Appendix B
Biographic Information on the Committee on Health Impact Assessment
Richard J. Jackson (Chair) is a professor and chair of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has worked extensively on the impact of the environment on public health, and over the last decade much of his work has focused on how the built environment affects health. In 2004, he was co-author of Urban Sprawl and Public Health. Dr. Jackson is currently working on policy analyses of environmental impacts on health, from chemical body burdens to climate change to urban design. In addition, he is evaluating the effects of farming, education, housing, and transportation policies on health. Dr. Jackson chaired the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Environmental Health and recently served on the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects. He serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Environmental Research, and Public Health Reports. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine and of the National Research Council Committee on “Sustainable” Products and Services. Dr. Jackson earned his MD from the University of California, San Francisco.
Dinah Bear is an attorney at law in Washington, DC, and previously served for over 25 years on the president’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). She joined CEQ as deputy general counsel in 1981, was appointed general counsel in January 1983, and served in that capacity until October 1993. She resumed that position in January 1995 and was with CEQ until her retirement from government at the end of 2007. At CEQ, she was responsible for interpreting the legal requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and assisted in overseeing the implementation of NEPA throughout the executive branch. Ms. Bear currently serves on the board of Defenders of Wildlife; Humane Borders, a faith-based organization based in Tucson, Arizona; and the Mt. Graham Coalition, and is an adviser to the Center for International Environmental Law. Ms.
Bear earned her J.D. from McGeorge School of Law and has been admitted to practice by the District of Columbia Bar, the State Bar of California, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She has chaired the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Environmental Law and the District of Columbia Bar Association’s Section on Environment and Natural Resources. She has received the award for Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy from the American Bar Association.
Rajiv Bhatia is director of occupational and environmental health for the San Francisco Department of Public Health and holds a clinical appointment at the University of California, San Francisco. He is responsible for developing, implementing, and evaluating environmental health policy in San Francisco. Under Dr. Bhatia’s leadership, the Department of Public Health has expanded environmental-health practice to ensure safe and adequate housing, to support worker health rights, to enhance connections between regional agriculture and urban consumers, and to integrate public health and urban planning. As part of those initiatives, the department is developing and evaluating tools for health impact assessment (HIA) and has conducted HIA on local land-use and transportation plans and projects, local and state workplace and employment regulations, regional maritime-port development proposals, and California state climate-change mitigation strategies. Dr. Bhatia developed and currently teaches a graduate course on HIA at the University of California, Berkeley and regularly conducts HIA training for peers; federal, state, and local public institutions; and community organizations. He is a co-founder and scientific director of the nonprofit Human Impact Partners, which conducts HIA and HIA training and facilitation for other organizations. Dr. Bhatia was a founding member of the Health and Social Justice Team for the National Association of County and City Health Officials and is a former board member of the Pesticide Action Network and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network. Dr. Bhatia earned an MD from Stanford University and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley.
Scott B. Cantor is a professor in the Section of Health Services Research in the Department of Biostatistics of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He also holds adjunct-professor positions in The University of Texas Health Science Center in the Houston School of Public Health and Rice University, and he is a faculty member for the Program in Biomathematics and Biostatistics of The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Houston. Dr. Cantor’s research focuses on the theoretical issues concerning cost-effectiveness analysis and diagnostic testing and on clinical issues in cancer prevention, particularly prostatic-cancer screening and cervical-precancer diagnosis. He is a past president of the Society for Medical Decision Making and is a member of the Decision Analysis Society, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. Dr. Cantor earned a PhD in decision sciences from Harvard University.
