Our Staff
Faculty and staff at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Amelia Arria, PhD
Co-Director
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Biography
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
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Biography
Sara Benjamin-Neelon is is the Co-Director of the Maryland Collaborative where she provides strategic oversight of the environmental-level strategies. She is a Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society and the Director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion. She is also the inaugural Helaine and Sidney Lerner Professor in Public Health Promotion. 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
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Biography
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.
Molly Mitchell, JD
Program Manager
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Biography
Molly Mitchell, JD, is the Program Manager for the Maryland Collaborative at the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Molly oversees the daily operations of the initiative while providing technical assistance and trainings to the partner universities as they work to develop and implement interventions to change their environments that contribute to excessive alcohol consumption in and around their campus community. She also lends her expertise to the Maryland Strategic Prevention Framework II providing guidance to the nine jurisdictions in Maryland working to reduce underage drinking among 12-20 year-olds and binge drinking among 18-25 year-olds in Maryland.
Molly brings years of experience consulting with local nonprofit organizations on substance abuse prevention and is a member of the Maryland Bar Association.
Kelsey O’Hara, MPH
Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator
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Biography
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.