People

PHI is home to more than 100 project directors and principal investigators that are leading innovative public health projects and programs. Below, you will find the biographies of two of these leaders.

Josie Ramos

Project Coordinator
GOJoven

Josie Ramos is a program coordinator for the International Health Program (IHP)’s GOJoven project at PHI. As such, she administers GOJoven’s Summit Educational Scholarship Fund, which supports youth health leaders’ educational goals. She also oversees the professional development of GOJoven’s Summit Fellows.

Since starting at IHP six years ago, Ramos has worn several hats. She joined the IHP team as a program assistant. Then she took on the role of grants manager for the Compton Emergency Contraception Grants and facilitator of GOJoven, which administers the Summit Fellowship Program and provides technical assistance and health leadership training to Mexico and Central American countries.

Throughout her career, Ramos has pursued a deep interest in Latino and women’s issues. Raised by Mexican-American parents in Pasadena, California, this bilingual Spanish speaker has worked at several nonprofits including Defensa de Mujeres, a Latina-based domestic violence agency in Santa Cruz, California.

Currently, this Stanford graduate is a member of the Board of Directors at Triangle Speakers, a nonprofit that works to eliminate homophobia. She also volunteers with her neighborhood council in Oakland, California. Santa Cruz County recently nominated Ramos for a Queer Youth Leadership award.

In addition to her work as program coordinator at GOJoven, Ramos plays a key role in implementing the Emergency Contraception Leadership Initiative (ECLI), which is funded by the Compton Foundation. She also serves on PHI’s Institutional Review Board.

To read more about GOJoven’s Summit Educational Scholarship Fund, visit our Programs page.

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Kate Karriker-Jaffe, PhD

Fellow
Alcohol Research Group

Kate Karriker-Jaffe is a post-doctoral fellow at PHI’s Alcohol Research Group (ARG). As such, she works with ARG scientists to advance previously-funded research and develop her own scientific papers.

As part of her fellowship, Karriker-Jaffe is studying how community and cultural determinants create ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in alcohol use. She has linked data from the United States Census to ARG’s National Alcohol Survey (Years 2000 and 2005) in pursuit of this research question.

Karriker-Jaffe’s overarching interest in the relationship between social determinants and health has developed throughout her professional life. She began her academic career at the University of Oklahoma, where she studied parenting and racism as part of her bachelor’s work in psychology.

Subsequent travel to rural communities in Central America further shaped her interest in how social circumstances affect people’s health. While living in Honduras, she collected data about barriers to the promotion of health behaviors. She compiled her findings into a master’s thesis for Cornell University.

Next, she went on to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s school of public health, where she focused her doctoral dissertation on the neighborhood and family effects on physical and social aggression among adolescents.

Since receiving a fellowship award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to continue post-doctoral work at ARG, Karriker-Jaffe has also been credentialed as a principal investigator at PHI.

She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi honor societies, as well as the Society for Community Research and Action. In her spare time, she enjoys travelling, scuba diving, cycling, and spending time with her new baby Stella.

Karriker-Jaffe is one of four post-doctoral fellows working at ARG. To learn more about this NIAAA-funded program, visit our Programs page.

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