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The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans (2008)

Chapter: Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

« Previous: Appendix B: Exposure Measures in Studies of U.S. Vietnam Veterans
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2008. The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12059.
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Page 136
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2008. The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12059.
×
Page 137
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2008. The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12059.
×
Page 138
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2008. The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12059.
×
Page 139
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2008. The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12059.
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Page 140

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Appendix C Biographical Sketches of Committee Members David A. Savitz, Ph.D. (Chair), is the Charles W. Bluhdorn Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine and director of the Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Disease Prevention Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Dr. Savitz’s primary research activities and interests are in repro- ductive, environmental, and cancer epidemiology. His teaching is focused on epidemiologic methods, and he authored a book entitled Interpreting Epidemiologic Evidence. He is past president of the Society for Epidemio- logic Research and of the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research. He has served on several Institute of Medicine and National Research Council studies, including the Committee on EPA’s Exposure and Human Health Reassessment of TCDD and Related Compounds and the Committee on Understanding Premature Birth and Assuring Healthy Out- comes. He served as vice chair of the Committee on the Possible Effects of Electromagnetic Fields on Biologic Systems. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and is currently an editor of Epidemiology. He was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine in 2007. Mehran Alaee, Ph.D., is a research scientist at Environment Canada, with a research focus on the sources and fate of persistent organic pollutants in the environment. He served as principal investigator for a study of the impact of polybrominated diphenyl ethers on the Canadian environment and the health of Canadians. He is a member of the International Advisory Board for Dioxin Symposia as well as the International Advisory Board for Brominated Flame Retardants workshops. He was co-chair for Dioxin 2005, the 25th International Symposium on Halogenated Environmental 136

APPENDIX C 137 Organic Pollutants and Persistent Organic Pollutants, as well as for BFR 2004, the 3rd International Symposium on Brominated Flame Retardants in the Environment. He coordinates the Environmental Interest Group of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry and serves on the editorial board for Chemosphere (Persistent Organic Pollutants and Dioxins sec- tion). Dr. Alaee received his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the Univer- sity of Guelph, Ontario. Francesca Dominici, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Univer- sity. Dr. Dominici has extensive experience in the development of statisti- cal ­ methods and their applications to clinical trials, toxicology, biology, and environmental epidemiology. Dr. Dominici has led the development of s ­ tatistical and epidemiological methods for analyzing a national database on air pollution, weather, and mortality. She is a member of the American S ­ tatistical Association and the International Biometric Society. Dr. Dominici is the recipient of the first Walter A. Rosenblith Young Investigator Award from The Health Effects Institute of Boston, the 2001 Young Investigator Award of the American Statistical Association, and the 2006 Mortimer Spiegelman Award from the American Public Health Association. She earned her Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Padua, Italy. Dr. Dominici has served the National Academies as a member of the Committee on Gulf War and Health: Review of the Medical Literature Relative to Gulf War Veterans’ Health and the Committee to Assess Potential Health Effects from Expo- sures to PAVE PAWS Low-level Phased-array Radiofrequency Energy. Gurumurthy Ramachandran, Ph.D., is a professor in the Division of Envi- ronmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. His research interests include occupational and ambient exposure assessment, Bayesian methods in retrospective exposure assessment, expo- sure modeling, mathematical methods for analyzing occupational measure- ments, occupational hygiene decision making, and inhalation dosimetry for mixed exposures. Dr. Ramachandran has written extensively on occu- pational environmental assessment, including a textbook on occupational exposure assessment. He is a Certified Industrial Hygienist. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Tech- nology, Bombay; his M.S. in environmental engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; and his Ph.D. in environmental sciences and engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. William G. Seibert, M.A., is the senior archivist and chief of the Archival Operations Branch at the National Archives and Records Administration’s

138 PROXIMITY-BASED HERBICIDE EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis. He has worked with NARA’s collections of twentieth-century military personnel and medi- cal records for nearly 30 years and has wide knowledge of alternate record sources available for use in reconstructing military service and medical data. In July 2004 he was appointed chief of the Archival Operations and ­Facility Planning Branch of the Center’s newly established Archival Programs Divi- sion. As the Center’s preservation officer from 2000 to 2004, he was responsible for establishing NPRC’s archival preservation program, build- ing and equipping its preservation laboratories, and recruiting its 24-person staff of preservation specialists and technicians. Prior to 2000 he headed the Military Organizational Records Appraisal and Disposition Project at the Center. The purpose of this project, begun in 1976, is to identify and archive permanently valuable material contained in the Center’s 100,000- cubic-foot collection of mid-twentieth-century program and administrative records of Army, Air Force, and Navy field commands. Mr. Seibert served for two and one half-years in the U.S. Army. He received his A.B. in history from the College of William and Mary and his B.A. and M.A. in law from the University of Oxford. He was a charter member of the Academy of Certified Archivists and is affiliated with the Society of American Archivists and the Association of St. Louis Area Archivists. Leslie T. Stayner, Ph.D., is professor and director of the Division of Epide- miology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Before joining the university in 2003, Dr. Stayner was chief of the Risk Evaluation Branch, Education and Information Division, of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He also served as visiting scientist at the International Agency for Research in Cancer in Lyon, France, in 2001–2002. His research interests include occupational, environmental, and chronic disease epidemiology, epidemiologic methods, and risk assessment. Dr. Stayner is a fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, and he is a mem- ber of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, the American Public Health Association, and the International Commission on Occupational Health. He received his M.Sc. in Epidemiology and Occupational Health and Safety from the Harvard School of Public Health and his Ph.D. in epidemiology with a formal minor in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina. Dr. Stayner previously served on the National Research Council Committee on Human Health Risks of Trichloroethylene. Lance A. Waller, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Emory University. Dr. Waller’s research interests involve statistical analysis of spatial patterns in public health data. Past investigations include develop- ment of statistical tests of spatial clustering in disease incidence data and

