Editorial Board
Editors-in-Chief
Tim Ken Mackey, MAS, PhD
Professor, University of California San Diego
Director, Healthcare Research & Policy, University of California San Diego - Extension
Director, Global Health Policy and Data Institute
Bio
Tim Ken Mackey is a Professor at the University of California, San Diego, the Director of the Global Health Policy and Data Institute, and also the CEO and co-founder of the healthcare startup company S-3 Research LLC. He holds a BA in Political Science-International Relations, a Masters Degree in Health Policy & Law and also earned his PhD in Global Public Health from the joint doctoral program at UC San Diego - San Diego State University. Prof. Mackey's work has been featured in high-impact journals such as Science, JAMA, Nature Biotechnology, JMIR, the Lancet, Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, Clinical Microbiology Reviews, and BMC Medicine. His research and expertise has also been featured in major news outlets such as CNN, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal. His work focuses on an array of multidisciplinary topics in domestic and global public health including infodemiology, public health and data science, health policy, and global health governance. He also has extensive professional experience including over 10 years experience in the private sector and acting as a consultant for the World Health Organization, the US Department of Justice and others.
Cynthia Baur, PhD
Professor, Behavioral and Community Health
Endowed Professor and Director of the Horowitz Center for Health Literacy
University of Maryland School of Public Health
Bio
Dr Cynthia Baur is interested in how people find, understand and use health information and services to decide on and take action to protect and promote health at the individual, community and societal levels. Prior to becoming the Endowed Professor and Director of the Horowitz Center for Health Literacy, Dr. Baur worked for 17 years in communication leadership roles with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Washington, D.C. She served as the Senior Advisor for Health Literacy in the CDC Office of the Associate Director for Communication and CDC's Senior Official for the Plain Writing Act implementation.
During her federal tenure, Dr Baur led multiple initiatives to define best practices and guidelines in health communication and health literacy. She was the first manager of the Healthy People health communication objectives and the editor of the U.S. National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy. At CDC, she created CDC's health literacy website, which provides tools and online training to improve health literacy and public health, and she is the co-creator of the CDC Clear Communication Index, a set of scientific criteria for creating clear public communication materials. Her approach is based in communication science and focuses on providing diverse audiences with information in ways they can.
Editorial Board Members/Section Editors
Wasim Ahmed, PhD, MSc, BA (Hons)
Newcastle University Business School
Bio
Dr. Ahmed is a Lecturer in Digital Business with a specialism in social media research at Newcastle University Business School. His PhD was completed at the University of Sheffield in the Information School's Health Informatics Research Group where Dr. Ahmed conducted an analysis of social media data related to infectious disease outbreaks. Dr. Ahmed has research interests in digital health and social network analysis. His previous work has examined misinformation and conspiracy networks, the use of social media by physicians, evaluation of health information online, and physical activity and ageing. He has published many peer-reviewed articles and delivered numerous invited talks around the world.
Raphael E. Cuomo, PhD
School of Medicine, University of California-San Diego
Bio
Raphael E. Cuomo PhD is a professor and scientist at UC San Diego School of Medicine with board-certification in public health from the National Board of Public Health Examiners. He studied at UC San Diego and Harvard University, and he completed additional training with Yale University and the World Health Organization. Dr. Cuomo’s research interests include health disparities, geospatial epidemiology, substance abuse research, healthcare access, and cancer prevention.
Bushra Ebadi, BA, MGA
Youth Ambassador, UNESCO Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Alliance
Youth Advisor and Executive Committee Member, Canadian Commission for UNESCO
Munk School Master of Global Affairs (MGA) Alumni Network Board Member
Global Advisor (Sherpa) to Aya Chebbi, Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response
Co-Founder, Health and Information Literacy Access (HILA) Alliance
Founder, InGender Media
Bio
Bushra Ebadi is a social innovator focused on mobilizing communities, knowledge, and resources to advance peace, justice, and the agency of marginalized individuals and communities around the world. She is Co-Founder of the Health and Information Literacy Access (HILA) Alliance and a member of the WHO EPI-WIN (Information Network for Epidemics) Network. Bushra currently serves as a Youth Ambassador for the UNESCO-led Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Alliance and as an executive member and youth adviser for the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. She has worked with over a dozen organizations, including civil society, think tanks, multilateral organizations, and thought leaders and activists to transform governance systems, improve information accessibility, and build capacities to meaningfully engage with diverse communities through strategic foresight, interdisciplinary research, design and systems thinking, policy analysis, and storytelling. Bushra holds a Master of Global Affairs from the University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs and a joint honours B.A. in political science and philosophy with a double minor in French and management from McGill University.
Annice Kim, PhD, MPH
Senior Scientist, Director, Health Media Impact and Digital Analytics Program, at RTI International
Bio
Dr Kim is an expert in evaluating digital/social media health campaigns and monitoring how tobacco, and e-cigarette products are marketed online. She leads studies to evaluate the impact of digital and social media health education campaigns for federal (e.g. CDC, FDA), state (e.g. Florida, California), and local health agencies (e.g. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health) on topics ranging from tobacco to opioids. Her work has examined how passive exposure to digital ads is associated with online information-seeking behavior and mining social media data to determine characteristics of campaign followers and their networks. She leverages both social media data and survey data to understand how the e-cigarette marketplace and consumer use patterns are changing and what role social media data play in influencing consumer beliefs and behaviors.
Lindsey Leininger, PhD
Clinical Professor, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Bio
Dr. Leininger is on faculty at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business where she teaches current and future health care leaders how to make sense of medical data. She was the founding CEO of @dearpandemic, an infodemic intervention about the Coronavirus pandemic that garnered over 115k followers on social media, hundreds of media consults, and dozens of speaking engagements ranging from middle school classrooms to global institutions. Prior to joining Dartmouth, she spent a decade leading research and technical assistance projects for health care safety net programs, both in academic and think-tank settings. Lindsey earned her PhD in health policy from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.
Research Focus
Dr. Leininger's research focus is crafting and communicating about data-driven health policy. Her expertise spans program evaluation, technical assistance, and workforce training.
Anuja Majmundar, PhD, MBA, MA
Principal Scientist, Data Science, Economic & Health Policy at American Cancer Society
Bio
Dr. Majmundar is a Principal Scientist at the American Cancer Society. Her research focuses on new and emerging tobacco products such as electronic cigarettes. Her work highlights gaps in tobacco regulations, demonstrates the utility of social media data in real-time syndromic surveillance, characterizes online health misinformation, outlines strategies for effective social media tobacco education campaigns, and models longitudinal social media data to infer public attitudes towards vape product use. Dr. Majmundar’s work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.
Meredith Meacham, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California San Francisco, USA
Bio
Dr Meacham is an epidemiologist and social scientist working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr Meacham studies substance use and related health conditions (substance use disorders, overdose, mental illness, HIV), with a current focus on infoveillance as a tool for monitoring trends and delivering interventions.
Tina Purnat, MSc
Principal Expert in eHealth and Digital Innovations for Public Health, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
Bio
Tina works at the intersection of health research, analysis and evidence-informed policy-making with an emphasis on infodemic management, digital technologies for health, and health information systems.
Research Focus
Tina's research focus is on digital health interventions and implementation research in public health, social listening, literacies, community resilience, infodemic characterization, health information systems.