Community Advisory Board

The Department of Public Health Advisory Board provides valuable insights and feedback about the direction of our programs.

Members 2023-2024

Michael Li, PhD, MPH. Dr. Li (they/them), is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Department of Family Medicine and is affiliated with the Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine and the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services. They study biomedical and behavioral interventions to reduce methamphetamine use and improve HIV treatment and prevention outcomes in sexual, gender, and racial minority communities. They also investigate how stress biology underlies the relationships between social adversity, substance use disorders, and HIV in these underserved communities. Dr. Li has major research collaborations with the Friends Research Institute, the NIDA Clinical Trials Network, and the Los Angeles County Medical Care Coordination Program for people with HIV. Dr. Li received their BS in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Irvine, their MPH from California State University, Fullerton, and their PhD in Preventive Medicine from the University of Southern California, and their postdoctoral training at UCLA. Their MPH education at CSUF marked a significant turning point in their career, leading them to focus on research. Dr. Li also lectures part-time at the CSUF Department of Public Health and enjoys sharing their professional and educational experiences with their students.

Bhavika Lodhia, MPH. Bhavika Lodhia is a seasoned Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) professional with 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry and 3 years of EHS experience in Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry. She has served as a Global EHS director and helped open compliant cancer diagnostic laboratories in Singapore, Shanghai, Switzerland, and London, in addition to about a dozen domestic locations. She has managed the chemical safety program, spill prevention program, hazardous waste and satellite accumulation areas management, environmental permits, safety incident root cause investigation and corrective/preventative actions, conducted ergonomic assessments, and ensured warehouse safety and compliance. At the height of the pandemic (2021), Ms. Lodhia was recruited by Chipotle to start their first ever enterprise-wide Health and Safety program in the U.S., Canada, London, Paris, and Berlin. She established their foundational EHS policies, procedures, and safety trainings and also conducted risk assessments and job hazard analyses for all new processes, tasks, and equipment brought into the restaurants. Ms. Lodhia has recently decided to return to the healthcare industry and has stepped away from Chipotle to complete her final doctoral capstone manuscript as she pursues a public health doctoral public health degree.    

Vattana Peong, MPH.  Vattana Peong is the Executive Director of The Cambodian Family Community Center (TCF), a nonprofit organization founded in 1980 in Orange County, CA. Vattana has over 20 years of experience working with nonprofit organizations both in the United States and abroad and has been a strong advocate for health equity. He has created, directed, and implemented several projects and initiatives to increase understanding regarding the health and mental health disparities that ethnic community members have faced and to address the lack of culturally and linguistically competent health and mental health services and providers in the Cambodian and other underserved communities. In the past 9 years, Vattana raised over $18 million in grants and contracts, and has increased TCF's staff members from just 3 in 2015 to over 31 in 2024. Vattana served as the co-chair of the Cultural Competency Committee for County of Orange Health Care Agency’s Behavioral Health Services and a member of the State of California Cultural and Linguistic Competence Committee of the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission. He also served as the community co-chair of Orange County Health Improvement Partnership and is a current member of the National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health Steering Committee. Vattana is also leading the Orange County API Task Force Population Health Equity Collective, a coalition of 20 Asian American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern and North African serving organizations in support of a common health equity agenda. He has also been appointed to the Hospital Community Board at Dignity Health, St. Mary Medical Center. He is bilingual and bicultural in English and Khmer (Cambodian) and holds a Master of Public Health degree from California State University, Fullerton.

Barry Ross, RN, MPH, MBA.  Barry Ross leads the Sisters of St. Joseph Healthcare Foundation and Sisters of St. Joseph Fund.  He has 40 years of health care administration experience in community health, mental health and hospital settings.  He currently serves on the Board of Providence Humboldt County Ministries and St. John of God Retirement and Care Center.  He is a Commissioner on the Buena Park Homeless Navigation Center Oversight Commission.  He serves on the faculty at CSUF, LA Valley College and the University of Providence. 

Eric Shearer, MPH.  Eric Shearer is an applied epidemiologist with a decade of experience in public health. He holds a Master of Public Health from California State University Fullerton and specializes in disease surveillance, data science, and outbreak investigation. Throughout his career, Mr. Shearer has held several positions within the Orange County Health Care Agency, most recently as the Surveillance & Epidemiology Manager within the Communicable Disease Control Unit.