The Educated Citizen and Public Health:
2008 Undergraduate Curriculum Development Institute

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Susan Albertine, PhD
Senior Director, LEAP States Initiative
Association of American Colleges and Universities
Washington, District of Columbia
Phone: 202-387-3760
Email: albertine@aacu.org

Susan Albertine began her work on the Educated Citizen and Public Health in 2006 while she served as Professor of English and Dean, School of Culture & Society, The College of New Jersey (2002-2008), and also as a member of the Board and then President-elect of the Council of Colleges of Arts & Sciences (2004-2008). She is lead author with Nancy A. Persily and Richard K. Riegelman of “Back to the Pump Handle: Public Health and the Future of Undergraduate Education” (Liberal Education 2007) and co-author with Persily and Riegelman of The Educated Citizen and Public Health: A Consensus Report on Public Health and Undergraduate Education (CCAS 2007). Earlier in her career, she served as Vice Provost of Temple University, and Assistant to the Provost at the University of Pennsylvania; she taught American literature as assistant and then associate professor at Susquehanna University and St. Olaf College.

Victor K. Barbiero, PhD, MHS
Visiting Associate Professor
George Washington University
Department of Global Health
Washington, District of Columbia
Phone: 202-416-0097
Email: vkb@gwu.edu

In December 2005, Dr. Victor K. Barbiero joined the George Washington University (GWU) School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) as a Visiting Associate Professor of Global Health in the Department of Global Health.  He was awarded the SPHHS’s Excellence in Teaching Award for Undergraduates in 2006 and 2007.  In April 2006 Dr. Barbiero was invited by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) to serve as a Senior Advisor in Global Health, and still serves in that position.  Prior to joining GWU and the WWICS, Dr. Barbiero was a Foreign Service Officer with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for 21 years and had the honor to serve with USAID in Washington, East Africa and India.  Dr. Barbiero served as the Chief of the Implementation Support Division in the Office of HIV/AIDS, Global Bureau for Health, USAID/Washington from 2003-2005.  He was the Director of the Population, Health and Nutrition Office at USAID/India from August 1999 through July 2003.  From July 1996 through July 1999, he was Chief of the Child Survival Division in the Office of Health, Global Bureau for Health, USAID/W.  He served in Ethiopia as the Director of the Population, Health and Nutrition (PHN) Office from 1992 – 1996 and as the Deputy Chief of PHN in the Regional Economic Development Support Office for East and Southern Africa from 1988 - 1992.  From 1984–1988, he served in USAID/W as a public health advisor specializing on tropical and vector-borne diseases.  Prior to joining USAID, Dr. Barbiero worked at the National Institutes of Health in the Laboratory of Allergy and Infectious Diseases where he conducted laboratory and field research on malaria and onchocerciasis (river blindness).  He also worked on tropical disease epidemiology in Sudan with Michigan State University and with the World Health Organization in Burkina Faso.  He was a Fulbright Scholar from 1979-1981 in Liberia and a Peace Corps volunteer from 1973-1975 in Ethiopia.  Dr. Barbiero holds a Doctorate in Pathobiology (1982) and a Masters of Health Sciences (focusing on Famine Ecology) (1977), both from The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, The Johns Hopkins University.

Nisha Botchwey, PhD, MCP
Assistant Professor
University of Virginia
Depts. of Urban and Environmental Planning and Public Health Sciences
Charlottesville, Virginia
Phone: 434.924.1339
Email: nbotchwey@virginia.edu

Dr. Botchwey specializes in community development and neighborhood planning with emphasis on local religious and secular institutions and the promotion of public health. She joined the faculty of the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning in the fall of 2003, and teaches undergraduate and graduate neighborhood planning workshops. She also developed Healthy Communities, a graduate seminar exploring the connections between the built environment and health. Dr. Botchwey also co-organized the Department's 2004 Spring Symposium, "Healthy Communities, Healthy People: Exploring the Relationship between Public Health and the Built Environment" and 2008 symposium "Sustainability and Health: Global, National, Local." Her work on religious and secular nonprofits provides empirical documentation of the characteristics and community revitalization contributions of these neighborhood-based organizations. It also identifies health promoting opportunities that exist through these venues for people with type-2 diabetes.  Dr. Botchwey's primary research focus is on developing methodologies for religious institutions to revitalize unhealthy communities, places where the physical and social environments do not enable people to maximize their lives.

Suzanne B. Cashman, ScD
Associate Professor and Director of Community Health
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
Worcester, Massachusetts
Phone: 508-856-2930
Email: suzanne.cashman@umassmed.edu

Formally trained in health services research, evaluation and administration, Suzanne Cashman has spent the thirty years of her professional career conducting evaluation research, teaching graduate courses in public health, and developing partnerships aimed at helping communities improve their health status.  Dr. Cashman joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) in 1999 after having spent the preceding decade developing a community-oriented primary care focused preventive medicine residency in Boston, MA. At UMMS, Dr. Cashman plays a lead role in developing the department’s community health agenda. In addition, she serves as a faculty member for the preventive medicine residency; carries out community-based evaluation research; co-directs a summer service-learning assistantship for rising second year medical students; and participates in teaching medical students and residents, as well as students in the Graduate School of Nursing and School of Public Health.  Shortly after arriving at UMMS, Dr. Cashman co-founded a Rural Health Scholars program aimed at ensuring that medical and nursing students who were interested in practicing in rural or small town communities would have adequate exposure during their education. Dr. Cashman serves as a Board and Executive Committee member of the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research and is a Senior Consultant with Community Campus Partnerships for Health.

Rebecca Dillingham, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Medicine
University of Virginia, Center for Global Health
Charlottesville, Virginia
Phone: 434-924-5242
Email: rd8v@virginia.edu

Rebecca Dillingham is an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Disease and International Health and in Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia. Dr. Dillingham received her B.A. from Harvard/Radcliffe College and then traveled to the Ivory Coast where she lived and worked for two years prior to entering medical school at the University of Missouri-Columbia.  She served as a resident in Internal Medicine in the UVa Health System and completed her fellowship in infectious diseases and her Masters in Public Health there before joining the faculty. Dr. Dillingham is involved in developing global health curriculum through UVa’s Framework Program in Global Health grant from the Fogarty International. In this capacity, she has worked across the schools at UVa to develop educational opportunities and pathways for students at all levels to develop skills needed to become global health leaders.

Dr. Dillingham’s major research projects include the development of improved nutritional approaches for patients infected with HIV and living in resource-poor countries, the use of cell-phone based technology to help vulnerable populations improve adherence to antiretrovirals, and the evaluation of the impact of changes in water and sanitation on the incidence of water-borne disease. This research takes place in Haiti, rural Virginia, and South Africa respectively.

Marion Field Fass, ScD
Professor of Biology
Beloit College
Beloit, Wisconsin
Phone: 608-363-2784
Email: fassm@beloit.edu

Marion Field Fass is Professor of Biology and Chair of the new, interdisciplinary Health and Society major at Beloit College.  She is interested in curriculum reform in Biology, and has been a faculty member with the SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities) Summer Institutes and the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium workshops.  She is a member of the Committee for the Assessment of Student Learning at Beloit College.

David W. Fraser, MD
Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology
Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Phone: 215-295-2016
Email: dwfraser@earthlink.net

David W. Fraser, MD, is an independent consultant with particular interest in epidemiology, international health and education and material culture.  Trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases, he led the Federal field investigation of the 1976 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Philadelphia and oversaw the CDC team that discovered the role of tampons in toxic shock syndrome.  He was as President of Swarthmore College from 1982-91 and headed health, education and housing activities in South Asia and East Africa for the Aga Khan’s Secretariat from 1991-1995, before serving as Executive Director of the International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN) from 1996-2000.  He led the working group that drafted an epidemiology curriculum for high school for the Young Epidemiology Scholars program of the College Board and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  He authored A Guide to Weft Twining and Related Structures with Interacting Wefts, the standard work on what may be the oldest textile structure, and, with Barbara G. Fraser, Mantles of Merit: Chin Textiles from Myanmar, India and Bangladesh. He holds positions as Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania and Research Associate at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and at The Textile Museum in Washington, DC.

Ruth Gaare Bernheim, JD, MPH
Director, Division of Public Health Policy and Practice; Department of Health Evaluation Sciences, School of Medicine
Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine
Associate Director, Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life
University of Virginia
Phone: 434-924-3487
Email:rg3r@virginia.edu

Ruth Gaare Bernheim is Associate Director of the University of Virginia's Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life and an Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences, as well as Director of the Division of Public Health Policy and Practice in the School of Medicine's Department of Health Evaluation Sciences. In the past she has co-taught Germs, Guns and Lead: Public Health Ethics and Law with professors Richard Bonnie and James Childress, International Health Law with Professor Thomas Massaro, and a Seminar in Ethical Values with Roberto A. Gomez and Andrew Wicks.

Gaare Bernheim earned her law degree at the University of Virginia in 1980 and went on to get a Masters in Public Health in 1993 at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. Gaare Bernheim then worked as a Professor in the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins from 1994-99 and became Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Bioethics Institute in 1995, serving in that position until 1998.

Marc Hiller, DrPH
Associate Professor of Health Management/Policy
University of New Hampshire
Durham, New Hampshire
Phone: 603-862-3411
E-mail: marc.hiller@unh.edu                  

Hiller is an associate professor of health management and policy, having come to UNH from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.  From 1999 to 2001, he was a Faculty Fellow in UNH's office of the Vice President for Research and Public Service while continuing to teach in both the department's undergraduate and graduate programs. Since 2001, he continues to serve as a visiting scholar in the Office on Smoking and Health and the Division of Adolescent and School Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society (Atlanta, GA).  

Hiller is the recipient of the Alumni Association Award for Excellence in Public Service in 1999, and the New Hampshire Public Health Association's (NHPHA) Presidential Citation in 1998. He has been a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Fellow in medical ethics at the University of Virginia, a fellow at the Hastings Center, and a visiting faculty member in the Ethics Program of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and at the Muskie Institute of the University of Southern Maine. Hiller was the project director of the New Hampshire Turning Point Initiative, a statewide strategic planning effort to strengthen the State's public health system in the 21st century, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson and W.K. Kellogg foundations. He remains active in the American Public Health Association (APHA), National Association of Local Boards of Health (NALBOH), and the NHPHA, among many other professional and civic organizations. He is the author/editor of two books, Medical Ethics and the Law Implications for Public Policy (1981) and Ethics and Health Administration Ethical Decision Making in Health Management (1986) and, has authored journal articles on a variety of public health and ethical issues and policies.

Michael Kelrick, PhD
Professor of Biology & Director of Interdisciplinary Studies
Truman State University, Dept. of Biology
Kirksville, Missouri
Phone: 660-785-6021
Email: mkelrick@truman.edu

I am a plant ecologist and conservation biologist by training, and an interdisciplinarian by inclination. Currently, I am serving as the Director of Interdisciplinary Studies (DIS) at Truman State University, while retaining my teaching and research position within the Biology Department. As DIS, I nurture development of interdisciplinary minors; hence my involvement with this effort. Beyond this, I am interested in quantitative approaches to biological problems, so that using models (as in epidemiology) and Geographic Information Systems (for spatially explicit models in public health) are natural extensions of what I do in studying rare plants.

