The CARE study is designed and managed by Co-Principal Investigators Dr. Zaneta Thayer and Dr. Theresa Gildner. The Co-PIs meet weekly with the rest of the CARE research team.
Dr. Thayer is an assistant professor of biological anthropology at Dartmouth College. She has spent the last 12 years investigating how maternal stress and wellbeing in pregnancy impacts maternal and child health. The majority of her work has been conducted in New Zealand, where the maternal care landscape differs substantially relative to the United States. This prior work has set her up well for the CARE study, since it has highlighted how patterns of maternity care, which are being greatly affected by the COVID pandemic, can affect maternal wellbeing and labor and delivery outcomes. Dr. Thayer is the 2020 recipient of the Michael A. Little Early Career Award for the Human Biology Association.
Dr. Theresa Gildner is an assistant professor of biological anthropology at
Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on the effects of human behavior and the environment on human health, particularly infectious disease. She is also interested in the various ways people respond to disease risk, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work utilizes a biocultural approach to examine how interactions between social factors and individual biology shape health outcomes, with implications for the design of more effective medical care.
Dr. Glorieuse Uwizeye is a postdoctoral fellow for the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College, with a primary appointment in the Department of Anthropology. She is interested in studying the intersecting impacts of political, socioeconomic, and environmental factors on development and adult health. Her research program focuses on health impacts of genocide and epigenetic mechanisms linking prenatal exposure to genocide and adulthood health outcomes. She enjoys socializing, listening to people, and seeing nature!
Maggie Sherin is a Dartmouth grad (Class of 2018) who majored in Biology and minored in Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. During undergraduate, she spent her off-term interning at a rural medical clinic in Mt. Elgon, Kenya, studied abroad in Hyderabad, India, and played on the Varsity Field Hockey team. After graduating, Maggie moved to New York City and worked as a pediatric research assistant at Northwell Health, focusing primarily on community breastfeeding education and promotion, and pediatric obesity prevention. In addition to her research with the CARE team, she has studied and written about long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) for adolescents and antepartum Tdap vaccination. She has also worked as a community birth doula for underserved women living in Manhattan and the Bronx, and as a coach for Girls on the Run.
Daniela Orozco Rendon was born in Tulua, Colombia. However, she spent the majority of her life in Houston, Texas with her parents. She attended the University of Houston and graduated in December 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a minor in Medicine in Society. During her time there she was a part of the Honor’s College, a Residential Advisor and the Program Chair for her college’s Natural Science and Mathematics Student Leadership Board, where she strived to create a community within her college and with the surrounding area. As the daughter of immigrants and as she learned more about the surrounding community in Houston as well as the social determinants of health from her minor, she began to notice the struggles that many face with health care that arise from factors outside of the clinic. She went on to shadow in the Harris Health System, which are low-income clinics in the Houston area. While there she shadowed an OB-GYN and saw a variety of patients who each brought their own narrative and was drawn to the way that the physician, she shadowed, was able to cater to her patient’s needs. Something that she and her family had not always experienced in their own health care. Daniela also conducted research on Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis and other kidney diseases and through her work she was able to learn more about the health disparities related to kidney diseases. It was these experiences that turned her to the importance of social determinants and pushed her to seek out how she can better combat them as a physician. Outside of school Daniela enjoys learning to cook new meals, spending time with her cat, Lil’ Mamas, watching movies, drawing and painting.
Amanda Lu is a rising senior at Dartmouth (Class of 2021) majoring in Economics and minoring in Anthropology. She has traditionally pursued linguistic and cultural anthropology but became interested in biological anthropology due to its integration of social, cultural, and biological understandings of health and medicine. As a member of the CARE study, she is excited to use both quantitative and qualitative methods to help analyse the complex issues of healthcare and pregnancy during COVID-19.
Beldina (also known as Bel) Orinda is a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis, studying Anthropology on the Global Health and Environment track and Psychology. Her interests lie at the intersection between race, culture, and public health, and the way that social determinants of health inform one’s quality of life and access to care. She especially enjoys studying this through the lenses of disability and maternal-infant health. As part of the CARE team, she is excited to assess how mothers navigate the new realities and challenges that Covid-19 brings to an already stressful experience, and how norms surrounding childbirth are upended and transformed by the pandemic. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family, singing, writing anything from blog posts to essays, babysitting, and volunteering in her community.
Becky Milner is a rising senior at Dartmouth (Class of 2021) studying Anthropology, Global Health and French. She loves learning about how health and wellness are perceived and experienced by different communities and is especially interested in maternal healthcare and wellbeing. As a member of the CARE team, she is excited to investigate how the pandemic is affecting women’s birth preferences and to work with her peers to support women across the country. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, paddle boarding and trying new breakfast foods.
Grace Alston is a rising junior at Dartmouth (Class of 2022) majoring in Anthropology and minoring in French. Motivated by both cultural and biological anthropology, her academic focus is human rites of passage concerning births and deaths. Grace joined the CARE study because of her interest in qualitatively analyzing cultural response to administering maternal care amidst crisis.