NIMHD Adjunct Faculty

Michele K. Evans, M.D.

Deputy Scientific Director & Senior Investigator, NIA

Dr. Evans is the Deputy Scientific Director, Senior Investigator and Chief of Disparities Research Section, Laboratory of Epidemiology and Population Sciences at NIA. She was appointed as an Adjunct Investigator in 2016. Dr. Evans is a board-certified internist and medical oncologist. Dr. Evans is the Principal Investigator of the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity Across the Life Span (HANDLS) study, a cohort study of 3,720 community-dwelling Black and White adults aged 30-64 that sampled individuals with a wide range of socioeconomic status in Baltimore, MD. Her research interests include investigating the role of oxidative stress in accelerated aging and populations at risk for health disparities.

Chandra Jackson, Ph.D., M.S.
Stadtman Investigator, NIEHS

Dr. Jackson joined the NIEHS Epidemiology Branch as a Stadtman Tenure Track Investigator in 2017. She has a doctorate in cardiovascular epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She conducted epidemiologic research as an Alonzo Smythe Yerby postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was a Research Associate at the Harvard Catalyst Clinical and Translational Science Center. She was promoted to a Senior Investigator at NIH in 2023 . Dr. Jackson investigates how the physical and social environments influence racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes, with an emphasis on exploring sleep as a mediator of these influences. Dr. Jackson’s research goals are to: 1) Investigate modifiable upstream factors in the physical and social environment that contribute to health disparities; and 2) Identify downstream social, behavioral and biological pathways leading to health disparities. 

Kyle P. Messier, Ph.D.
Stadtman Investigator, NIEHS

Kyle Messier, Ph.D., is an Earl Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator, jointly supported by NIMHD and NIEHS/NTP. Dr. Messier’s research is unique at The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences National Toxicology Program  as he utilizes spatiotemporal models to evaluate environmental and human health relationships. Dr. Messier, along with research fellows in the Spatiotemporal Health Analytics Group, us these approaches to evaluate factors driving environmental, socioeconomic, and racial disparities of pollution exposures and disease outcomes. Dr. Messier received a B.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Anne Summer, M.D.
Senior Investigator, NIDDK

Dr. Sumner is a Senior Investigator and Chief of the Section on Diabetes, Nutrition, and Health in the Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Obesity Branch of NIDDK. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, completed an Internal Medicine residency at Reading Hospital and Medical Center, and a Nutrition and Endocrinology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and the Medical College of Pennsylvania. Her research aims to improve the design of screening tests for diabetes to enhance their universal applicability and decrease the adverse impact of cardiometabolic diseases on populations in the United States and worldwide. Dr. Sumner is a well-known and skilled mentor and, in collaboration with and with the support of NIMHD, is the founding Director of the NIH-Rwandan Health Program.