Ben Cave is chief executive of Ben Cave Associates. He has specialized in health and social impact assessment for the last 13 years. His work has two broad themes. The first addresses health in statutory assessments. On a policy level, he advises the World Health Organization and the UK Department of Health on requirements and methods for strategic environmental assessment. On a project level, he leads health impact assessments in conjunction with environmental assessments in a wide variety of sectors. The second major theme of his work is to improve the consideration of health issues in the wider planning process and the consideration of environmental issues by health stakeholders. Mr. Cave is associated with several professional organizations and is the chair of the Health Section of the International Association for Impact Assessment and an associate member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment. He earned an MSc in health-promotion sciences from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Ana V. Diez Roux is a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health in the School of Public Health, a research professor in the Survey Research Center in the Institute for Social Research, and director of the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program at the University of Michigan. Dr. Diez Roux has been an international leader in the investigation of the social determinants of health, the application of multilevel analysis in health research, and the study of neighborhood health effects. Her research includes social epidemiology and health disparities, environmental-health effects, urban health, psychosocial factors in health, cardiovascular-disease epidemiology, social environment-gene interactions, and the use of complex systems approaches in population health. She serves on numerous review and advisory committees, was awarded the Wade Hampton Frost Award for her contributions to public health by the American Public Health Association, and was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2009. Dr. Diez Roux received an MD from the University of Buenos Aires and a master’s degree in public health and a doctorate in health policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Carlos Dora is coordinator of a global program on health impact assessment in the Public Health and the Environment Department of the World Health Organization (WHO). He leads a unit on interventions for healthy environments that is focused on improving the health consequences of policies in different sectors of the economy. Earlier, Dr. Dora had developed a program on the environmental health implications of transport policies and worked on policy frameworks for environmental health, including the Strategic Environmental Assessment Protocol and Environment and Health Performance Reviews, and on risk assessment, including assessment related to the Chernobyl disaster and depleted uranium. He also served as a senior policy analyst at the office of the WHO director general. Dr. Dora earned a PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Jonathan E. Fielding is the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and the county health officer and is responsible for all public-health functions, such as surveillance and control of both communicable and noncommunicable diseases and health protection, including emergency preparedness, for the county’s 10 million residents. He is also a member of the Los Angeles First 5 Commission, which grants over $100 million per year to improve the health and development of children 0-5 years old. Dr. Fielding chairs the U.S. Community Preventive Services Task Force and was a founding member of the U.S. Clinical Preventive Services Task Force. He also chairs the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2020 and was appointed to the California Department of Public Health Advisory Board. Dr. Fielding is a professor in the Schools of Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the author of over 175 peer-reviewed publications, editorials, and book chapters on public health, health policy, health economics, emergency preparedness, and evidence-based public-health practice issues. He has been the principal investigator on grants to develop health impact assessment methods and to use them in assessing the health effects of existing or proposed policies in other sectors. He is editor of the Annual Review of Public Health and chairman of Partnership for Prevention. He also serves on the board of the American Legacy Foundation and is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine. He formerly served as Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health and vice president of Johnson & Johnson. Dr. Fielding has received numerous awards, including the Sedgwick Memorial Medal from the American Public Health Association, the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from the Harvard School of Public Health, and the UCLA Medal, which is the university’s highest honor. He received his MD and MPH from Harvard University and an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of Business.
Joshua Graff Zivin is an associate professor of economics in the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and research director for international environmental and health studies at the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation. From 2004 to 2005, he served as senior economist for health and the environment for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Before joining the faculty at UCSD, Dr. Graff Zivin was an associate professor of economics in the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. Dr. Graff Zivin’s research spans three fields of economics—health, the environment, and international development—and focuses on how uncertainty and heterogeneity affect both individual and societal decision-making. He is currently engaged in three large projects. The first makes use of primary data collected over the last several years to examine the economic impacts of the AIDS crisis in Africa. The second relies on a unique, matched dataset to understand the role of institutions, social
networks, and financial incentives in the production of new scientific knowledge in the life sciences. The third examines behavioral responses to poor air quality and its implications for the economic costs of climate change. Dr. Graff Zivin earned his PhD from University of California, Berkeley.
Jonathan I. Levy is professor of environmental health at Boston University School of Public Health. Dr. Levy’s research centers on developing models for quantitative assessment of the environmental and health impacts of air pollution from local to national scales, with a focus on urban environments and variability in exposures and risks. Current research efforts involve developing methods for cumulative risk assessment, addressing chemical and nonchemical stressors in a low-income community, modeling spatial and temporal patterns of air pollution associated with traffic and aircraft, and assessing the influence of indoor environmental interventions on pediatric asthma. Dr. Levy was the recipient of the Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator Award from the Health Effects Institute in 2005. He is a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Advisory Council on Clear Air Compliance Analysis and previously served as a member of the National Research Council Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Committee on the Effects of Changes in New Source Review Programs for Stationary Sources of Air Pollutants. Dr. Levy earned an ScD in environmental science and risk management from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Julia B. Quint is a research scientist and retired as chief of the Hazard Evaluation System and Information Service in the Occupational Health Branch of the California Department of Public Health. She was involved in identifying and evaluating reproductive toxicants, carcinogens, and other workplace chemical hazards and in developing research projects and other strategies to protect workers, communities, and the environment from the hazards of toxic chemicals. Dr. Quint is a member of the California Environmental Contaminant Biomonitoring Program Scientific Guidance Panel and the California Environmental Protection Agency Green Ribbon Science Panel. She was also a member of the National Research Council Committee on Tetrachloroethylene. Dr. Quint received a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Southern California.
Samina Raja is associate professor of urban and regional planning and adjunct associate professor of health behavior at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. Her research focuses on planning and design for healthy communities, sustainable food systems, and the fiscal dimensions of planning. Her research on healthy communities examines the influence of the food and built environments on obesity and physical activity. Her interests in fiscal dimensions of planning pertain to the methods that planners use for measuring the fiscal impacts of land development. Dr. Raja’s service to the community and the planning profession is linked to her research interests. She is an active member of the Food Interest Group of the American Planning Association
and serves on the Board of Directors of the Community Food Security Coalition. Dr. Raja earned a PhD in urban and regional planning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Amy J. Schulz is associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education and associate director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health of the University of Michigan School of Public Health and associate research professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Dr. Schulz has a longstanding commitment and research record focused on the contributions of social factors to racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health. Her current research focuses on community-based participatory approaches to understanding social inequalities as they influence health disparities with a particular focus on the health of urban residents. Since 2000, her work has focused on understanding social determinants of obesity and cardiovascular disease in Detroit and evaluating the impacts of interventions to reduce them. She is principal investigator for the Lean & Green in Motown Project, which addresses associations between social and physical environments and risk factors associated with obesity and the Community Approaches to Cardiovascular Health intervention research project to improve cardiovascular health. She previously served as co-principal investigator for the Promoting Healthy Eating in Detroit project. In addition to directing a number of major studies of chronic conditions in multiethnic populations, she is a leader in the field of community-based participatory approaches to research and intervention design. She has been a frequent contributor to the published literature on racial and ethnic disparities in health, on contributions of social factors to health disparities, and on the active engagement of representatives of communities disproportionately affected by health risks in researching and developing interventions to improve health. Dr. Schulz received her PhD in sociology and her MPH in health behavior and health education from the University of Michigan.
Aaron A. Wernham is director of the health impact project at Pew Charitable Trusts. The project involves the creation of a new national center to promote the use of health impact assessment (HIA) and support the growth of the field in the United States. Dr. Wernham is a nationally recognized expert who has led HIA at the state and federal level and conducted HIA training for, collaborated with, and advised numerous health and environmental regulatory agencies on integrating HIA into their programs. Earlier, Dr. Wernham was a senior policy analyst with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, where he led the first successful efforts in the United States to integrate HIA formally into the federal environmental impact statement process. He also directed a collaborative state-tribal-federal working group on HIA and, with the assistance of this group, wrote HIA guidance for federal and state environmental regulatory and permitting efforts. Dr. Wernham received his MD from the University of California, San Francisco.
