Faculty & Staff

Bio

Jeffrey Adams, MD, is faculty at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus, where he directs a medical student course/clerkship and instructs third- and fourth-year medical student workshops.

Bio

Dr. al'Absi is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Biobehavioral Health, and directs the Duluth Global Health Research Institute. He holds the Max E. and Mary LaDue Pickworth Chair. Al'Absi has been honored with several awards, including the ABMR Neal E. Miller Award and American Psychosomatic Society Herbert Weiner Early Career Award. He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences; has served in leadership positions within several scientific organizations and on several NIH panels; and is associate editor for Psychophysiology and on the editorial board of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Clinical Summary

Psychobiology of stress; pain; addiction

Bio

I am a licensed psychologist with training in community and clinical psychology. My clinical interests include individual and family therapy, and assessment. Current work is in the implementation and testing of multilevel health promotion interventions in American Indian/Alaska Native rural communities.

Research Summary

My research focuses on ways to enhance the capacities of American Indian/Alaska Native communities to promote their own health and well-being. My current emphasis is youth development and health as part of a long-term 25-year collaboration with rural Alaska Native communities. This collaboration has documented culture-based strategies for youth suicide and alcohol misuse prevention and is now testing their effectiveness. The Qungasvik (toolbox) intervention is a strength-based, community-directed and community-staffed approach that creates protective experiences to buffer risk factors and promote well-being. The second strand of this work is documenting and describing the role of community-level protective mechanisms, sometimes called cultural continuity, in the low suicide rates of certain communities within high suicide impacted regions of rural Alaska. A third effort seeks to understand cultural and spiritual factors individuals in Pacific Northwest and Northern Minnesota tribal communities are using in their recovery from opioid use. All these studies share focus at the intersection of culture, resistance, and health.Research methods for this work include interview approaches to understanding cultural processes in health and well-being, and collaborative coding and interpretive analyses of these qualitative data with Indigenous community members. Quantitative approaches draw on my interests in classical and modern measurement theory, particularly in application with cultural distinctiveness, contemporary approaches to modeling for testing theory and intervention effectiveness, with particular focus on small population and small sample research, and recent developments in multilevel and Bayesian analysis approaches.Driving all these efforts is an applied focus in intervention science. Recent work has concentrated on protective factors frameworks. As an alternative to the risk and deficit models, this framework can guide a fresh understanding of resilience processes and new, more effective intervention development.

Bio

James Boulger, PhD, is a Distinguished University Teaching Professor Emeritus of the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth Campus. Dr. Boulger was the director of the Family Medicine Preceptorship Program and the co-director of the Rural Medical Scholars Program.

Bio

Raymond Christensen, MD, has practiced family medicine for approximately 40 years, making it his personal mission to provide rural communities with access to high quality health care. He serves as associate dean for rural health at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus, and associate director of the Rural Physician Associate Program. He also advises the Family Medicine Interest Group on the Duluth campus.

Bio

Devaleena Das's intellectual and pedagogical labor focuses on transnational analysis of gender, sexuality, health, race, and human bodies across borders of cultures, disciplines and geography. Das earned a PhD in Australian Feminist and Aboriginal Studies from the University of Calcutta, M.A. in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Calcutta, and B.A from the University of Calcutta. Before joining UMD in 2018, she served as Assistant Professor at Delhi University (2012-14), worked on her postdoctoral research project at University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014-17) and was also a lecturer of transnational feminist studies at Northern Arizona University (2017-18). A body studies theorist, Das in her transdisciplinary research problematizes idealization of human biology and prioritization of individual choice influenced by technologies of race, gender, transnationality, medicalization and political economy.

Research Summary

Devaleena Das's research explores alternative theories of human bodies based on real life narratives, ethnography, field research, literature, art, religious myths, and performances to initiate an ethical and respectful understanding of marginalized bodies and contributes toward corporeal justices in healthcare system. She investigates the dilemma of transhumanism that brings in the hope to eliminate disease, aging and miseries, but also reduces corporeality to a “data body” or information profile in clinical practice and security surveillance. Das practice multidisciplinary methodologies: from traditional critical analysis of textual and visual narratives, oral history, ethnographical field research, to non-traditional autobiographical story-telling, experiential and applied learning, and creative participation. She endorses decolonizing methodologies by questioning invisible power structures in research findings between the researcher and researched; challenging Western Eurocentric regimes; critically thinking diverse perspectives; encouraging personal experiences as a resource for academic inquiries; and involving consciousness raising process that engenders creativity and results in transformative community praxis. Her area of research includes Body and Embodiment, Transnational Study of Public Health, Race and Sexuality, Medical Humanities, Queer Ecology, Critical Disability Studies, Feminist and Queer Research Methodologies, Migration and Diaspora Studies, New Materialism, Politics of Knowledge Formation, Aboriginal Feminism, and South Asian Cultural Studies

Bio

Dr. Doberstein joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus in January 2022 following 37 years of practice as a family medicine physician in rural, urban, and military settings. She has been full-time faculty at FM residencies in Georgia and Minnesota and continues to teach part-time at the Duluth Family Medicine Residency Program.

Teaching Summary

In addition to ongoing curriculum development and admission responsibilities, Dr. Doberstein will assist Learning Community faculty leaders with clinical skill development and mentor students during their adult and pediatric H&P experiences.

Bio

Dr. Greenfield is a licensed psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Biobehavioral Health. Her research focuses on substance use disorder treatment and recovery, prevention of opioid overdose deaths, behavioral health interventions, and Indigenous health equity. Other interests include mindfulness-based interventions, motivational interviewing, community-based participatory research, and scientific communication. Dr. Greenfield publishes regularly in peer-reviewed journals, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, and has reviewed grants for the National Institutes of Health. The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, internal university sources, and the National Institutes of Health have funded her team's work.

Research Summary

Since 2006, Dr. Greenfield has done research in addiction treatment and recovery. She is committed to Indigenous data sovereignty and ensuring research benefits tribal communities and is sustainable and enjoyable for all team and community members. She studies how change happens while meeting people where they are at. NIDA and NIAAA have funded her work, and she trained at Hazelden Betty Ford Center for Youth and Families, the University of New Mexico Center on Alcohol, Substance Use, and Addictions (CASAA), and the University of Minnesota.

Creative Activity Summary

Dr. Greenfield and colleagues incorporate art into their research. This has included hosting three art shows to complement research studies, releasing a coloring book during the pandemic, and hosting live Facebook events with Indigenous artists during the pandemic.

Teaching Summary

Dr. Greenfield teaches first and second-year medical students on the Duluth Campus. Example lectures include motivational interviewing, Psychological Interventions: the VA as a case example, sexual history taking, and harm reduction/opioid treatment in rural areas. She facilitates small group discussions, provides feedback on history-taking, and collaborates with colleagues to create PBL cases. Dr. Greenfield teaches first and second-year medical students on the Duluth Campus. Example lectures include motivational interviewing, Psychological Interventions: the VA as a case example, sexual history taking, and harm reduction/opioid treatment in rural areas. She facilitates small group discussions, provides feedback on history-taking, and collaborates with colleagues to create PBL cases.

Service Summary

Dr. Greenfield, Ph.D., LP,  research focuses on substance use disorder treatment and recovery, prevention of opioid overdose deaths, behavioral health interventions, and Indigenous health equity.

Clinical Summary

Dr. Greenfield has experience with hospital-based psychiatry consultation/liaison, substance use disorder treatment, psychiatric comorbidity, mindfulness-based interventions, Indigenous health, motivational interviewing, and Veterans. Clinical work has been with adults; she is not currently practicing.