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Committee Member Biographies
David W. Fleming, M.D. (Chair, March 2009-February 2010), is the Director of the Department of Public Health in Seattle & King County. Previously in his career, Dr. Fleming directed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Strategies Program, served as the Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, and was the State Epidemiologist for the Oregon Health Division. Dr. Fleming has published on a wide range of public health issues, and he has served on multiple boards and commissions, including the Board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. He has served on numerous Institute of Medicine (IOM) committees, including the Committee on Training Physicians for Public Health Careers, the Committee on the Elimination of Tuberculosis in the United States, and the Panel on Performance Measures for Data and Public Health Performance Partnership Grants. Dr. Fleming received his M.D. from the State University of New York Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse. He is board certified in internal medicine and preventive medicine and serves on the faculty of the Departments of Public Health at both the University of Washington and Oregon Health Sciences University.
Howard Koh, M.D., M.P.H. (Chair, January-March 2009), was the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health and Associate Dean for Public Health Practice in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health while serving on this committee. Dr. Koh’s research interests include exploring community-based strategies to reduce cancer disparities and promote cancer prevention and
early detection, as well as tobacco control. Previously, he served as Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health to advance projects with a broad array of state and national organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. He is a member of the IOM and has participated in a number of IOM activities. Dr. Koh received his M.D. from Yale University and his M.P.H. from the Boston University School of Public Health.
Ana V. Diez-Roux, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., is Professor of Epidemiology, Director of the Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities, and Associate Director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. Her research interests include social epidemiology, cardiovascular disease epidemiology, air pollution and cardiovascular risk, race and ethnic disparities, and systems approaches in population health. She has published extensively on a variety of public health issues, including the relationship between communities and cardiovascular risk factors and exposure to particulate matter and subsequent development of atherosclerosis, among others. Dr. Diez-Roux earned a Ph.D. and M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. She also earned an M.D. from the University of Buenos Aires in 1985.
Jiang He, M.D., Ph.D., is Joseph S. Copes Chair and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Tulane University. His research interests include the etiology and prevention of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and stroke; ethnic and gender differences in chronic disease and international comparisons of disease; and gene and environment interaction on hypertension and other cardiovascular disease. He has published extensively on a variety of topics including cardiovascular disease risk factors. Dr. He earned his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, his Dr.Med.Sc. from Peking Union Medical College, and his M.D. from Jiangxi Medical College in Jiangxi, China.
Kathy Hebert, M.D., M.P.H., M.M.M., is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine. She received her medical degree from Louisiana State University School of Medicine and completed fellowships in cardiology/nuclear medicine from the Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation in Louisiana. Dr. Hebert also holds an M.M.M. degree from the Tulane School of Public Health and an M.P.H. degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. Before joining the University of Miami, Dr. Hebert was the state task force director for congestive heart failure disease management at the Louisiana State University Health
Care Services Division and Director of Cardiology at the Chabert Medical Center in Louisiana.
Corinne Husten, M.D., M.P.H., was the Vice President for Programs and Policy at the Partnership for Prevention while working on this committee. Partnership for Prevention is a nonprofit devoted to improving the lives of all Americans through prevention. Previously, she served as Chief of the Epidemiology Branch and as Acting Director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Some of her accomplishments include serving as the scientific lead for developing the Healthy People 2010 tobacco control objectives, leading the release of the Surgeon General’s report on second-hand smoke, developing “Best Practices” for tobacco prevention and control, serving on the guideline panel for the Public Health Service “Treating tobacco use and dependence” guideline, providing technical assistance to the Community Preventive Services Task Force guideline recommendations on tobacco, and helping plan tobacco-free campus initiatives at the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Husten received her M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine and her M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. She is currently Senior Medical Advisor for the Center for Tobacco Products at the Food and Drug Administration.
Sherman A. James, Ph.D., is the Susan B. King Professor of Public Policy Studies and also Professor of Sociology and Community and Family Medicine at Duke University. Dr. James, a social epidemiologist, studies the social determinants of racial disparities in health and health care, particularly in cardiovascular disease and diabetes. He is a member of the IOM (elected in 2000) and served on the Committee for Review and Assessment of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s Strategic Plan to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities. Dr. James earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from Washington University in St. Louis.
Thomas G. Pickering, M.D., D.Phil., was the Director of the Behavioral Cardiovascular Health and Hypertension Program at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Pickering’s extensive research focuses on hypertension, psychosocial factors and cardiovascular disease, and delivery of effective care. His research contributions include the recognition of white coat hypertension as a clinically important entity of behavioral origin, the role of job strain in the development of hypertension, and the use of ambulatory and home blood pressure monitoring for evaluating the causes and consequences of hypertension. He has authored more than 550 scientific articles and chapters and recently served on the IOM Committee on Gulf War and Health: Physiologic, Psychologic, and Psychosocial Effects of Deployment-
Related Stress. Dr. Pickering served on numerous editorial boards of hypertension and behavioral medicine journals. In addition, he has served on several NIH task forces. He received his M.D. from Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London and his D.Phil. from Linacre College, Oxford University.
Geoffrey Rosenthal, M.D., Ph.D., is a pediatric cardiologist and currently a Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Pediatric Heart Program at the Department of Pediatrics, Cardiology Division, University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Rosenthal was previously the Director of the Pediatric Cardiovascular Research group at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Rosenthal has served on numerous committees including the Pediatric Advisory Committee for the Food and Drug Administration and as co-chair of the Quality Improvement Working Group of the Section on Adult Congenital and Pediatric Cardiology of the American College of Cardiology. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr.P.H., is the Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition in the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Willett is also the Chair of the Department of Nutrition. Dr. Willett’s research primarily involves the investigation of dietary factors, using epidemiologic approaches, in the cause and prevention of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other important conditions. Fundamental to this work has been the development of methods to measure dietary intake in large populations. In addition, Dr. Willett continues to work on the development and evaluation of biological markers of dietary intake, particularly using plasma and toenail samples. These biological indicators are primarily utilized in nested case control studies using the large specimen banks collected prospectively as part of ongoing studies. Dr. Willett is a member of the IOM. Dr. Willett received his M.D. from the University of Michigan in 1970 and his Dr.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1980.