Nancy E. Adler, Ph.D. (Co-Chair), is a professor of psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is also vice chair of the Department of Psychiatry and director of the Center for Health and Community. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. Her research spans two areas. One focuses on health behaviors, investigating why individuals engage in health-damaging behaviors and how their understanding of risk affects their choices. This research has primarily been in reproductive health, examining adolescent decision making regarding contraception, conscious and preconscious motivation for pregnancy, perceptions of risk of sexually transmitted diseases, and use of reproductive technologies for infertility. Her second area of work is on the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) on health and the role of psychosocial mediators. As chair of the MacArthur Foundation Network on SES and Health, her interests span levels of analysis to examine (1) how social, psychological, and biological factors associated with SES act together to determine the onset and progression of disease and (2) how the relationship of SES and health may differ depending on gender and ethnicity. She has been testing a measure of subjective social status (the MacArthur “ladder”), which is designed to capture an individual’s global sense of their status. One version of the ladder assesses standing on traditional SES indicators, whereas another assesses standing in one’s community. Both are showing strong associations with health outcomes across a range of populations.
William W. Stead, M.D. (Co-Chair), is associate vice chancellor for health affairs, chief strategy officer, and director of the Informatics Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Stead is the McKesson Foundation Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Professor of Medicine and a founding fellow of both the American College of Medical Informatics and the American Institute for Engineering in Biology and Medicine. He is a member of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and an elected member of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, and he served as president of the American College of Medical Informatics. Dr. Stead received a medical degree from Duke University, where he also completed specialty and subspecialty training in internal medicine and nephrology.
Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, Ph.D., M.D., M.A.S., is the Lee Goldman MD Endowed Chair in Medicine and a professor of medicine and of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is a general internist and attending physician at San Francisco General Hospital and the director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Bibbins-Domingo is an active researcher in preventive cardiology, the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease in young adults, and race and gender health and health care disparities. Her research has examined the development of cardiovascular risk factors in young adults, the effectiveness of screening and diagnostic tests for cardiovascular disease, and computer-simulated projections of future cardiovascular disease trends and the impact of public health and clinical interventions on cardiovascular disease prevention. She is an inducted member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Dr. Bibbins-Domingo received an undergraduate degree in molecular biology and public policy from Princeton University and a medical degree, a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and master’s of clinical research from UCSF.
Patricia Flatley Brennan, R.N., Ph.D., F.A.A.N., is professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Moehlman Bascom Professor in Nursing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Dr. Brennan’s work ranges from the development and evaluation of computer networks as a mechanism for delivering nursing care to homebound ill persons and their caregivers to stimulating innovation in personal health records, with particular attention to patient-defined and patient-generated data. Her most current projects include exploring how individuals and families manage health information in their homes and evaluating the adoption of novel health information technology architectures. She has served on the Board on Mathematical Sciences and Their Application of the National Academy
of Sciences and on several Institute of Medicine (IOM) committees, including the Committee on Enhancing the Internet for Biomedical Applications: Technical Requirements and Implementation Strategies (1998 to 2000) and the Committee on the Review of the Adoption and Implementation of Health IT Standards by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (2007). Dr. Brennan is fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (1991) and the American College of Medical Informatics (1993). She has been an IOM member since 2001. Dr. Brennan has a Ph.D. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and received an M.S.N. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ana Diez-Roux, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., is dean of the Drexel University School of Public Health. She was formerly a professor and chair of epidemiology and director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She is also a research professor in the Survey Research Center in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. She received an M.P.H. and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University of School of Hygiene and Public Health and an M.D. from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Dr. Diez-Roux’s research interests and projects focus on social epidemiology, neighborhood health effects, racial and ethnic disparities, and systems approaches in population health.
Christopher Forrest, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor of pediatrics and health care management at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He is a general pediatrician who has run inpatient units and primary health care centers. He leads a research center that focuses on the theory and measurement of health across the life course, value in pediatric health care, and development of a national pediatric learning health system. He provides leadership for a federally funded Pediatric Quality Measures Program Center of Excellence, a national program in pediatric learning health systems (which are dedicated to advancing the health of children through research, quality improvement, and informatics), the National Children’s Study health measurement network, and the National Institutes of Health’s Patient Reported Outcome Measurement Information System’s Executive Committee. Dr. Forrest received B.A. and M.D. degrees at Boston University as part of a dual-degree program and completed a Ph.D. in health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
James S. House, Ph.D., is the Angus Campbell Distinguished University Professor of Survey Research, Public Policy, and Sociology at the Univer-
sity of Michigan. His research interests include social psychology, political sociology, social structure and personality, psychosocial and socioeconomic factors in health, survey research methods, and American society. Dr. House has worked in sociology and social epidemiology to understand the effects of broader social structures and processes on people’s attitudes, behaviors, well-being, and especially health. His and his colleagues’ research has helped to demonstrate the adverse effects of occupational and other forms of stress on health and how social relationships and supports can buffer or mitigate the deleterious health effects of stress and promote health more generally. Over the past two decades he has focused on describing and understanding social disparities in health over time and the life course, especially by socioeconomic position. Dr. House is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine. He has served on the National Research Council’s Panel on Race, Ethnicity, and Health in Later Life. Dr. House received a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan.
