Board of Directors

2022 – 2023 Board Members

President
John Kaleekal, MPH, MBA

John Kaleekal (pronouns: he/they) joined APIC in 2019 as Treasurer and is delighted to continue serving the board as the President. They work as the Data and Evaluation Project Manager at the Public Health Institute for the CA Bridge Program in Oakland, California. He is looking forward to strengthening APIC’s position to connect AAPI public health professionals, promote our health issues, and advance our community. John received his Master’s in Public Health (MPH) and Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Corporate Secretary
Erika Mey

Erika (she/her/hers) is the daughter of Khmer refugees and a first-generation college graduate from UC Irvine. Her research interests include Khmer health (particularly mental health and chronic diseases such as trauma and diabetes) in addition to health disparities/inequities and social determinants of health among underserved populations. Her lived experiences, academic and cross-cultural involvements in research, volunteering abroad, and interning at the federal level crystalized her commitment to serving historically-marginalized communities in addressing health disparities through research, policy, health education, program interventions, and community organization. Overall, through the design, implementation, and refinement of culturally-tailored and linguistically-appropriate health programs and policies, Erika aspires to utilize research as a tool to implement actionable community-based public health solutions to address health inequities, mitigate health disparities, and improve health outcomes of underserved communities.

Program Director
Priya Raman

Priya Raman is an Indo-Fijian, first-generation college graduate from California State University, East Bay with a B.S. in Health Sciences-Concentration in Public Health. She is currently working as the SPARC Program Coordinator for the Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy and Leadership (APPEAL). Priya enjoys working with her mentor, Dr. Arnab Mukherjea and his students to understand South Asian health disparities including diaspora communities like her own through Community Based Participatory Research practices. She also loves connecting with her Oceania Leadership Institute cohort and other NH/PI community leaders to discuss NH/PI health disparities and create more representation in our various fields. Priya hopes to use her experiences to inspire others to advocate for underserved AA and NH/PI communities and their health.

Program Director-Elect
Reener Balingit, MPH, CHES

Reener Balingit (she/her/hers) is a first-generation Filipina American immigrant currently based in Los Angeles, California. With years of experience in helping communities thrive, her educational and professional public health interest continuously aims to address psychosocial, environmental, biological, structural, and political factors that determine the overall quality of life of individuals across the lifespan, especially among underserved, underrepresented, and marginalized communities. Reener has obtained a Master of Public Health degree with an emphasis on Health Promotion, Education, and Evaluation at Claremont Graduate University, School of Community and Global Health, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Public Health with a concentration in Community Health at the California State University, Los Angeles. Reener serves as a research assistant at SCGH’s Community Health Innovation Learning Lab focused on program evaluation and research, and leads community outreach efforts on cancer health at Cedars-Sinai Cancer Research Center for Health Equity. Reener is currently working on projects related to understanding the public health workforce needs, establishing organizational goals and objectives for accreditation, and developing manuscripts on innovative approaches to program evaluation, as well as reducing cancer health disparities among the Filipinx community through health and faith initiatives, community engagement, and health education.

Communications Director
Shahmir Ali, PhD

Shahmir Ali is a PhD student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the New York University School of Global Public Health. He received his Bachelor’s degree in public health and political science from Johns Hopkins University, and has conducted research in the US, China, Australia, and Pakistan on various social and behavioral contributors to health. He is also currently a clinical research coordinator for the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) Study, the first longitudinal study of U.S. South Asians focused on risk factors of cardiovascular disease.  Holding citizenships in Pakistan, USA, and Australia, Shahmir’s tri-national identity has strongly informed his emphasis on considering the complex global forces that intersect with the health experiences of both Asian Americans as well as the Asian diaspora more broadly. Currently, his research focuses on interpersonal and community level factors involved in the eating behaviors of young and second-generation Asian Americans, and how these factors can be integrated into innovative intervention designs to address non-communicable disease disparities.

Treasurer
Nelson Lin

Nelson (he/him) is an undergraduate at Brown University, where he studies public health and neuroscience. The son of Chinese immigrants, he hails from Freehold, New Jersey. Nelson’s personal interests broadly focus on community-engaged research in the realm of the opioid overdose epidemic, as well as Asian-American advocacy in health and politics. As a Royce Fellow at Brown University, Nelson currently is a research assistant at the People, Place, and Health Collective of the Brown University School of Public Health, where his work looks at trauma and stressor-related disorders in laypersons who respond to an overdose. He also has worked as a policy research intern with Stop AAPI Hate, where he co-authored one of the first quantitative reports on xenophobic rhetoric against Asian-Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, which received national attention and was cited in Congressional resolutions condemning anti-Asian racism. Outside of his advocacy work, Nelson helps lead a student organization that works with underserved families at Rhode Island Hospital to address basic social needs like food, housing, and clothing. He hopes to pursue an MD/MPH in the future, with the hopes of becoming a physician-advocate working with Asian-American communities and pursuing equitable health policy for all.

