Thought Leadership at Rollins
Voices that Power the Public Health Conversation
Thought leadership at Rollins connects research, lived experience, and real-world public health work. We lead national conversations on infectious disease, climate and health, reproductive health care, data and modeling, and rural health through expert insight, public platforms, and dialogue on campus.
Meet our Faculty Experts
Rollins faculty are trusted voices in the national dialogue on health. Through expert commentary, public communication, and on-the-ground collaboration, they shape how the world understands and responds to our biggest public health challenges.
Jodie Guest, PhD
Guest is a national thought leader in rural health equity and science communication. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she became one of the most visible public health experts in Georgia, leading testing initiatives in underserved areas and offering clear, data-backed public messaging. She continues to work on rural vaccine equity and HIV prevention.
"[After an early COVID-19 outbreak, a] poultry plant needed to shut down. But that wasn’t an option—it wasn’t an option to send people home to do that work. So what could we do, given the parameters that we had? [We started by asking,] What does the community need? That is not always the same about what the community wants, and if you don't ask the question of what they want, what you think they need might actually not matter.”
Carmen Marsit, PhD
Marsit, a professor and researcher, works to unlock answers about environmental health, including molecular mechanisms that mediate the environment’s impact on our bodies. His experience is in bioinformatics, genetics and genomics, child health, PFAS, the exposome, and more. In his research, he looks for biologic and mechanistic evidence to support policies for contaminant control.
"We know the majority of air pollution we see today is coming from car exhaust or diesel exhaust from trucks. So the majority of exposures are going to affect people around highways. If you think about where highways are built, they often run through poorer neighborhoods. In the South, you're talking about Black neighborhoods. You have this set-up environment built upon structural racism that has placed people at risk for exposures because of the way our infrastructure was built.”
Lauren McCullough, PhD
McCullough is a nationally recognized expert on cancer disparities. Her research connects environment, obesity, and social conditions to cancer risk and survival—particularly among Black women. Current research includes studying how neighborhood inequities shape tumor biology and outcomes.
"In the past two decades, we’ve learned a lot around social determinants of health—thinking about health care access and transportation and health insurance as being pathways to achieve optimal health outcomes in cancer. Not just thinking about, ‘how does my neighborhood transportation impact my ability to get quality care,’ but thinking about, ‘how have the decisions been made whether or not to have transportation in these neighborhoods, and how does that lack of transportation also translate to my ability to access healthy foods, healthy activities.’”
Our Experts in the News
Rollins researchers and leaders drive the conversation on public health, regularly weighing in on complex issues that affect us all. Here are some of their latest hits.
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Health Wanted
Health Wanted is a weekly podcast from Rollins and WABE that extends Rollins’ public health thought leadership to a broader audience. Show host Laurel Bristow breaks down topics like extreme heat, vaccine hesitancy, Ozempic, and clinical trials with clarity and credibility.
Luminaries: A Public Health Lecture Series
Rollins’ Luminaries talks bring public health thought leaders to campus for informed discussions on the timely and complex issues our society is grappling with today—from climate policy and vaccine strategy to reproductive health and public trust.
The Luminaries Lecture Series: Coming Up
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Stay connected to the people and ideas moving public health forward.