About Us

All for Them

All for Them is a vaccination initiative that assists schools in planning, implementing, and evaluating comprehensive immunization clinics to help students reach their vaccination milestones. Funded by The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, All for Them implements evidence-based approaches to increase HPV vaccine initiations and completion rates among medically underserved adolescents in Texas.

Program Staff

Paula M. Cuccaro, PhD

Principal Investigator

Dr. Cuccaro is an assistant professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science and a researcher at the Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research at the UTHealth School of Public Health. She has over 25 years of experience working on projects focused on improving the health of children and adolescents. Her current research activities involve the development, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of interventions to improve HPV vaccination uptake, breast and cervical cancer screening, as well as improving the health and wellness of vulnerable youth. Dr. Cuccaro is invested in community engagement research and efforts, including serving as an Associate Director of Community Engagement of the Texas Prevention Research Center and leading the community engagement efforts for Harris SAVES, an initiative to increase COVID-19 testing in Harris County. She was the project director and a co-investigator for Healthy Passages, a large multi-site cohort study to understand the trajectories of adolescent risk and protective behaviors.

Sally W. Vernon, PhD

Professor Emerita

Dr. Vernon is the former Chair of the Department of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences and the Blair Justice Professor in Mind-Body Medicine and Public Health. Her training is in epidemiology and behavioral sciences. She received her bachelor’s in Spanish from the University of Oklahoma, her master’s in sociology from New York University, and her doctorate in philosophy from the UTHealth School of Public Health. Since 1985, Dr. Vernon has conducted interdisciplinary research in the area of cancer prevention and control with an emphasis on breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers. Her work has been conducted in community, worksite, and medical care settings where she has developed and tested interventions to promote the uptake of cancer screening behaviors for which there is a scientific evidence base. Her most recent research has focused on developing and evaluating strategies to promote the initiation and completion of HPV vaccination. Dr. Vernon has published more than 250 scientific articles and book chapters and is currently a member of several journal editorial boards including the Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, Preventive Medicine, and Cancer Causes and Control. She is a Fellow and past president of the American College of Epidemiology.

Lara Savas, PhD

Co-Investigator

Dr. Savas is an Associate Professor at the UTHealth School of Public Health in the Division of Behavioral Sciences. Her intervention planning, implementation and evaluation research focus includes the application of epidemiologic, behavioral science, and community-based participatory research methods to develop and evaluate community-, clinic- and school-based health promotion programs. Her research focuses on health problems in underserved populations, such as un- and under-insured groups, ethnic/racial minorities, rural populations, and veterans. Her intervention research experience includes the development, implementation, and evaluation of breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening and HPV vaccination, smoke-free homes, acute stroke, and most recently COVID-19 testing behavioral interventions. Her health promotion research includes collaborations with clinic systems, community health centers, community health worker programs, and other non-profit organizations. Dr. Savas graduated from Tufts University and received her doctorate and master’s in science in Epidemiology from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health. She completed a National Cancer Institute Pre-doctoral fellowship in Cancer Prevention at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Baylor College of Medicine in Clinical Epidemiology and Outcomes Services Research.

Diane M. Santa Maria, DrPH, MSN, RN, PHNA-BC, FSAHM, FAAN

Co-Investigator

Dr. Santa Maria was named dean of Cizik School of Nursing on Sept. 1, 2020, after leading the school on an interim basis for two years. She holds the Jane and Robert Cizik Distinguished Chair and the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair in Nursing Education Leadership. She is a tenured Associate Professor with expertise in public health nursing, adolescent health, HIV/STI and pregnancy prevention, intervention development, randomized controlled trials, mobile technology, and predictive modeling. She has served as the principal investigator and program director on research and demonstration grants on multiple NIH-, CDC-, ACF-, and foundation-funded prevention projects. With wide-ranging experience working in underserved communities in the U.S. and abroad, she currently is conducting HIV prevention and mindfulness research with youth and young adults experiencing homelessness, at-risk youth and their families. Dr. Santa Maria is an adjunct faculty member in the Center for Health Promotion and Research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health. She received her Bachelor of Science in nursing from The Ohio State University, her Master of Science in nursing in Public Health Nursing from Case Western Reserve University, and her Doctor of Public Health in Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences from the UTHealth School of Public Health.

Elizabeth Baumler, PhD

Co-Investigator and Statistician

Dr. Baumler is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. She has worked in Public Health for over 20 years. She has served as the lead statistician on numerous NIH- and CDC-funded, multi-site longitudinal studies in multiple areas, including violence prevention, youth risk behavior, vaccination uptake and cancer prevention screening. Her primary area of expertise is the design and analysis of studies using complex data sets evaluated as randomized controlled trials. Dr. Baumler enjoys collaboration with multiple research teams across the country from many different disciplines analyzing various types of behavioral, psychosocial and community-level data. Her research interests focus on using multilevel modeling to evaluate intervention effectiveness in school, clinic, and community-based studies as well as the integration of qualitative research to refine and inform complementary quantitative analyses.