George Hripcsak, M.D., M.S., is professor and chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics and director of Medical Informatics Services for New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia Campus. Dr. Hripcsak is a board-certified internist with degrees in chemistry, medicine, and biostatistics. He led the effort to create the Arden syntax, a language for representing health knowledge that has become a national standard. Dr. Hripcsak’s current research focus is on the clinical information stored in electronic health records (EHRs). Using data-mining techniques such as machine learning and natural language processing, he is developing the methods necessary to support clinical research and patient safety initiatives. As director of medical informatics services, he oversees a 7,000-user, 4 million-patient clinical information system and data repository. He is currently cochair of the Meaningful Use Workgroup of the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); it defines the criteria by which health care providers collect incentives for using EHRs. Dr. Hripcsak was elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics in 1995 and served on the Board of Directors of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). As chair of the AMIA Standards Committee, he coordinated the medical informatics community response to HHS for the health informatics standards rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Dr. Hripcsak chaired the National Library of Medicine’s Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee, and he is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the New York Academy of Medicine and a member of the Institute of Medicine. He has published more than 250 papers.
Mitchell H. Katz, M.D., is the director of the Los Angeles County, California, Department of Health Services, the second largest health system in the nation. Previously, he was the director of health for the City and County of San Francisco for 13 years. Prior to becoming the director in San Francisco, he served the department in a number of positions, including director of the AIDS Office and director of the Emergency Medical Services Agency. He practices medicine as a primary care doctor at the Edward R. Roybal Comprehensive Health Center.
Eric B. Larson, M.D., M.P.H., M.A.C.P., is vice president for research and executive director at Group Health Research Institute (GHRI). His research has changed how people think about healthy aging. Dr. Larson is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a national leader in geriatrics research. A general internist, Dr. Larson has pursued an array of research, ranging from clinical interests such as Alzheimer’s disease and genomics to health services research involving technology assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, and quality improvement. His research on aging includes a long-standing collaboration between Group Health and the University of Washington (UW) called the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study. ACT’s many groundbreaking results include news linking exercise to later onset of dementia. Several of Dr. Larson’s research projects are related to promoting successful aging and high functioning in seniors. With colleagues at UW, he is executive coproducer of the Art of Aging, a newsmagazine series on public television and the Internet. Dr. Larson strives to keep GHRI on the cutting edge of health research. He has provided leadership on several new initiatives, including serving as principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health roadmap project to expand the capacity of the HMO Research Network, launching GHRI research programs in health informatics and obesity, and evaluating the Medical Home model at GHRI. In 2008, Dr. Larson facilitated GHRI’s inclusion in the UW’s new Northwest Institute for Genetic Medicine, a collaboration among local research institutions to support the translation of genetic research into clinical care. He has also established a formal affiliation agreement with the UW School of Public Health and strengthened the Institute’s relationship with its partners in the GHRI health care delivery system. Dr. Larson served as medical director for the UW Medical Center and associate dean for clinical affairs at its medical school from 1989 to 2002. He is a member and past president of the Society of General Internal Medicine, having received its highest honor, the Robert J. Glaser Award, in 2004. Dr. Larson is also a master of the American College of Physicians and served on its board of regents for nearly a decade, including one term as chair. He has been a commissioner on The Joint Commission since 1999.
Karen A. Matthews, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor of psychiatry and professor of epidemiology and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. For more than three decades, Dr. Matthews and her research group have investigated the psychosocial characteristics of individuals and their early life experiences that ultimately lead to coronary atherosclerosis and hypertension later in life. They have focused on two stages of the life span when change in cardiovascular risk reliably occurs, adolescence and mid-life, because change provides an optimal setting for observing how hormonal and other biological processes, social roles, and psychological characteristics interact to accelerate an individual’s cardiovascular risk. Their approach cannot rely on the methodologies and concepts from a single discipline or field because of the limitations of a single field and the nature of the scientific problem. Dr. Matthews and her research group thus benefit from the knowledge and methods derived from psychology, psychiatry, epidemiology, and cardiology. Dr. Matthews has published in scholarly journals and has received various honors and awards, including the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology and the American Psychosomatic Society President’s Award. In 2002, she became a member of the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Mathews earned a Ph.D. at the University of Texas, Austin.
David Ross, Sc.D., is director of the Public Health Informatics Institute. He became the director of All Kids Count, a program of the Institute supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), in 2000, and subsequently began the Institute, also with funding from RWJF. His experience spans the private health care and public health sectors. Before joining the Task Force, Dr. Ross was an executive with a private health information systems firm, a Public Health Service officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and an executive in a private health system. Dr. Ross holds a doctoral degree in operations research from Johns Hopkins University (1980), where he was involved in health services research. After serving as director of the Health Service Research Center, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, he became vice president for administration with the Wyman Park Health System. In 1983, he joined the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health. During his career at the CDC, he worked in environmental health, the CDC’s executive administration, and public health practice. Dr. Ross was founding director of the Information Network for Public Health Officials, the CDC’s national initiative to improve the information infrastructure of public health. His research and programmatic interests reflect those of the institute: the strategic application of information technologies to improve public health practice.
David R. Williams, Ph.D., M.P.H., is the Norman Professor of Public Health and a professor of African and African American Studies and of sociology at Harvard University. His prior academic appointments were at Yale and the University of Michigan. Dr. Williams is interested in the patterns, trends, and determinants of variations in disease and death by race and socioeconomic status. His research has examined the extent to which a broad range of social and psychological factors are linked to social status and can explain social variations in physical and mental health. He is especially interested in the complex ways in which social class and race/ethnicity combine to affect health and in identifying the mechanisms and processes by which racism, at both the societal and individual levels, can affect the incidence, prevalence, and course of disease. He is also a former member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics.