Brenda Kirkwood
Office of the Dean, School of Public Health
SUNY - University at Albany
Rensselaer, New York
Phone: (518) 312-8030
Email: bkirkwood@nycap.rr.com

Brenda Kirkwood, MPH, has worked in academic affairs at the University at Albany School of Public Health since November 2004, most recently serving as Director of Academic Programs.  She received her Master of Public Health degree from UAlbany in 2001, and will be pursuing a Doctor of Public Health degree from The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services in Washington, DC, beginning in Fall 2008.  Prior to her staff position at UAlbany, Ms. Kirkwood served as a Public Health Representative in the Cancer Registry at the New York State Department of Health.  She has developed and co-taught two undergraduate public health courses: “From Cholera to Cancer: History, Achievements and Future Challenges in Public Health” and “Demystifying Public Health”.

Denise Koo, MD, MPH
CAPT, USPHS
Director, Career Development Division
Office of Workforce and Career Development
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Phone: 404-498-6080
Email: dkoo@cdc.gov

Denise Koo, MD, MPH is Director of the Career Development Division in CDC’s Office of Workforce and Career Development. This Division houses several key CDC training and workforce development programs with a total of nearly 400 trainees each year, including the Epidemic Intelligence Service, an ACGME-accredited Preventive Medicine Residency, the Public Health Prevention Service, Public Health Informatics fellowship, Prevention Effectiveness Fellowship, electives for medical and veterinary students, The CDC Experience fellowship in applied epidemiology for medical students, and the CDC lead for the Emerging Leader and Presidential Management Fellows Programs, as well as a new pilot Senior Executive Service fellowship.  Dr. Koo is herself a graduate of CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service and Preventive Medicine Residency.  Previous positions have included running the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System and serving as Director of the Division of Public Health Surveillance and Informatics at CDC.

Ross Miller, BM, MM
Senior Director of Assessment for Learning
Office of Quality, Curriculum, and Assessment
Association of American Colleges and Universities
Washington, District of Columbia
Phone: 202-884-0803
Email: miller@aacu.org

Ross Miller is senior director of assessment for learning in the office of education and quality initiatives at the Association of American Colleges and Universities.   Since coming to AAC&U in 1999, he has worked with planning and implementation of the Greater Expectations and LEAP Initiatives. Miller has also helped to reshape the content and processes of the AAC&U Institute on General Education.   The Institute strives to offer a coherent curriculum that advances participants’ knowledge and skills in the processes and strategies of general education reform, learning centered innovations in undergraduate education, and assessment.   Miller serves the Institute both as an AAC&U staff member and as an Institute consultant.  He has authored, co-authored, and contributed to several AAC&U publications related to general education, assessment planning, and improving student learning of liberal education outcomes. 

Prior to his AAC&U work, Miller was a tenured associate professor of music education at Nazareth College of Rochester (NY).  During his thirteen years there, he worked primarily with the undergraduate music education program and also served as the director of the graduate program in music education.  Additionally, he directed the college band, supervised student teachers, and taught applied trumpet and all levels of music education courses.  He was president of the Council of Music Teacher Education Programs, an affiliate of the New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA). 

In an assignment as assessment coordinator for Nazareth College, he was responsible for assessment of the college's general education program.  Assessment has been a long-term interest with particular emphasis upon formative, performance, and portfolio assessment.  He has served as a question writer in the arts for the National Assessment of Educational Progress and worked on a NYSSMA team developing a high school outcomes test in the arts for the New York State Education Department.

Richard Riegelman MD, MPH, PhD
Professor and Founding Dean
George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services
Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Washington, District of Columbia
Phone: 202-994-4727
Email: sphrkr@gwumc.edu

Richard Riegelman is Professor of Epidemiology-Biostatistics, Medicine, and Health Policy and Founding Dean of The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. His education includes an M.D. from the University of Wisconsin plus a M.P.H. and Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins. Dr. Riegelman practiced primary care internal medicine for over 20 years.

Richard Riegelman has over 60 publications including 6 books for students and practitioners of medicine and public health. Studying a Study and Testing a Test: How to Read the Medical Evidence now in its 5th edition is widely used to teach evaluation of the health research literature and has been translated into Spanish and Japanese. He is editor of the Jones and Bartlett book series Essential Public Health.

