Sally E. Findley, Ph.D.

Sally Findley, Ph.D., is a professor of population and family health and socio-medical Sciences (in pediatrics) at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. She leads the statewide evaluation of the New York State supplemental feeding program (WIC) impact on the prevention of early childhood obesity. She collaborates with the NYS Department of Health Division of Nutrition on developing innovative strategies to encourage more women to stay enrolled longer in WIC. For the past two decades, she has focused on research to develop innovative multi-pronged strategies for community health workers (CHW) to support parents of young children in keeping their children healthy. She has led two major child health promotion coalitions in Washington Heights and Harlem, Northern Manhattan Start Right Coalition and Northern Manhattan Asthma Basics for Children Initiative, and advocates for integration of community health promotion into routine social service and educational activities. Most recently her work has expanded to include assessment of alternative models to improve diabetes management through CHWs, and she has frequently provided advice to New York State Department of Health on the effectiveness ofalternative CHW programs. She has co-led the NYS CHW Initiative, which has recently developed recommendations for advancing the CHW workforce statewide. She is a strong advocate for CHW, and is active in the APHA CHW section and on the board of the CHW Network of NYC. In addition to her work in New York, she is involved in extending the New Yorklessons learned on CHW to child health promotion programs in West Africa, where she is a leading member of research collaboratives in Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria.