Brown University graduate from both undergraduate and graduate programs and current CAAS staff, Morayo (“Mo”) Akande, MPH, has been with the University for nearly a decade. In her time at Brown, Mo completed a 5-year, combined AB/MPH degree program in May 2017, was a two-year Captain of the Track and Field Team, a three-year Chair of the Brown Opera Productions Board, and a member of the first cohort of the Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training Program (MHIRT) in Ghana. Her undergraduate thesis, “Promoting Smoking Cessation for the Rhode Island Homeless” won the Award for Excellence in Public Health Honors. Mo also travelled to Tanzania on a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State.

Additionally, Mo has served as the Project Coordinator for Brown University School of Public Health Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies for the past four years. During this time, she worked on with Dr. Becker and Dr. Kuo on the SAMHSA-funded South Africa Addiction Technology Transfer Center, a SAMHSA-funded center that provides training and technical assistance support to front-line addiction treatment providers as well as an NIAAA-funded implementation trial rolling out Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment in article. She showcased her phenomenal coordination skills on several additional NIH funded studies with Dr. Kuo and Dr. Operario, working on issues to address HIV, violence, mental health, resilience and more amount young people, families, and LGBTQ+ populations in the USA and South Africa.

Mo Akande  will be pursuing a PhD in Population, Family and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health advancing her passion for preventing violence domestically and globally.