Laura J. Mintz, MD, Ph.D
Ther Wint Aung, PhD
Susan De Luca, MSW, PhD
Anne Gaglioti, MD
Vanessa P. Ho, MD
Have joined the CHEEER Team. Learn more about each faculty member below
Ther W. Aung, PhD
Where did you grow up? – Myanmar (Burma)
What’s your background – education and interests? – Environmental health and climate change.
Why Cleveland? – Moved to Cleveland for my partner’s job, then I saw nice Metroparks and decided this could be home.
What motivates you to conduct health equity research? – I believe that everyone should have equal protection from environmental and health hazards.
What interests do you have outside of research/what do you enjoy doing in your free time? – Hiking/walking in nature.
Susan De Luca, MSW, PhD
Where did you grow up? – Cleveland, but just returned after a few decades.
What’s your background – education and interests? – Social Work Researcher, former clinician, community organizer via AmeriCorps, and policy advisor for the Ohio Commission on Hispanic/Latino Affairs. With that training, I always root for the underdog. My research, direct social work practice, advocacy, and volunteer work have always followed those values and ethics.
Why Cleveland? – I grew up here and have seen the highs and lows. But we are a city that should never be counted out. Cleveland, I have a lot in common. As a first-gen college student with different abilities, nothing came easy to me. But I continue to stay in the race.
What motivates you to conduct health equity research? – I use my privilege to make change.
What interests do you have outside of research/what do you enjoy doing in your free time? – Walking the dogs, volunteering/mentoring, working out, brunch is my religion, attempting to access my grandma’s artistic skills, Golden Girl marathons, and anything University of Michigan…Hail! Go Blue!
Anne Gaglioti, MD
Where did you grow up? – Cleveland Heights, OH
What’s your background – education and interests? – I’m a family doctor and a health services and practice-based researcher. Before I went to medical school, I studied dance and poetry. I focus on primary care and health equity research with expertise in patient/community/clinician engagement.
Why Cleveland? – We moved to Cleveland from Atlanta in 2021 to be closer to my parents who needed some support.
What motivates you to conduct health equity research? – I came to research through motivation to engage in advocacy for changes in policies around structural bias in the healthcare system and in systems that impact health, but also from a place of wanting to connect on an individual level and serve those disproportionately impacted by health inequities in my clinical practice.
What interests do you have outside of research/what do you enjoy doing in your free time? – I enjoy being with my family- my husband and two school-age boys. I enjoy yoga, cooking, traveling, and being in nature- especially birding.
Vanessa P. Ho, MD
Where did you grow up?
What’s your background – education and interests?
Why Cleveland?
What motivates you to conduct health equity research?
What interests do you have outside of research/what do you enjoy doing in your free time?
Laura J. Mintz, MD, Ph.D
Where did you grow up? – Grew up around here, left at 18, vowing never to return!
What’s your background – education and interests? – I did my undergrad degree at the New School for Social Research in a postcolonial studies interdisciplinary degree, focusing on queer identity in immigrants (or 1st gen) people from the Middle East. It was supposed to be a BA/MA, but the money ran out before grad school. Then I did A Lot of things. In 2009, I went to med school and did an MD/PhD in Health Services Research from CWRU. My interests are about multiply marginalized sexual and gender minority communities, management of complex chronic pain syndromes, and the impact of criminalization on healthcare. And about 986 other things.
Why Cleveland? – My parents are here.
What motivates you to conduct health equity research? – It’s a critical strategy for building the kind of world I’d prefer to live in and seems like a good use of my skills
What interests do you have outside of research/what do you enjoy doing in your free time? – I’m interested in so many things—I like fiber arts, cooking (and infusing and baking etcetc), gardening (indoor and outdoor), foraging, art (lately lots of fiber art, site specific installations, photography, sculpture), dancing (not organized or skilled in any way), karaoke, reading (non-fiction recommendations: Healing Justice Legacies and Let This Radicalize You (I’m also reading The Trauma of Caste in a book club it is terrific); fiction: Relentless Melt, poetry: I’m about to start Rita Dove’s Sonata Mullatica