Development, a member emerita of the IOM Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, and serves as liaison or advisor to several IOM activities. She has a Ph.D. in microbial genetics from the Rockefeller University and an M.D. from New York University School of Medicine.

Robert Plotnick serves on the faculty of the University of Washington as professor of public affairs, director of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and adjunct professor of economics, sociology and social work. He is also a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research has addressed a wide range of topics concerned with poverty, income inequality, income support policy, teenage and nonmarital childbearing, the application of benefit-cost analysis to social services, and related social policy issues. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Rebekah Pinto (Senior Project Assistant) is a staff member with the Board on Children, Youth, and Families of the National Research Council/ Institutes of Medicine. She has helped the board organize workshops related to children and computer technology, family stresses in the 21st Century, and urban school reform. Before joining the board she worked as a communications associate at Catholics for a Free Choice. Before joining the National Academies her research focused on public health, women’s issues, and international family planning. She has a B.A. in anthropology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Zena Stein is professor of public health (epidemiology) and psychiatry emerita at Columbia University. She is an expert in the prevention of AIDS in women and on the prevention of mental retardation. She is co-director of the HIV Center at Columbia with a major commitment to work in Southern Africa. Recently, her principal research efforts at the Center have been to develop protective methods for women that will reduce their risks of sexually transmitted infections; to study the epidemiology of perinatal HIV infection, including risks for maternal-infant transmission including breast feeding; factors involved in survival; and neurodevelopmental effects on infected infants. She has an M.A. in history at the University of Cape Town and an M.B. and B.Ch. in medicine at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.