Sanghamitra M. Misra, MD, FAAP, ABIHM

Co-Investigator

Dr. Sanghamitra Misra is an integrative pediatrician with a passion for serving vulnerable populations including immigrants and refugees. She is the medical director of the Texas Children’s Mobile Clinic Program, which brings comprehensive healthcare including immunizations and behavioral healthcare to underserved children in the Houston area. She is also the director of the Integrative Medicine Program at Texas Children’s Hospital, which focuses on research and education on complementary and integrative therapies in pediatrics. Dr. Misra is an associate professor of pediatrics and director of the pediatric core clerkship at Baylor College of Medicine. She is a published author of research articles, book chapters and a book on topics including immunizations, refugee health, mobile clinics and integrative medicine. Dr. Misra is an elected member of the executive committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Integrative Medicine. She is the immediate past chair of the Board of Directors of Doctors for Change and a member of the Board of Directors of Undies for Everyone, Inc. Dr. Misra is a section editor of UpToDate, an electronic clinical resource tool for physicians and patients. She is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar Fellow. Dr. Misra is a proud daughter, sister, wife and mother of three.

Amy Raines, DrPH

Co-Investigator

Amy Raines, DrPH, Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Women’s Health at The University of North Texas Health Science Center, is an applied public health professional and community researcher. She has extensive experience in designing and implementing all stages of community-based interventions focused on historically excluded populations. She has experience in implementing and managing large, multi-year intervention studies, i.e., Healthy Start: Eliminating Disparities in Perinatal Health funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Building Bridges Initiative for Refugee Health funded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) She is an appointed member of the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee and the holder of the grant to prepare all maternal death records for review by the Committee. She brings community relationships and population knowledge, experience in health disparities, intervention design, and skills to community collaborations and research.

Daisy G. Mullassery, DrNP, APRN-CNP, WHNP-BC

Co-Investigator

Daisy Mullassery has more than 30 years of experience in the field of nursing in various capacities: staff nurse, nurse-midwife, nurse practitioner and nurse educator. Dr. Mullassery obtained her undergraduate education in nursing from India and then completed her master’s and doctoral degrees at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She worked as a full-time, board-certified women’s health nurse practitioner (WHNP-BC) in an inner-city hospital in Philadelphia before moving to Houston. Currently, she works as an assistant professor at the Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston. She teaches in the graduate programs and is actively involved in advising DNP students for their scholarly projects. She also maintains an active practice providing clinic services to patients one day per week at the UTHealth services clinic in Houston. Her research interests include women’s health issues, vaccine preventable cancers, sexual health issues and curriculum development for health care education. She currently is a co-investigator (Co-I) for three active, funded, research projects. Two of these projects involve interprofessional collaboration.

Efrat K. Gabay, MPH

Senior Program Manager

Efrat manages the daily operations of several All for Them implementation and dissemination projects at the Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research. She also manages a vaccination campaign development project for agricultural workers and an evaluation of a trauma-informed care program at the Texas Epidemic Public Health Institute. Efrat has extensive experience in project management, development, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination of public health intervention programs and has served as a local, state, and national speaker. She is a member of the Texas HPV Coalition and has served as a content expert for American Cancer Society and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Efrat has coordinated several research and implementation projects at the since 2010, mainly in the areas of school- and clinic-based HPV vaccination, adolescent sexual health and healthy relationships, and school health. Her research interests include cancer prevention, prevention of adolescent risk behaviors, and child and adolescent mental health. Efrat earned a Master of Public Health degree in Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology at Tulane University.

Amy Casebier

Manager Communications

Amy Casebier is the manager communications for the All for Them vaccination program at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. Her background in journalism, design, marketing, and writing supports her passion for storytelling and increasing access to information. Amy also works on the All for Them Texas dissemination and implementation project, the Texas CARES COVID-19 survey, and a rural health vaccination project through the Texas Epidemic Public Health Initiative. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish at Hanover College.

Shandria Sutton, MPH

Communication Specialist

Shandria Sutton currently serves as the communication specialist for two UTHealth Houston School of Public Health initiatives: the All for Them vaccination project and the Texas CARES survey. With a background in implementing health communication strategies for cancer prevention and chronic disease efforts, her passion is communicating with diverse audiences to make public health information and services more accessible for the general public, particularly underserved communities. She earned her MPH in Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences from Emory University. Prior, she received her BA in Mass Communication from Tougaloo College.

Sarai Saldana, MA

Research Coordinator

Sarai is a research coordinator at the UTHealth School of Public Health. She has over 10 years of experience in the field of public health with a focus on children and adolescent health initiatives. Her primary role on this project is to coordinate the implementation of All for Them Baytown with our partners in Goose Creek CISD and Be Well Baytown. She is dedicated to improving the quality of health in children and adolescents by providing education and access to resources to underserved communities.

