Maria Joy Ferrera, PhD, LCSW

Co-Director, Center for Community Health Equity | mferrera@depaul.edu

Maria Ferrera is an Associate Professor within DePaul University’s Department of Social Work. Maria received her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago, Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice. She has served for over 25 years as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the areas of child welfare and medical social work and continue to do work in immigrant communities. Maria’s areas of practice and research involve a decolonization perspective, ethnic identity development; community-engaged, socially just practices and research with racial and ethnic minority youth; health and mental health disparities among racial and ethnic minority communities. Maria is the Co-Founding Co-Chair of the The Coalition for Immigrant Mental Health (CIMH), a collaborative, community based and research informed initiative that is a partnership between immigrants regardless of status, mental health practitioners, community organizers, researchers, and allies. She is also a volunteer Mental Health Evaluator and Steering Committee Member of The Midwest Human Rights Consortium (MHRC) a referral network of multi-institutional and interdisciplinary professionals who perform trauma-informed forensic evaluations for individuals seeking asylum in the U.S.

Raj C. Shah, MD

Co-Director, Center for Community Health Equity | raj_c_shah@rush.edu

Raj Shah is the Co-Director of the Center for Community Health Equity. Dr. Shah is a geriatrician at Rush University Medical Center and a Professor in the Department of Family & Preventive Medicine and the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center for over 20 years. His academic interest is the design and conduct of clinical trials for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of common conditions that impact healthspan in diverse older adults. Through Dr. Shah’s work in the Center for Community Health Equity, he is interested in understanding how the design and implementation of activities to advance belonging improves community health equity by countering the impact of syndemics.