Dr. Riegelman is co-chair of the Healthy People Curriculum Task Force, a coalition of seven health professions education organizations established to implement the Healthy People 2010 objective to increase the teaching of prevention in clinical health professions education. He chaired the planning committee for the Consensus Conference on Undergraduate Public Health Education that produced curriculum frameworks to implement the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that “…all undergraduates should have access to education in public health.”  Dr. Riegelman is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research.

Morton Winston, PhD, MA
Professor of Philosophy and Chair
Department of Philosophy and Religion
The College of New Jersey
Ewing, New Jersey
Phone: 609-771-2398
Email: mwinston@tcnj.edu

Morton Winston’s areas of specialization include human rights theory and practice, biomedical ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of technology. His most recent books are On Chomsky (2001) and Society, Ethics, and Technology (2008). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Human Rights and Human Rights Quarterly. In addition to his academic career Dr. Winston has had a career as a human rights activist. He served as chairman of Amnesty International USA's national board of directors from 1995 to 1997 and was named honorary chair of AIUSA in 2003. He has received three Fulbright Scholarships: South Africa in 1992, Thailand in 1999 and in 2007 he held the Danish Distinguished Chair of Human Rights and International Relations at the Danish Institute of Human Rights in Copenhagen Denmark. Dr. Winston attended Swarthmore College, graduating with High Honors and Phi Beta Kappa. He received his M.A. in cognitive psychology and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  He is married to Dr. Sally Winston and they have three adult daughters.

Carol Day Young, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor
School of Public Health, Health Policy, Management and Behavior
University at Albany, SUNY
Delmar, New York
Phone: 518-475-1380
Email: cdyoung@nycap.rr.com

Carol Young is an independent consultant and Clinical Associate Professor at the U Albany School of Public Health where she teaches the undergraduate course “From Cholera to Cancer.” In 2007 she retired from all administrative responsibilities and her position as Director of Continuing Education. The program focuses on professional development and training for front-line public health practitioners and reaches over 50,000 learners annually through satellite broadcasts, on-line short courses, and live training.

Previously, Carol developed community programs and labor-management training programs for the University of Maine at Augusta, Empire State College, the New York State Governor’s Office, and other organizations. She is past president of the New York State Public Health Association and has held leadership positions with the American Society for Training and Development in both Maine and New York. She began her career as a French instructor and is now studying to become a Yoga instructor. Carol Young holds a PhD in Educational Administration from Cornell University, a MA in French from Middlebury College, and a BA in French from Harpur College of Binghamton University.

Lydia B. Zablotska, MD, PhD, MPA
Assistant Professor of Epidemiology
Columbia University
Mailman School of Public Health
New York, New York
Phone: 212-305-8451
Email: lbz7@columbia.edu

Dr. Zablotska is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.  Her research activities have focused primarily on the study of the effects of radiation exposures, and on nutritional epidemiology, particularly as it relates to cancer risk.  She is currently a principal investigator in a NCI-funded studies of the consequences of the Chornobyl accident, two cohort studies of thyroid cancer and other thyroid diseases among more than 25,000 exposed as young people and a case-control study of leukemia in clean-up workers from Ukraine. 

Dr. Zablotska directs the largest introductory class in epidemiology, P6400 Principles of Epidemiology.  As a core course for the MPH degree in the Mailman School, it has a large enrollment of close to 400 students per semester.  In 2005, she received the Dean’s Award for Innovation in the Curriculum for her work on the course.  Based on student evaluations, the course has consistently been ranked among the top 10% of all courses taught in the School.  Dr. Zablotska’s other teaching activities include developing an advanced methods course for doctoral students in epidemiology, teaching an epidemiology course at BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, as well as specialized epidemiology courses for pathology residents and medical students from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.  Recently, Dr. Zablotska was elected to a two-year term on the test-writing committee of the National Public Health Examiners Board. Dr. Zablotska is the author of Epiville, an open-access website featuring a set of interactive modules providing training in main epidemiological principles through a case-based approach.