Sergio Chaulet

Research Coordinator

Sergio is the FWISD coordinator for All for Them vaccination initiative at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health. His responsibilities involve being the liaison between the schools at FWISD and The University of North Texas Health Science Center Pediatric Mobile Clinic, parent and student HPV vaccine education, scheduling and coordinating the vaccine clinics and collecting data from participants at the clinics. Sergio has a long history at the School of Public Health. In the past 18 years, he has worked in many projects such as Safer Choices, Safer Choices II, Healthy Passages, and It’s Your Game… Keep it Real. He has covered different roles on each project including Data Collector, Supervisor and Coordinator. Sergio is interested in reaching out to minority communities in regards to education and health.

Johanna Estrada

Research Coordinator

Johanna is the HISD coordinator for the All for Them vaccination initiative at the UTHealth School of Public Health. Her roles include parent and student HPV vaccine education, scheduling and coordinating the vaccine clinics as well as managing and monitoring the project phone line. In the past years, Johanna worked at Harris County Public Health Department as school liaison where she educated nurses, parents, and students about communicable diseases, disease trends, and the importance of vaccines to prevent diseases. She also worked conducting communicable disease investigations (COVID-19, enteric diseases), doing disease surveillance, and managing COVID-19 outbreaks in schools as well as monitoring travelers that returned from Ebola regions. She also had the opportunity to assist doing oral health research during her undergrad at the National Dental Practice-Based Research Network-Southwest region in UTHSCSA. Johanna earned her bachelor’s degree in Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology and Disease Control and a minor in Biology from the University of Texas at San Antonio and is now pursuing her master’s degree in Public Health-Epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston. Her research interests include communicable diseases, diabetes and heart disease prevention, health disparities, and cancer prevention.

Mayra Aguilar McBride, MS

Research Coordinator

Mayra is a coordinator for the All for Them vaccination initiative at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. Her role in the project includes providing parent education and referral through the project’s phone line, survey development, data reporting, and supporting district coordinators with clinic implementation efforts. She is also the project coordinator for the All for Them Texas dissemination project. Mayra has also worked at the Children’s Learning Institute at UTHealth Houston, where she performed cognitive, social, and emotional assessments with children ages 3-6 years old. Mayra earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas and her master’s degree in Clinic Psychology from California Lutheran University. Her research interests include cancer prevention, HPV vaccination uptake, and language and literacy development in early childhood.

Jeanette Deason, MPH

Data Manager

Jeanette Deason is a third-year PhD student at UTHealth Houston seeking a degree in biostatistics. She is a graduate research assistant for All for Them and the External Evaluation Team evaluating the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium (TCMHCC). She has a BS in statistics and an MPH in quantitative methods from the University of Iowa, where she studied biostatistics methods and their applications in public health. After receiving her MPH, she worked as a data manager for the Clinical Trials Statistical Data Management Center (CTSDMC) in Iowa City and as a data analyst for Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago before returning for a PhD. Her doctoral goals include completing a dissertation on spatial analysis techniques as well as mentoring fellow students. Additionally, she strives to provide reproducible and efficient data managing and analyzing techniques in her role as a graduate research assistant.

Program Funders

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) is a state agency that funds cancer research in the state of Texas. It was founded to create and expedite innovation in the area of cancer research and attract, create, or expand research capabilities of public or private institutions of higher education that will promote a substantial increase of quality cancer research. CPRIT is the second largest public funder of cancer research in the United States. All for Them is funded through CPRIT grants PP170046 (2017-2021), PP200017 (2020-2024), PP230033 (2023-2025), and PP240030 (2024-2028).

All for Them Baytown was supported from 2020-2024 by Be Well™ Baytown, an initiative of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center sponsored by ExxonMobil.

All for Them Aldine, All for Them Crowley, and All for Them Spring are supported by The University of Texas
MD Anderson Cancer Center.

About UTHealth Houston

The UTHealth Houston School of Public Health is one of six schools of UTHealth Houston, the most comprehensive academic health system in The University of Texas System and the U.S. Gulf Coast region. In addition to the School of Public Health, UTHealth Houston is home to schools of biomedical informatics, biomedical sciences, dentistry, medicine, and nursing. The mission of the School of Public Health is “Changing the culture of health through excellence in graduate education, research, and engagement.” Our vision is “Health without boundaries.” The mission and vision of our organization are exemplified by our values of collaboration, leadership, and transformation. Our research team functions within the Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research (CHPPR) at the School of Public Health. The Center’s mission is “To conduct research to develop, evaluate, and disseminate health promotion and disease prevention programs in a variety of settings and populations.” CHPPR includes accomplished behavioral scientists and researchers focusing on a number of health promotion projects, targeting topics such as cancer prevention and screening, HPV vaccination, tobacco cessation, adolescent sexual health, HIV, and substance use.