APPENDIX C 139 implementation of spatial and space–time Markov random field models for maps of disease rates. He is currently investigating statistical methods to analyze environmental exposure, demographic, and disease incidence data linked through geographic information systems (GISs). His ongo- ing research projects involve assessment of environmental justice, local measures of health disparities, and the distribution of epidermal nerve fibers in the skin. Dr. Waller earned his Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University. He has served the National Academies as a member of the Committee to Assess Potential Health Effects from Exposures to PAVE PAWS Low-level Phased-array Radiofrequency Energy and the Com­ mittee on Review of Existing and Potential Standoff Explosives Detection Techniques. Mary H. Ward, Ph.D., is an investigator in the Occupational and Environ- mental Epidemiology Branch in the Division of Cancer ­Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute. Her research interests include cancer risks associated with environmental exposure to pesticides and other chemicals; and the role that N-nitroso compounds and their ­ precursors play in cancer development, particularly exposure to nitrate from drinking water and diet. Cancers of specific interest include childhood ­ leukemia, non-­Hodgkin’s lymphoma, colorectal, and stomach cancer. Dr. Ward has incorporated state-of-the art exposure assessment into her studies by developing interdisciplinary collaborations with environmental scientists, environ­mental engineers, hydrogeologists, geographers, and biostatisticians to estimate exposure to environmental contaminants based on environ- mental monitoring data, land use maps, and geographic fate and transport models. She received an M.S. in ecology from the University of Tennessee and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and ­Public Health. Dr. Ward serves as an associate editor for Environmental Health Perspectives and on the EPA Board of Scientific Counselor’s Drink- ing Water Subcommittee, which reviews EPA’s drinking water research program. Thomas F. Webster, D.Sc., is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health and deputy director and a principal investigator of the Boston University Superfund Basic Research Program. His research interests include ­methods in environmental epidemiology (particularly spatial epidemiology and eco- logic bias) and application of mathematical modeling to toxicology and epidemiology. A second major research interest involves the sources, fate, and hazards of dioxins and other persistent organic compounds. A current project investigates exposure routes and body burdens of polybrominated diphenyl ethers. Dr. Webster served on the organizing committee for Dioxin

140 PROXIMITY-BASED HERBICIDE EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT 2003, the 23rd International Symposium on Halogenated Environmental Organic Pollutants and Persistent Organic Pollutants, and on the NRC Committee on Fluoride in Drinking Water. Susan R. Woskie, Ph.D., is professor in the Department of Work Environ- ment, School of Health and Environment, at the University of Massachu- setts at Lowell. Her research interests include exposure assessment for occupational epidemiologic studies, biomarkers of exposure, toxicokinetic modeling, and developing methods to integrate total exposure assessment into epidemiology and risk assessment. Dr. Woskie serves on the edito- rial board of the American Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene and on the advisory panel for the Agricultural Health Study, which is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Environmental Protection Agency. She was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Agent Orange and Herbicides (Second Biennial Update) and the Committee to Review the Evidence Regarding the Link between Exposure to Agent Orange and Dia- betes. She received her M.Sc. in environmental health/industrial hygiene at the Harvard School of Public Health and her Ph.D. in biomedical science/ industrial hygiene from Clark University.

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A fundamental challenge in past studies evaluating whether health problems experienced by Vietnam veterans might be linked to wartime use of Agent Orange or other herbicides has been a lack of information about the veterans' level of exposure to these herbicides. To address that problem, researchers developed a model to assess the opportunity for herbicide exposure among these veterans.

The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans presents the conclusions and recommendations of an Institute of Medicine committee (IOM) that was convened to provide guidance to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) about the best use of a model to characterize exposure to the troops based on their proximity to herbicide spraying in Vietnam. This book's assessment is guided by four primary considerations: to be clear about what the assessment model does and does not claim to do; to gain understanding of the strengths and limitations of data on herbicide spraying, troop locations, and health outcomes; to consider whether the model locates spraying and troops accurately to consider the potential contributions and pitfalls of using it in epidemiologic studies. Of particular interest in these deliberations were the degree to which exposure classification might be improved if the model were to be used, and the appropriate interpretation of the results of any such studies.

In light of the questions that remain concerning herbicide exposure and health among Vietnam veterans and the array of evidence that has thus far been brought to bear on that issue, The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans concludes that the application of this model offers a constructive approach to extending knowledge about the effects of herbicides on the health of these veterans and merits the initial steps recommended in our report.

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