, and supporting the strategic development of GHPC’s global portfolio.

Lowe’s published research is currently available on the World Health Organization’s website and has appeared in the journals Food and Nutrition Bulletin, PLOS One, Nutrition Journal, and BioMed Central Public Health.

Margaret Major

• M.P.H., Tulane University
• B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Biography

Margaret Major is a research associate II at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC). She brings a breadth of intercultural experience in community engagement, research and evaluation, and youth education to the Health Policy and Finance team.

Major provides program management, research, and technical assistance support for a range of Health in All Policies projects focused on strengthening cross sector collaboration to improve the vital conditions for health and well-being. She also provides policy and engagement expertise as a member of the GHPC team supporting the Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center and contributes to capacity building activities for the National Maternal and Child Health Workforce Development Center.

Chris Parker

• M.B.B.S., University of the West Indies (Jamaica)
• M.P.H., Emory University
• B.Sc., University of the West Indies (Jamaica)

Specializations

Population health; public health; community health; health policy; health systems
strengthening; global health; glocalization; health equity

Biography

Dr. Chris Parker is a health systems strategist, researcher and policy analyst with significant expertise in applied health program planning, implementation and evaluation. His portfolios of work focus on mixed methods research and evaluation aimed at providing diverse stakeholders with information and data to problem-solve complex health policy challenges.

He has an appointment as a research assistant professor in the Dean’s Office of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and is a director at the Georgia Health Policy Center, with responsibility for its population and global health portfolio of work. With more than two decades of experience, he has been in the role of principal investigator on many of center’s federally, state and philanthropically supported public health and health equity efforts.

His areas of expertise include strategic planning and evaluation, with a particular interest in projects that link population health and health care. His current work supports International Non-Governmental Organization-sponsored projects related to health systems strengthening and program evaluation in a couple of African countries, and research to better understand how the alignment of health care, public health and the social services enables improved community health, especially in challenged communities across the United States. Chris regularly provides health policy training to Georgia’s state legislators and medical students at Augusta University’s Medical College of Georgia.

He has served on university-based committees (e.g., AYSPS Strategic Planning and GSU’s Vice President, Research and Economic Development Search) and is Board Vice Chair of Mercy Care, Winship Cancer Center’s Community Advisory Board and Integrity Children’d Fund. He also serves as a board member of the Georgia Health Foundation and Georgia CORE’s Cancer Survivorship Council. He was recently awarded the James Hotz Award for championing cancer control in Georgia.

Torrian Percy

• M.P.H., Georgia State University
• B.S., Clayton State University

Biography

Torrian Percy provides administrative support for the Population and Global Health team. With expertise in logistics coordination, presentation assistance, travel arrangements, and records management, Percy ensures seamless operations for team projects and events.

Beyond administrative tasks, Percy excels in building meaningful relationships with high-profile stakeholders, GHPC partners, and collaborators by facilitating seamless communication (document creation and dissemination). Driven by a passion for efficiency and excellence, she also plays a pivotal role in supporting financial operations across the center. From project proposals to vendor relationships and invoice management, Torrian ensures financial processes run smoothly, enabling timely and accurate settlements.

Kayla Poller

• M.P.A., Georgia State University
• B.A., Virginia State University

Biography

Kayla Poller is a marketing manager at the Georgia Health Policy Center. She brings expertise is in digital communications, marketing, and graphic design. She provides support for the center through social media management, website maintenance, and creation of collateral. She supports several projects across the center’s portfolio, including Aligning Systems for Health: Health Care + Public Health + Social Services and Georgia State Physical Activity and Nutrition Initiative.

Kayla’s focus is raising awareness of G-SPAN’s goals, resources, and events, as well as highlighting impact through engaging content creation across platforms. Additionally, she provides website support.

Adele Vaughan

• M.S.W., Georgia State University
• B.S., San Diego State University

Biography

Adele Vaughan is a Part-Time Research Associate II at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC), co-leading the breastfeeding arm of the Georgia State Physical Activity and Nutrition (G-SPAN) grant. In this role she guides the design and implementation of social marketing strategies addressing systemic barriers to breastfeeding promotion. She previously supported G-SPAN as a Paul D. Coverdell Fellow while obtaining her MSW degree.

Vaughan’s focus on mobilizing groups of people to create meaningful change is enhanced by her multidisciplinary background in applied research, project management, quality improvement, and social work. In addition to her work at GHPC, Vaughan is a staff member at the Baby Brain Optimization Project lab at Emory University, where she contributes to research investigating the intersection of social determinants of health and developmental delay-related health outcomes.