Membership Director
Michael Huynh, MPH

Michael (he/him) is a PhD student in Public Health at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Michael was raised in Little Saigon, Orange County as a 2nd-generation Vietnamese American, and he grew up in a neighborhood learning about the importance of multicultural identity integration, autism services, and social support to promote the wellbeing of Southeast Asian American families. His research interests focus on social determinants of chronic and mental health conditions among ethnic minority and immigrant populations. Specifically, he hopes to apply social epidemiologic methods and study interactions between adversity and resilience on outcomes such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide among Asian American communities. Before entering UCI, Michael worked as a project manager/research analyst at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and volunteered as a crisis line counselor at the Didi Hirsch Suicide Prevention Center. He completed his MPH in Epidemiology/Biostatistics at UC Berkeley and received his BS in Human Biology and Society at UCLA.

Caucus Director
Louis Lin

Louis Lin (he/him) is a Master of Public Health Student at the University of Pennsylvania and is the Eviction Diversion Project Coordinator at Philadelphia Legal Assistance for the City’s Eviction Diversion Program. Louis is passionate about AAPI and immigrant health and has focused his research on immigrant communities, specifically those of Chinese Americans and Chinatowns. His interests are in bridging public health to policy and law. His current work is focused on how American has used public health as a means of implementing exclusionary immigration policies during public health crises. Within APHA, Louis serves as the Treasurer of the School Health and Wellness Section and as Caucus Collaborative Rep for the Student Assembly. Originally from New York, Louis is a proud first-generation, low-income college graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He will start law school soon and plans to pursue a career in public service working to achieve just policies for immigrant communities.

Caucus Director
Shabana Ali

Shabana works for the national non-profit organization, Prevention Institute (PI) as a Program Assistant supporting the Safety and Wellbeing team on projects related to mental health, wellbeing, and community safety. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences with a concentration in Public Health from California State University, East Bay. Her journey began as an undergraduate student researcher to address health disparities and promote preventative methods through community-based participatory research among Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Shabana is committed to reducing health disparities to empower at-risk communities to pursue optimal health and achieve a greater quality of life.

Caucus Director
Anh Thu Thai, DHA, RRT, RCP

Anh Thu Thai is from Columbus, Ohio and graduated with a Doctorate in Healthcare Administration. She is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants. She currently works at The Ohio State University College of Nursing, focusing on The Southeast Women’s Health Project with Dr. Jennifer Kue. Her passion is to help address disparities of Asian Americans and advocate health and wellness for individuals to have a better quality of life. Anh Thu looks forward to incorporating her life experiences into her role as Caucus Director and be a part of the APIC team.

Student and Young Professional Representative
Christina Chu

Christina Chu is originally from Riverside, CA. Her interest in public health and health policy began with an internship as a CDC Undergraduate Public Health Scholar and an academic semester spent in Washington, D.C. as a health policy intern at a think tank. She graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Health and Human Biology in 2018. Afterwards, she worked as a senior research assistant for two years and coordinated NIH studies focused on HIV prevention, including interventions to promote pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake at a publicly funded HIV/STI clinic in Rhode Island. Currently, Christina is a Data and Policy Analyst at Acumen, LLC, a government contractor with federal health agencies including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She plans to pursue a MPH in health policy and PhD in health services research, focusing on Medicaid as a social policy, the health care safety-net, and access to care for the uninsured. As a Vietnamese American and daughter to boat refugees from a low-income background, Christina is invested in highlighting the unique health disparities and the impact of public policymaking experienced by Asian American communities. She is eager to bring her lived and professional experiences in public health and public policy to her role as the APIC Student and Young Professional Representative.

Student and Young Professional Representative
Angela Rose David

Angela Rose David (she/hers) is a first-generation Filipino American college graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After earning a bachelor’s in Biology and Spanish, she spent two years interning with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on projects related to public health education and COVID-19 preparedness. Now, she serves as the project coordinator for the UCLA Health of Philippine Emigrants Study, a research lab that explores health disparities affecting the Filipino immigrant population in the United States. In her spare time, she loves reading, swimming, and spending time with her family. She learned about APIC through connecting with other students of underserved Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander communities. As the incoming APIC Student and Young Professional Representative, she is invested in learning more about current AA/NHPI public health research efforts across the nation and raising awareness about such unique experiences.

Immediate Past President
Jennifer Kue, PhD

Dr. Jennifer Kue has over 20 years of experience working with refugees, immigrants, and medically underserved populations. Her research focus and expertise are in community health promotion, cancer control and prevention, community-engaged research, and refugee and immigrant health. Her research applies the principles of community-engagement to understanding and addressing cancer health disparities. She also has substantial experience in qualitative and mixed-methods research and health program planning and evaluation. Her research and advocacy areas also include global health, health equity, and social determinants of health.