Institute for Community Research
Our Staff

Our Staff

Kathy Engle-Dulac, MSW
Program Director – CT Youth Food Program Alliance
kathy.engle-dulac@icrweb.org

Kathy Engle-Dulac, MSW is a community organizer focused on issues of food justice and teen leadership. They have coordinated approaches to urban agriculture in New Haven, and served as an Americorps VISTA in the Food Justice Youth Corps, a statewide food justice and teen leadership program. Their efforts in coordinating the Youth Food Program Alliance fostered the creation of new curricula, improved connections between food justice programs, and assisted in creating presentations written and offered by young leaders at regional conferences and national gatherings. Prior to working in social research, Kathy taught at the high school level. Their experiences with food insecurity and agriculture are driving forces in continuing this work.

JiangHong Li, M.D., M.S.
Executive Director and Senior Research Scientist
jianghong.li@icrweb.org

JiangHong Li, M.D., M.S., is a Senior Research Scientist and Executive Director at the Institute for Community Research. Dr. Li was trained in preventive medicine, health education, and community epidemiology. Her primary research interests include social, cultural, and network influences on health or risk behavior, Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS), community based multi-level or peer intervention, and integration of a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Dr. Li’s research is primarily focused on drug users, commercial sex workers, urban and rural low income and other hard to reach populations in the United States and China. Dr. Li is the PI of IDU Peer Recruitment Dynamics and Network Structure in RDS, and Sociocultural Factors on Syringe Sharing and HIV Risks among Injection Drug Users in Guangdong, China. She also served as Co-PI or Co-Investigator on many other NIH funded domestic and international HIV prevention studies that utilize interdisciplinary methods.

See Dr. Li’s CV here.

Danielle Montaque, PhD.
Research Associate, Community Research Alliance Coordinator
Danielle.Green@icrweb.org

Danielle Montaque, Ph.D. is a mixed methods researcher, a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), and Research Associate at ICR. Danielle received her doctorate degree in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Connecticut. Her general interests include addressing health and healthcare disparities for the Black community, with a focus in substance abuse and HIV prevention. She has developed a study to conduct a community-based evaluation of Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for the Black community. She was previously involved in an in-depth investigation of the HIV Test and Treat (T&T) continuum of services in the Greater Hartford area in Connecticut aiming to understand how systemic processes affect HIV community viral load (CVL). She is currently the coordinator for a five-year, three-state study to understand how laws and policies are currently implemented to reduce opioid diversion and transition to injection drug use.

Heather Mosher, Ph.D.
Research Associate
heather.mosher@icrweb.org

Heather Mosher, Ph.D., is a community psychologist and Research Associate at the Institute for Community Research. In her work, she aims to facilitate the development of healthy communities through rigorous multi-level research that uses cutting-edge digital media methods and innovative modes of disseminating research findings. As a mixed-method applied researcher and a professional filmmaker, she has conducted community-based research utilizing video with economically disadvantaged communities in the United States and abroad (East and Southern Africa and Latin America). She has worked with a diverse range of marginalized populations, including women, low-income, homeless, minority, youth, and LGBTQ communities. Her primary areas of research include research methods, group processes, and community development, with a particular focus on poverty, homelessness and housing.

Jean.J. Schensul, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist & Founding Director
jean.schensul@icrweb.org

Jean J. Schensul, Ph.D., is a medical/educational anthropologist with interdisciplinary experience in the development and implementation of collaborative and participatory research in health, culture and education. From 1978-1987, as Research Director, Hispanic Health Council, she developed its research and training infrastructure and initiated partnership research on HIV in Hartford. From 1987 – 2004, as founding director of ICR she guided the development of the organization’s collaborative research mission and blueprint for research tracks, its program of art/science fusion, the ICR gallery, cultural programs, Y-PAR program, and a diverse funding portfolio. Since 2004 she has developed her own full-time research and teaching/training program while continuing to mentor others. Her research is eclectic, shaped by community interests and has ranged from early childhood development through older adult health. Her NIH, CDC and SAMHSA grants have focused on emerging adulthood, substance abuse prevention using participatory action research, with youth, health of older adults and alcohol, tobacco and HIV in India. She is editor/co-author (with Margaret LeCompte, U.Colorado Boulder), of the Ethnographer’s Toolkit, a 7-book set outlining a mixed methods approach to community based research and intervention (1st edition 1999; 2nd edition 2010-2014), and has published more than 120 peer reviewed papers and book chapters. She  plays a national role in promoting community-initiated research partnerships with universities, building community research capacity and mentoring diverse young scholars to conduct community based participatory research. Dr. Schensul was the recipient of the 2010 Malinowski Career Award for contributions of research to solution of human problems (Society for Applied Anthropology), and the American Anthropological Association 1992 Solon Kimball Award for contributions of anthropology to policy (with Stephen Schensul) and has held elected leadership roles in both organizations. She has lived in Hartford since 1978. She is also adjunct research professor, University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine, and Research Affiliate, Yale University where she was a co-founder of the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA).

See Dr. Schensul’s CV here.

Margaret R. Weeks, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
mweeks@icrweb.org

Margaret R. Weeks, Ph.D. is a socio-cultural anthropologist and Senior Scientist of The Institute for Community Research in Hartford, CT. Since 1989, she has conducted community-based, applied social science research on prevention of HIV/AIDS among drug users and their partners, and evaluated AIDS prevention programs in collaboration with other community research and service organizations. Prior to this she conducted research on the changing status of urban women in the People’s Republic of China. Her research interests include women’s issues, gender, substance abuse, AIDS prevention, multi-level interventions and implementation, both in the U.S. and China.

See Dr. Weeks’s CV here.

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