Lab Director
Associate Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences)
Lab Director
Associate Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences)
Lab Manager
Program Administrator
Postgraduate Associate
Whitney (she/her/hers) is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. After completing her MPH at YSPH in 2020, she joined the Housing and Health Equity Lab, directed by Dr. Danya Keene. Whitney has worked on multiple projects in the lab, including Project ReSIDe, a mixed-methods, longitudinal R01 investigating the impacts of rental assistance and diabetes, and the COVID Eviction Project, a series of interviews investigating the impacts of rental moratoria during the pandemic. She is committed to understanding how housing can impact mental and physical health equity. Her dissertation research will focus on how housing displacement due to extreme climate events impacts individual and community health.
Kyra Rost is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at The Ohio State University. Her research interests broadly include black pop culture, intergroup-conflict and cooperation, health outcomes, and criminology. Her current research focuses on using hip-hop music to combat mental health stigmas, enact reliance, and influence health policy. Kyra has earned the Distinguished Graduate Enrichment Fellowship and the Patrick S. Osmer Fellowship from The Ohio State University’s Graduate School.
Doctoral Student, Urban Planning
Carolyn Swope is a doctoral student in urban planning at Columbia University, and also holds an MPH in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University. Broadly, her research interests focus on the relationship between housing and health disparities, with particular attention to historical housing policies producing present-day housing inequities. Currently Carolyn is working on her dissertation, which examines how gentrification’s connection to other forms of racialized dispossession informs its effects on health for Black residents in Southwest Washington, DC.
Postgraduate Associates
Shannon Whittaker is a doctoral candidate in Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. Her research interests lie at the intersection of place, race, health and history where she examines how social, structural, and political processes such as gentrification impact the health of marginalized communities of color, in particular Black communities. Most of her current work evaluates how systemic forms of racism, discrimination, and dispossession have evolved and how these systems of oppression affect neighborhoods and their residents. Before Yale, she worked in healthcare advertising at Omnicom Health Group, tv and film production at Atlantic Pictures, and as a health policy coordinator for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Postgraduate Associate
Kayl is a post-graduate associate with the CIRA lab. They graduated with honors in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020, followed by an MPH in Social and Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Health Justice from Yale School of Public Health in 2023.
Kayl's research interests lie at the intersection of substance use, LGBTQ health, homelessness, and sex work. Their multidisciplinary approach enables them to tackle complex issues with sensitivity, inclusivity, and a focus on marginalized populations.
They are currently involved in two studies: Project RENEW and the TRAC-ER Study. Project RENEW focuses on understanding the social and geographic influences on substance use recovery and treatment, utilizing technological advancements to explore relapse triggers during alcohol and substance use treatment. The TRAC-ER Study aims to develop a health promotion program using mobile apps and Bluetooth breathalyzers to reduce alcohol use among transgender individuals and queer men.
Postgraduate Associate
Gaby Olea Vargas (she/her) is a postgraduate associate in YSPH’s Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is currently working with the Housing and Health Lab under Dr. Danya Keene’s mentorship providing support on multiple projects in the lab, including the Right to Counsel (RTC) Study and Project ReSIDe (learn more about these on the website).
Gaby also works under Dr. Annie Harper’s mentorship on projects surrounding energy affordability, energy efficiency, climate-smart technology, and their intersection with health. Her research interests focus on housing and its influence on the health of Latine/x, immigrants, and undocumented communities.
Frank is a second year Master of Public Health candidate at the Yale School of Public Health within the Social Behavioral Science department. His research interest focuses on how healthcare systems can better address homelessness, health equity, and other social determinants of health.
Before coming to Yale, Frank completed a master’s degree in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and worked for Goddard Riverside, a nonprofit organization contracted by New York City as part of the Manhattan Outreach Consortium to conduct homeless outreach, as a housing specialist.