Director
Xiaoming Li, Ph.D.
Professor and Endowed Chair, Health Promotion, Education and Behavior
Director, SC SmartState Center for Healthcare Quality (CHQ)
xiaoming@mailbox.sc.edu
Dr. Li is Professor and Endowed Chair of clinical translational research. Dr. Li’s research interests include development, delivery and evaluation of culturally appropriate best practices in the areas of mental health and HIV/AIDS behavioral prevention intervention in both domestic and international settings. He has been continuously funded by NIH since 2001 to study HIV disclosure, stigma, HIV treatment and care, resilience, and other health issues among children and adolescents, rural migrants, men who have sex with men, female sex workers, children and family affected by HIV/AIDS, and people living with HIV/AIDS in China. He has also participated in HIV-related research in Namibia, Viet Nam, India, Mexico, Zambia, and the Bahamas.
Administrative Assistant
Joanne (Joni) Zwemer, Administrator Coordinator
zwemer@mailbox.sc.edu
Joni Zwemer has worked with Dr. Xiaoming Li for the last 20 years. She was his Administrator Coordinator at Wayne State University.
Miranda Cole, Project Coordinator
Ms. Cole has her master’s in international education from New York University. She has over 10 years of experience coordinating projects and people both in the United States and abroad. As the Foreign Director of a language school in South Korea, she coordinated the training, curriculum development, outreach, recruitment and legal logistics for over 25 teachers and helped to plan events large and small for the entire school. Originally trained as a teacher, Miranda has lived and worked in educational settings in Tanzania, China, and Korea and is well versed in cross-cultural collaboration and teamwork. She has successfully planned several large conferences and has a proven track record of organizing diverse teams in university settings.
mc95@mailbox.sc.edu
Core Faculty
Jan Ostermann, Ph.D., Associate Professor
jano@mailbox.sc.edu
Jan Ostermann, Ph.D., is an Associate Research Professor in Duke University’s Global Health Institute. Dr. Ostermann is a health services and population health researcher who specializes in analytic techniques for longitudinal and complex survey designs. Dr. Ostermann led the research design for the multi-year, five country orphan research, and has resided in Tanzania for 5 years.
Shan Qiao, Ph.D., Associate Professor Dr. Shan Qiao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior. She has academic background in multiple social science disciplines (B.A. in sociology, M.A. in anthropology, and Ph.D. in public health) with specific training and expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research and behavioral intervention. She has focused on HIV prevention and care since 2006 and has been working with diverse vulnerable populations in China including female sex workers, children affected by HIV/AIDS, and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH), as well as health care providers engaged in HIV prevention and care. Her recent research interests focus on HIV disclosure, medication adherence, remove coma here and mental health among PLWH, and intervention design, evaluation, and implementation. Sayward Harrison,Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Dr. Harrison is a Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. Dr. Harrison has a PhD in Health Psychology and a specialization in the field of Pediatric School Psychology. Her research focuses on improving the health and well-being of children and adolescents and creating stronger links between schools, homes, and healthcare settings. Dr. Harrison is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a mobile Health (mHealth) intervention for youth living with HIV in the Southern United States. She also is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study rural-urban disparities in adolescent vaccination and develop a school-based intervention to increase uptake of the HPV vaccine Dr. Monique Brown, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Dr. Monique Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Arnold School of Public Health. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Bates College, her Master of Public Health degree from Brown University and her PhD in Epidemiology from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. Her research interests are in HIV intervention and prevention; childhood trauma; social, behavioral and mental health; and aging. She is interested in these topics as separate and intersecting areas of study. Dr. Brown is currently funded by the National Institute of Mental Health to study the impact of childhood sexual trauma on aging with HIV, and to develop an intervention addressing childhood sexual trauma with the aim of improving HIV treatment outcomes among older adults living with HIV. Jiajia Zhang, Ph.D., Professor
Dr. Jiajia Zhang is professor of biostatistics and electronic health record core leader of UofSC big data health center at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests focus on developing advanced statistical methodologies, such as developing the new prediction model based on longitudinal electronic health record, and applying the statistical methods in analyzing public health related data sets including South Carolina Cancer Registration data set, South Carolina HIV data set, Women Health Initiative (WHI) data set, NHANES III data set, SEER data set, geographic data set from census tract, and Arabic Center Longitudinal Study (ACLS) data set. Dr. Zhang has been PI and Co-investigator on NIH funded grants. Bankole Olatosi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Dr. Bankole Olatosi is Clinical Associate Professor and Director of the MHA program in the Department of Health Services Policy & Management at ASPH and a faculty associate of CHQ. He has expertise in the field of Data Analytics and Data Mining, and currently has NIH grant funding in this area. He is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE) and serves on the board of the South Carolina ACHE state chapter.
Xueying Yang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Dr. Xueying Yang received her degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and a master’s degree from Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China. She also served as a public health practitioner in the Chaoyang Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing. Dr. Yang’s research interests focus on the health promotion of biomedical preventions for HIV infection (e.g. Antiretroviral Therapy (ART), Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PreP)) through application of social and behavioral sciences, especially among men who have sex with men. Dr. Yang’s current research at CHQ focuses on the longitudinal studies related to stigma and HIV-associated comorbidities among people living with HIV/AIDS.
Cheuk Chi (George) Tam, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor Dr. Cheuk Chi (George) Tam earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Health Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University and a M.A. in Developmental and Counseling Psychology from Beijing Normal University. He has been dedicated into developing, delivering, and evaluating psychosocial-theory-based interventions (e.g., Resilience) among vulnerable population and people living with HIV/AIDS.
As a health psychologist, Dr. Tam expanded his research interests to the field of prescription drug/opioid misuse since 2015. His current research focuses on (1) technology-based psychosocial intervention for prescription drug misuse and biopsychosocial influences on prescription drug misuse; (2) Psychological and behavioral aspects of COVID-19; (3) Resilience-based intervention to mitigate HIV-related stigma and its influences in people living with HIV.
shanqiao@mailbox.sc.edu
harri764@mailbox.sc.edu 
brownm68@mailbox.sc.edu
jzhang@mailbox.sc.edu
olatosi@mailbox.sc.edu
xueyyang@mailbox.sc.edu
ctam@mailbox.sc.edu