Ms. Ohlson has seven years of experience in public health and education research and three years of teaching experience in Oakland and New Haven, CT. She earned a master’s degree in education from the University of New Haven and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Yale University. Ms. Ohlson brings her bilingual (Spanish) skills to many projects. Prior to joining Gibson and Associates, Mr. Ohlson served as a project director for a five-year study on adolescent health at the University of California, San Francisco, funded by the National Institutes of Health. Cultural issues in adolescent health and infectious disease were the primary focus of her research. She was responsible for securing sites, managing school partnerships, coordinating and implementing data collection, and analyzing data. In a separate study on coping at UCSF, Ms. Ohlson conducted over 50 qualitative interviews with caregivers of HIV-positive children in English and Spanish. Ms. Ohlson has extensive experience in qualitative analysis of interviews and focus groups, using Vernacular Term Analysis, Thematic Unit Analysis, and Color Dot Analysis techniques. She co-wrote articles for publication, two of which are pending publication.
At Gibson and Associates, Ms. Ohlson has worked on public health, education, and community development projects in Oakland and San Mateo County. She designed and implemented data collection tools for the community input phase for the Prop. 63 planning process for San Mateo County Department of Mental Health; analyzed focus group data from over 100 focus groups targeting ‘underserved’ populations; and produced reports to inform task forces. The recommendations formed from this work focused upon making the mental health system more culturally competent. She is currently the lead on the Linguistic Access Study for the San Mateo County Health Department, a countywide study examining language assistance services for limited English proficient clients. In this project she is studying exemplary practices in how communities create a more linguistically diverse health system with one of those strategies being to develop pipelines extending from K-12 through the local community college systems to encourage more people of color to enter the health profession. In the Education Department, she has worked on school reform initiatives, restructuring, program improvement for schools and districts, and planning processes in Oakland Unified School District. She served on the design team for Sankofa Academy, a new small autonomous school in Oakland and continues to serve as part of an advisory team to that school. She has conducted and summarized research on promising practices and model programs in the areas of mental health, health disparities, cultural competence, linguistic access, and education reform. She has facilitated community and staff input on projects, designed and implemented survey and focus group tools, analyzed data, and produced reports and recommendations for a range of planning and evaluation projects, including:
- Linguistic Access Study, San Mateo County Health Department
- Prop. 63, San Mateo County Department of Mental Health Planning Process
- Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, Strategic Plan
- Oakland Unified School District, Program Improvement Plan
- Strategies for Effective Organizations, schools across Oakland
- Restructuring, schools across Oakland
- Sankofa Academy, New School Design and Advisory and
- The research and development of Gibson Learning Communities.
|
