Our Academic Advisory Board

Nicole Cook is a seasoned health care administrator, epidemiologist and health services scientist with a broad background in applying Electronic Health Record (EHR) data to improving care for medically underserved populations. Her passion is to improve surveillance, care delivery and healthcare outcomes in safety-net primary care settings. In collaboration with diverse researchers, stakeholders and people with lived experience, Nicole is committed to conducting real-world implementation science and translating research findings into actionable strategies.  In the aftermath of the Parkland, FL school shooting in her community, Nicole designed, wrote, received funding, and led a county-wide project to improve behavioral health literacy among school-aged parents from minoritized populations in collaboration with the Broward County School Board and community organizations. She also co-developed and currently serves as co-I on research to develop a National Language Processing (NLP) pipeline to identify patient exposure to firearm violence documented in EHR clinical progress notes and to apply machine learning to EHR data to better understand morbidity following exposure to firearm violence. Through this work, the research team aims to reframe the public health burden of firearm violence to include the millions of people who experience primary or secondary exposure to firearm violence, improve understanding of the health impacts following exposure to firearm violence, and identify opportunities to better support the health of people impacted by firearm violence. Nicole is honored to be a part of GVPedia’s Advisory Board.

Linda C. Degutis, DrPH, MSN is a Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health with a focus on injury and violence as public health issues. Dr. Degutis provides consultation services in public health policy and practice, in addition to injury and violence prevention strategies, and firearm suicide prevention in veterans. She is engaged in teaching and advocacy initiatives for gun violence prevention and is the editor of the book “Gun Violence Prevention: A Public Health Approach”. She is former director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC and founding executive director of Defense Health Horizons, a program of the Henry Jackson Foundation based at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, MD. Previously she was Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Public Health and Clinical Associate Professor of Nursing at Yale University where she served as Research Director for the Dept. of Emergency Medicine, and Director of the Yale Center for Public Health Preparedness. Dr. Degutis is Past President of the American Public Health Association (APHA), as well as the Society for the Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR). She serves on the Advisory Board of the Systems for Action Program at the University of Colorado, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and chairs the Advisory Committee of the College of Science and Health at DePaul University. She was recently elected to chair the board of directors of the newly forming national organization, Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility. Dr. Degutis, a native of Chicago, Illinois.

Ieva Jusionyte is a legal anthropologist and associate professor at Brown University. She is the author of several books, including Threshold: Emergency Responders on the US-Mexico Border (2018) and Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border (2024). Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and fellowships from the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Fulbright Program. Jusionyte has written for The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, and Rolling Stone, among others. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of Global Action on Gun Violence and the Research Network to Prevent Gun Violence in the Americas. She is also a certified EMT-paramedic who volunteered as emergency responder in Massachusetts, Florida, and Arizona. 

Caroline Light is a feminist and anti-racist scholar of U.S. history and a faculty member in the Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Department at Harvard University. She is also the author of Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense ( Beacon Press, 2017), which was featured on NPR’s list of books that help explain the U.S. gun violence epidemic. 

Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH is Bloomberg Professor of American Health and Distinguished Scholar with the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has published widely on the impacts of gun policies on homicides, suicides, and gun trafficking and led studies of community violence intervention programs and intimate partner violence. He is the lead editor and contributor to Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). He is elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2023 and is a member of the Council on Criminal Justice. Dr. Webster’s research has informed policies to reduce gun violence at the local, state, and federal level. His awards include American Public Health Association’s award for science-based advocacy, Baltimore City’s Health Equity Leadership Award, Pioneer Award from the Injury Free Coalition for Kids, and Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumni Award.