The Bloustein School is pleased to welcome five new faculty members to the teaching ranks in the fall of 2019.
Soumitra Bhuyan, PhD, MPH joins the Bloustein School as an Assistant Professor. His primary teaching and research interests include chronic disease management, health information systems with an overarching emphasis on population health. Dr. Bhuyan has received several awards from national organizations including the American Public Health Association, AcademyHealth for his research and leadership activities.
Dr. Bhuyan and colleagues received the 2017 Charles E. Gibbs Leadership Prize for their research on women’s health issues. The Charles E. Gibbs Leadership Prize is awarded annually to recognize excellence in research on women’s health care or policy. He was the recipient of the “Rising Star” award from the American Public Health Association (APHA) Health Administration Section in 2013, which recognizes the outstanding potential in the field of health administration and public health practice. Dr. Bhuyan is as an Associate Editor of British Medical Journal Global Health.
Susan Krum, Au.D. joins the Bloustein School as an Assistant Teaching Professor. Dr. Krum is an experienced health care leader with extensive knowledge in delivering strategic and operational change for a multi-hospital healthcare system. She was Vice President of Ambulatory Operations at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. Her strong business acumen combined with expertise in strategic planning, business development, and team-building was demonstrated through her ability to secure positive results for all areas of healthcare management including a fast turnaround during a multimillion-dollar merger and acquisition. She is effective in driving process improvements to boost revenue and profit while expanding services and enhancing productivity, employee satisfaction, and community relations.
Most recently, Dr. Krum was AVP of Population Health and Executive Director of the physician group at Kennedy/Jefferson Health where she was responsible for the analysis, planning, development, and implementation of new physician practices as well as maintaining all daily operations for all existing practices. Dr. Krum excels in healthcare management and operations, healthcare budgeting and finance, and population health strategy.
Patricia O’Brien-Richardson, Ph.D. joins the school as an Associate Professor of Teaching. For the past ten years, she has been the CEO and Founder of Move it Nation, Inc., a public health non-profit organization whose mission is to empower youth to move their bodies and minds. She is also the author of a clean-eating book for busy professionals and students. Previously, she spent ten years living in sub-Saharan Africa supervising faith-based humanitarian projects in eight countries including South Africa, Zambia, Madagascar, Botswana, and Mozambique.
Dr. O’Brien-Richardson’s work focuses on health disparities and socio-cultural determinants of health among youth, in particular adolescent girls and women of African descent. She is the creator of multicultural and well-being programs and curriculum which has been included in the Boston Public Schools, the Newark Public Schools, the New York City Department of Education, and several schools and organizations across the northeast region of the United States.
Her research explores social, cultural, and structural factors that influence the health of women and girls of African descent, such as hair, and has been featured in Elle.com, NJTV News, and presented widely contributing to the growing body of literature addressing the need for public policies on hair discrimination including The CROWN Act in California and the expansion of the New York City Human Rights Law to protect the rights of New Yorkers to maintain natural hair and hairstyles.
Eric Seymour, Ph.D. has joined the Bloustein School as an Assistant Professor. Hewas most recently a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University’s Population Studies and Training Center, where he worked on the spatial demography of urban population loss. Prior to that, he received his Ph.D. from the Urban and Regional Planning Program at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Seymour’s primary research interests include housing and neighborhood dynamics under conditions of chronic job and population losses, including the role of urban policy in influencing the location and pace of disinvestment. His current research examines transformations in “post-crisis” housing markets and their implications for the health and housing insecurity of low-income and minority groups. This work looks at investors in formerly foreclosed single-family housing and their business practices, including the use of problematic home sale arrangements like land contracts and the expansion of rental property holdings by exploitative landlords. He is also engaged in ongoing research on evictions, focusing on the intersection of opportunistic property investment and the constrained housing options of low-income renters.
Jermaine Toney, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Bloustein School. Prior to joining the Bloustein School faculty, he was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. Currently, Professor Toney is a research fellow with the Institute for Behavioral and Household Finance at Cornell University.
Dr. Toney’s research focuses on finance, family, and health. An overarching focus of his research is the distribution and stratification of various socio-economic indicators, such as wealth, income, and education. His current work examines the transmission of socioeconomic status across generations, intergroup experiences in accessing credit and asset markets, analytic approaches to measuring the racial wealth gap, how disparities in health affect a household’s financial marketplace participation. Professor Toney previously taught in the Department of Economics at Queens College, City University of New York.
