Our Staff

Amelia Arria, PhD
Co-Director

Amelia M. Arria, PhD, is the Co-Director of the Maryland Collaborative where she provides strategic oversight of the individual-level strategies and leads administering the Maryland College Alcohol Survey (MD-CAS), a survey designed to measure levels of alcohol use and excessive drinking, the alcohol-related consequences that drinkers experience, and the harms students experience as a result of other students’ drinking.

She is also the Director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and is also a Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health. Her research focuses on risk and resiliency factors associated with the development of mental health and substance use problems among adolescents and young adults, as well as the consequences of untreated mental health conditions and substance use.

She is the Principal Investigator on the College Life Study, a longitudinal prospective study of health-risk behaviors among college students. She has published more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles and much of her research has direct relevance to parents, clinicians and policy makers.

Sara Benjamin-Neelon, PhD, JD, MPH, RD
Co-Director

Sara Benjamin-Neelon, PhD, JD, MPH, RD is the Co-Director of the Maryland Collaborative where she provides strategic oversight of environmental-level strategies.  She is a Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society and in the Department of International Health, Division of Human Nutrition. As a public health researcher, her work focuses on policy and environmental approaches to chronic disease prevention in children and families. She completed her PhD at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, her JD at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, and her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

Malinda Kennedy, ScD
Project Director

Malinda Kennedy, ScD is Project Director for the Maryland Collaborative and works with Dr. Arria at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. She received a BA in German from Brown University, an MPH in International Health from Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, and a ScD in Social Epidemiology from Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She spent several years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the coordinator for a foodborne disease surveillance network and assisting with outbreak investigations. Her research interests include child health and well-being and community and social influences on the health of children and young adults, particularly the influence of educational institutions on health.

Kara Skelton, PhD
Program Manager

Kara Skelton, PhD is the Program Manager for the Maryland Collaborative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In additional to coordinating many aspects of the initiative, as Program Manager, Kara provides technical assistance to schools for strategies and policies to reduce underage drinking and cannabis use at the environmental level. She is also an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society, where her research focuses on improving maternal, child, and adolescent outcomes through effective environmental and policy interventions. She completed her PhD at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and her postdoctoral fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Kelsey O’Hara, MPH
Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator

Kelsey O’Hara, MPH, is the Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator for the Maryland Collaborative at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. She received her BS in Psychology and MPH in Health Education from Virginia Tech. She is passionate about increasing access to care and effective resources for stigmatized health topics such as substance use and mental health. She has experience in mental health crisis support, maternal and early childhood community outreach, and alcohol and drug prevention with college students. She came to the Maryland Collaborative after several years at Virginia Tech, where she served as the Assistant Director over alcohol and other drug prevention initiatives and health communication and marketing. She works with the member schools of the Maryland Collaborative to plan and provide effective training on emerging topics, promote evidence-based practices, and create resources to serve their campus communities.