Full-Time Faculty

Dr. Cathy Coleman’s professional career and her passion for nursing and education includes decades of experience across multiple clinical settings and organizations as a nurse, consultant, and volunteer. Most of her career focused on oncology; she specialized in comprehensive breast center development and quality/performance improvement, spending years as a consultant for clients that include a medical device startup. After ten years with a CMS-funded Quality Improvement Organization in San...

Dr. Couture has more than fifteen years of experience leading public health studies in local and international settings, including Haiti, Cambodia, Ghana, Thailand, and the Ivory Coast. She built a solid academic background in epidemiology and public health with research interests in substance use, infectious diseases, gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health, and social determinants of health in diverse, vulnerable populations. Dr. Couture has been principal investigator, co-...

Dr. Cox is a dually board-certified adult nurse practitioner and adult psychiatric nurse practitioner, and certified public health nurse. Her specialty interests and NP work are in psychiatric mental health, addiction medicine, behavioral and community health of vulnerable populations, advocacy, and psychiatric consultation. She brings her clinical experience, interests, and enthusiasm for community and mental health to her teaching, service, clinical work, and volunteerism. Her focus is on...

Alexa C. Curtis received her PhD in nursing from the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of Community Health Systems. She is a practicing family and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at a substance use disorder facility in rural Northern California. Her area of interest includes improving access to under-served populations through advanced practice nursing services, particularly for rural youth and other vulnerable populations in rural communities.

Mary Lou De Natale has expertise in community mental health and telehealth case management with the underserved in the community and their partners / families. For the past twenty nine years, she has been involved in the bachelors, masters, and DNP programs (committee member of doctoral dissertations in the School of Education and School of Nursing and Health Professions - DNP projects). Her professional and personal mission, clinical practice, and research revolve around health care advocacy...

Dory Magasis Escobar, PhD has worked in community organizing, coalition building, and grassroots leadership development for decades in Northern California and Central America.  She was Director of Healthy Communities and Community Building at a regional health system for 13 years; where she also oversaw the organization’s Community Benefit planning and reporting. Prior to that time, Dory worked for 11 years in Central America in community mental health, community-based rehabilitation, community...

Clinical Emphasis - Psychodynamically, psychoanalytically oriented adult individual psychotherapy; sub-specialization in adult development, and psychological testing and therapy with mid-life and older adults.

Alice Fiddian-Green (she, her, hers) is Assistant Professor in the MPH program in the School of Nursing and Health Professions. Alice specializes in the application and analysis of digital and visual participatory research methods to examine social, structural, and racial inequities as they pertain to reproductive health and justice. Alice was certified as a Digital Storytelling facilitator in 2015. Since then, she has co-facilitated and worked on digital storytelling projects in a range of...

Dr. Dellanira Garcia, a licensed clinical psychologist, obtained her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Washington. She was awarded a National Research Service Award (F31) from the National Institutes of Mental Health to examine social capital and mental illness among women of Mexican descent. Dr. Garcia's research focuses on socio-cultural contextual factors impacting ethnic minority mental health and sexual risk behaviors, with an emphasis in Latino populations. Her community-...