People

Pamela Jackson, Ph.D., RN, MLT(ASCP)BB is a nurse scientist whose research focuses on the influence of neighborhood-level environmental exposures on the pace of biological aging. Dr. Jackson is particularly interested in the adverse health impacts of climate change on socioeconomically vulnerable communities and using community-engaged approaches to examine the intersection of climate and health. She has an extensive 20+ year history working in healthcare systems in the broader metropolitan area and grew up in local, socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods – bringing inherent ties and shared perspective with the local community’s environmental concerns. Her past work examined the relationship between neighborhood deprivation/disadvantage and epigenetic age acceleration. Additional ongoing projects explore climate distress, disparities in ambient heat exposure and the relationship between environmental injustice and epigenetic age acceleration. Dr. Jackson was selected as a member of the 2023 cohort of the NIH/NIEHS Environmental Health Research Institute for Nurse and Clinician Scientists. Her work has resulted in multiple peer-reviewed publications; local, state, and national conference presentations; and grant funding from NIH/NIA.

Paul Campbell Erwin, M.D., DrPH is Dean of the UAB School of Public Health and Professor in Health Policy and Organization. Dr. Erwin earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of the South (Sewanee), his medical degree from the UAB School of Medicine, a master’s in public health from John Hopkins University and a doctorate in public health from the University of North Carolina. He is certified in internal medicine, public health and preventive medicine, and a leader in establishing formal Academic Health Department collaboratives with public health practice partners. Prior to becoming dean in 2018, Dr. Erwin was the Department Head for Public Health at the University of Tennessee, where he served for 11 years. Before joining academia, he was director of the East Tennessee Regional Health Office for the Tennessee Department of Health, overseeing 15 county health departments, mostly in rural Appalachia. He is an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health and a member of the editorial boards for Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba Review and the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice.

Meredith Gartin, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Global Health in the Department of Health Policy and Organization at the UAB School of Public Health. Dr. Gartin also holds a position as the Board President for the Alabama Interfaith Refugee Partnership, a non-profit 501(c)(3) based here in Birmingham. Dr. Gartin’s main area of expertise focuses on global environmental health and urbanization, with a particular focus on migration and on vulnerabilities related to food and water. Dr. Gartin is especially interested in how global and local processes of climate change converge on human health and development issues,. For over 10 years, Dr. Gartin has conducted cross-cultural, climate-related health research in Central and South America, the South Pacific, and the US.

Given her focus on general global health education and training, Dr. Gartin consults and evaluates the global health curriculum and programming in institutions of higher education. As the co-chair of the Sub-Committee on Master’s and Undergraduate Degrees in Global Health with the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, Education Committee, Dr. Gartin and fellow colleagues have published a series of peer-reviewed journal articles mapping global health programs in US institutions with CEPH and ASPPH competencies. She also leads and directs global health curriculum at UAB as well.

Maryam Karimi, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at UAB School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences. She has a joint appointment with School of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Karimi has diverse set of experiences in environmental science, public health, and urban resiliency, which places her in a unique position for independent research projects aimed towards sustainable cities and human health focusing on developing strategies to counteract climate change at a local and national scale. Her research interests include identifying environmental risk and social vulnerability associated with the impact of Urban Heat Island (UHI) and climate change caused by urban development and air pollution, understanding the structure of cities, urbanization and the role of urban morphology in changing urban microclimate and urban health, urban redesign and building sustainable cities at local and global level, and application of big data and sensing in developing models that predict environmental risk and social vulnerability associated with urban development (UHI), air pollution and population at risk. Her research work has been funded by NIH, NASA and NOAA.

James McClintock, Ph.D. began his career at UAB in 1987 and has since served as Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (1999-2003) and as Interim Dean of the Graduate School (2003-2005). His research has been funded continuously over the past 25 years by the National Science Foundation and focuses on aspects of marine invertebrate nutrition, reproduction, and primarily, Antarctic marine chemical ecology. His research has grown to include studies of the impacts of rapid climate change and ocean acidification on Antarctic marine algae and invertebrates.

Dr. McClintock has published over 290 scientific publications, edited and written books and has been invited to make numerous scientific and popular science presentations. His research has been featured in a variety of media outlets including NPR‘s Diane Rehm Show and On Point with Tom Ashbrook, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discover, Scientific American, CNN, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and The Weather Channel. He has served on National Academy of Sciences workshops on Climate Change and Polar Ecosystems.

David Kimberlin, M.D. holds the Sergio Stagno Endowed Chair in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he is Vice Chair for Clinical and Translational Research and Co-Director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases in the UAB Heersink School of Medicine. Dr. Kimberlin also is the Principal Investigator for the Collaborative Antiviral Study Group (CASG). Funded continuously by NIH/NIAID/DMID since the early 1970s, the CASG is a network of pediatric academic medical centers that evaluates antiviral therapeutics in rare diseases with a large unmet medical need, including neonatal herpes simplex virus (HSV) infections, congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease, congenital Zika syndrome, neonatal and infantile influenza infection, and neonatal enteroviral sepsis syndrome. Current studies are evaluating novel treatment approaches for neonatal HSV, new antiviral drugs for congenital CMV, longterm benefit of antiviral therapy in congenital CMV, and natural history studies of acute flaccid myelitis and neonatal enteroviral sepsis. These studies build upon previous CASG studies conducted by Dr. Kimberlin that have defined the standard of care for the treatment of neonatal HSV and congenital CMV infections.

Dr. Kimberlin is also Editor of the 2021 AAP Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases (Red Book), an Associate Editor for the 6th edition of Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and a Past-President of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS). In 2016, he received the Ronald McDonald House Charities 2016 Medical Award of Excellence in addition to numerous education awards.

Claudette Poole, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Associate Program Director of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program at the at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine. Dr. Poole’s research interests include respiratory viral infections in vulnerable patient populations, the role of molecular diagnostics and antivirals. In addition to her clinical role in the division of infectious diseases she, participates in infection prevention both at Children’s Hospital and in the RNICU of the UAB Women and Infant’s Hospital.

Dustin Kemp, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the UAB College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Kemp is a native of Missouri, but during high school, had the opportunity to travel to Australia and dive on the Great Barrier Reef. He was fascinated by the abundance of animals and the complex interactions occurring and continued to develop a strong interest in marine biology during undergraduate work at Texas A&M University at Galveston. This determined his interest in a career studying marine ecosystems.

During graduate work at Florida Atlantic University and Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, Dr. Kemp began working with invertebrate symbiotic relationships. This research further developed during his doctoral and post-doctoral work at the University of Georgia and Penn State University where he studied coral physiology, microbial diversity of prokaryotes and eukaryotes associated with corals and the effects of climate change on coral reef ecosystems. He has worked on coral reefs throughout the Caribbean and Pacific and continues to study ecology, physiology and evolution of these important ecosystems. Dr. Kemp’s research interests include marine invertebrate physiology and ecology during environmental perturbation, carbon and nutrient transfer in marine organisms and diversity and function of microbial symbionts.