CHAMPS Study: Investigators

Principal-Investigator
Professor
Department of Preventive Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Karen C. Johnson, M.D., M.P.H., Professor and Vice Chair, is an Internist and Preventive Medicine specialist. Dr. Johnson received her M.D. degree from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center where she completed an Internal Medicine residency. She received her Master's of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University where she completed a Preventive Medicine residency program. Dr. Johnson's primary interest has been promoting health through healthy living and she has been working in the areas of smoking cessation and obesity prevention for over 18 years. She is the principal investigator (PI) for the TARGIT study, which is exploring ways to help people stop smoking without gaining weight. She is also the principal investigator for the Women's Health Initiative, which is exploring the major causes of disease and the promotion of health in postmenopausal women. Dr. Johnson is the principal investigator for the Look AHEAD study in persons with Type II Diabetes, which is exploring whether weight loss can prevent heart attacks and stroke disease. Dr. Johnson is a member of the Board of Trustee's of the University of Tennessee.

Karen C. Johnson, M.D., M.P.H.

Co-Investigator
Professor
Department of Preventive Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Mace Coday, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist and Behavioral Health Investigator/Specialist in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Medicine, & Psychiatry at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Her research expertise is in developing behavioral interventions targeting lifestyle changes, recruitment, and retention in hard to reach populations, with emphasis on obesity treatments and Cardiovascular/Psychological/Cancer related outcomes. Dr. Coday teaches 2 graduate level research courses. She has recently been elected to be President beginning May 2022 for the faculty of the College of Medicine's 4 state campuses (Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, & Chattanooga). UTHSC has 4 Mission areas to serve the residents of TN; Education, Clinical Care, Research, & Service.

Mace Coday, Ph.D.

Co-Investigator
Professor
Department of Preventive Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Phyllis Richey, Ph.D. is an expert in Exercise Physiology (specializations in adult and pediatric cardiovascular physiology; utilizing innovative technologies for the delivery and assessment of healthy lifestyle interventions across the lifespan). Physical activity. Mobility. Community health interventions for the prevention and treatment of obesity and metabolic syndrome. Accelerometry. Clinical trials and community-based participatory research. Investigation of precursors for hypertension-induced target organ damage. Clinical and community research informatics.

Phyllis Richey, Ph.D.

Co-Investigator
Professor
Department of Preventive Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Fridtjof Thomas, Ph.D. supports the City of Memphis and Shelby County COVID-19 Joint Task Force: Emergency Support Function #8 – Public Health and Medical Services and has contributed COVID-19 related summaries and analyses from daily new cases to bed occupancy in the hospital system incl. required ICU resources in the Memphis Metropolitan Area. These updates were delivered daily starting April 2020 and are currently (June 2021) provided twice per week. The primary users of this information are the Shelby County Health Department and the City of Memphis. His projections of the COVID-19 situation in the Memphis Metropolitan Area is also used by UTHSC’s leadership and the leadership of St. Jude’s Children’s Research hospital.
His current research focus is on kidney function and, especially, on monitoring progression towards kidney failure (in collaboration with Dr. Kovesdy and the Clinical Outcomes and Clinical Trials Program - COCTP): I work on a longitudinal mixed-effects approach with integrated continuous-time Brownian motion that models diverging decline of the glomerular filtration rate over time. I apply these methods to a cohort of >3.5 million veterans, utilizing the VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) as well as the Advanced Computing Facility (ACF) at the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Fridtjof Thomas, Ph.D.

Co-Investigator
Assistant Professor
Department of Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Dr. Martin is a Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Founding Director of the Center for Innovation in Health Equity Research. As a psychologist, Dr. Martin brings to CHAMPS a career focused on addressing disparities (racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and rural) across different chronic diseases in partnership with communities and multidisciplinary academic colleagues. She is currently working on a multistate project that is enrolling older cancer survivors in a trial to facilitate weight loss, healthy eating, and physical activity through a web based intervention.

Michelle Martin, Ph.D.

Co-Investigator
Assistant Professor
Department of Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Catherine Womack, M.D. has served in many roles at UTHSC. She have been a Co-Division Chief for the General Internal Medicine Division, Associate Program Director for the Medicine Residency program, Site-Director for the Med-Peds and Medicine residents at Baptist Memorial Hospital and Interim Chair of Preventive Medicine. She served as an Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for several years and is currently the Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Admissions. During her tenure at UTHSC, she collaborated on many research projects and continue to work with colleagues in the Dept. of Preventive Medicine. She is currently the Governor for the Tennessee chapter of the American College of Physicians.

Catherine Womack, M.D.

Co-Investigator
Assistant Professor
Department of Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Cyrilyn Walters MD, MPH is an assistant professor at the University of TN Department of Medicine. She also serves as the Medical Director of Ambulatory Services at Regional One Health. Dr. Walters is a trained Internist and Pediatrician. Her Master of Public Health has a concentration in Maternal and Child Health. She has an interest in preventative medicine including metabolic disorders such as hypertension, Diabetes and Obesity in disenfranchised populations.

Cyrilyn Amarie Walters, M.D., M.P.H.

Co-Investigator
Associate Professor
Department of Diagnostic and Health Sciences
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Charisse Madlock-Brown is a faculty member in Health Informatics and Information Management at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She received her Master’s in Library Science and Ph.D. in Health Informatics from the University of Iowa. She has expertise in data management, data mining, and visualization. She has a broad background in health informatics, with a current focus on obesity trends and multimorbidity. Other areas of interest are network analysis and emerging topic detection in biomedicine. She has authored several book chapters and journal articles and continues to keep up-to-date on data integration, data architecture, database management, and analytic methods. She runs the UTHSC Research Pipelines labs, which provide online interfaces for distributed computing and storage systems. Her lab can manage projects from data extraction and transformation to modeling and visualization for small-scale and big data projects.

Charisse Madlock-Brown, Ph.D.

Staff
Research Study Coordinator.
Department of Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Kip Handwerker is a certified strength and conditioning specialist with nearly a decade in personal training and behavioral intervention experience, with a bachelor’s in Exercise Science and a master’s in Kinesiology. Kip has worked with multiple high school and collegiate athletic teams and focuses in healthy movement mechanics for injury prevention, and identifying and addressing strength deficits for improvements in quality of life and athletic performance. Kip is also finishing his second master’s in Biostatistics where his focus is in developing non-parametric clustering algorithms for epigenetic data to help identify factors for stronger disease predictions. His primary role is working as a lifestyle change and behavioral interventionist while his secondary role includes database management and data analytics.

Joseph (Kip) Handwerker, M.S., C.S.C.S.

Staff
Research Assistant
Department of Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Maddie is a lifestyle change and behavioral interventionist for the CHAMPS study. She is a University of Memphis alumna, where she received a bachelor’s degree in Psychology (Behavioral Neuroscience) and a master’s in Health Promotion. It was during this time she found her love for research while working in a neurochemistry lab, and a desire to support others in improving their health and well-being. Maddie is also a Certified Health Education Specialist with interests in social/behavioral health and nutrition. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, exploring the outdoors, and spending time with friends + family.

Maddie Mills, M.S., CHES

Staff
Research Project Coordinator
Department of Medicine
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

Julia is the Research Project Coordinator for the CHAMPS study. She has experience working on weight loss and smoking cessation research as both a Research Project Coordinator and Interventionist. She received her M.A. in Applied Medical Anthropology from the University of Memphis in 2011 and she has worked at UTHSC since 2017. Julia has also worked as a Study Coordinator for a contract research organization running studies of consumer products for a pharmaceutical company in Memphis.

Julia Graber, M.A., C.C.R.P.

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