Appendix D
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members
Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D. (Chair), is Elizabeth K. Dollard professor of psychiatry, medicine, and law and director of the Division of Psychiatry, Law, and Ethics in the Department of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a research psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and an affiliated faculty member at Columbia Law School. He directs Columbia’s Center for Research on Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Psychiatric, Neurologic, and Behavioral Genetics, and heads the Clinical Research Ethics Core for Columbia’s Clinical and Translational Science Award program. Dr. Appelbaum is the author of many articles and books on law and ethics in clinical practice and research, including four that were awarded the Manfred S. Guttmacher Award from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. He is past president of the APA and of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. He has twice served as chair of the APA Council on Psychiatry and Law and of the APA Committee on Judicial Action, and he currently chairs the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Steering Committee. He was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Networks on Mental Health and the Law and on Mandatory Outpatient Treatment and is a network scholar for the Network on Neuroscience and Law. Dr. Appelbaum has received the APA’s Isaac Ray Award for “outstanding contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence,” was Fritz Redlich fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine. He performs forensic evaluations in civil and criminal cases and treats patients with a broad variety of problems.
Dr. Appelbaum is a graduate of Columbia College, received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and completed his residency in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center/Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Karen E. Anderson, M.D., M.P.H., is an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology and director of the Huntington’s Disease Care, Education and Research Center at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. She sees adult patients and families dealing with behavioral symptoms caused by neurological conditions such as Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and brain injuries. Her work combines her lifelong interest in behavior with an interest in understanding how disease can affect the brain and cause behavioral symptoms. In addition to seeing patients and their families, Dr. Anderson is active in research. She is currently co-principal investigator for clinical trials studying medications for Huntington’s disease and for tardive dyskinesia, a neurological disorder. She also is involved in research to develop treatment for the behavioral symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, brain injury, and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Anderson is on the executive committee of the Huntington Study Group, a collaborative organization of physicians and health care providers from around the world who are dedicated to clinical research on Huntington’s disease. She received her medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and her M.P.H. from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
María P. Aranda, Ph.D., joined the University of Southern California (USC) School of Social Work faculty in 1995 and holds a joint appointment with the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Her research and teaching interests address the interplay among chronic illness, social resources, and psychological well-being in low-income minority populations. Dr. Aranda has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on several key studies funded by and/or in collaboration with the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Southern California-Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), the John A. Hartford Foundation/the Gerontological Society of America, the National Institute of Rehabilitation and Research, the Alzheimer’s Association/Health Resources and Services Administration, the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, and the California Community Foundation. Overall, her research addresses psychosocial care for adult and late-life psychiatric disorders, linguistic and cultural adaptations of behavioral health services, and evidence-based interventions. Dr. Aranda has 30 years of licensed clinical experience in providing assessment and treatment services to middle-aged and older adults with comorbid medical and psychiatric illness. She has served on
local and national boards and committees dedicated to the enhancement of practice, policy, research, and advocacy related to historically underrepresented minority populations. Dr. Aranda received her undergraduate degree in social work from the California State University, Los Angeles. She obtained her M.S.W., M.P.A., and Ph.D. from USC.
Nancy Bagatell, Ph.D., OTR/L, is an associate professor in the Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the Ph.D. program. Her research interests focus on adolescents and the transition to adulthood and independent living and on community participation in adults with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities. As an occupational scientist, she studies how sociocultural, contextual, and political phenomena facilitate and inhibit engagement in everyday occupation. Currently, Dr. Bagatell is an investigator on a longitudinal study of outcomes for adults with autism spectrum disorders and on a study focused on community integration of adults with cerebral palsy. Additionally, she is a member of an interdisciplinary team conducting research to support the development of a comprehensive service for adolescents with cerebral palsy and their families. She has worked clinically in mental health settings and with individuals with autism spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities across the life span in schools, homes, and the community. Dr. Bagatell served on the Autism Advisory Council for the State of Connecticut and worked extensively with the Connecticut Autism Resource Center. She holds a bachelor’s degree in music performance from Indiana University and obtained both her M.A. in occupational therapy and her Ph.D. in occupational science from the University of Southern California.
Julie Birkenmaier, Ph.D., M.S.W., LCSW, is a professor at the Saint Louis University School of Social Work. Her research, publishing, and teaching are focused on financial capability and credit, social work practice, and older adults. She is the senior editor of Financial Education and Capability: Research, Education, Policy, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Educating for Social Justice: Transformative Experiential Learning (Lyceum Books, 2011). She is co-author of The Practice of Generalist Social Work (3rd ed., Routledge, 2014) and The Practicum Companion for Social Work: Integrating Class and Field Work (3rd ed., Allyn & Bacon, 2011). Dr. Birkenmaier is a licensed clinical social worker. She received her M.S.W. from Saint Louis University and holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
Nancy Neveloff Dubler, LL.B., is an attorney and a professor emerita of bioethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She was founder and
director of the Division of Bioethics at Montefiore Medical Center. She is presently ethics consultant to the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and an adjunct professor at New York University Langone Medical Center, Division of Bioethics. Professor Dubler has written about end-of-life care, AIDS, geriatrics, prison and jail health care, research ethics, clinical ethics consultation, and bioethics mediation. She has consulted widely with academic medical centers and is a member of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law and the New York State Stem Cell Ethics Research Board.
Laura B. Dunn, M.D., is director of the Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship Training Program and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She is board certified in psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry. She has served as secretary/treasurer and a board member of the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry and is a member of the American College of Psychiatrists and the American Psychosocial Oncology Society. Dr. Dunn has extensive research and clinical experience in the evaluation and management of older adults with mood, anxiety, and cognitive disorders. She also has extensive research and clinical expertise in psycho-oncology. She is an internationally recognized expert in the study of ethical issues in clinical research (e.g., informed consent, decision-making capacity, and influences on research participation). Her research has examined ethical issues in psychiatric research and in clinical research more generally, with a focus on potentially vulnerable individuals. Her work has included randomized trials of novel methods for enhancing the informed consent process for research and assessments of potential participants’ understanding of key aspects of research participation. Dr. Dunn has published extensively on empirical ethics issues in vulnerable populations. Her psycho-oncology research focuses on identifying patterns and predictors in the longitudinal course of psychological symptoms in cancer patients, as well as on developing and testing novel interventions for pervasive symptoms. She has served as a principal investigator, co-investigator, or consultant on many National Institutes of Health–funded and foundation-funded studies on issues in empirical ethics, geriatric psychiatry, and psycho-oncology.
Alan M. Jette, P.T., M.P.H., is director of the Health & Disabilities Research Institute and professor of health policy and management at the Boston University School of Public Health. His research interests include late-life exercise; evaluation of rehabilitation treatment outcomes; and the measurement, epidemiology, and prevention of disability. Dr. Jette is an international expert in the development and dissemination of contemporary outcome measurement instruments for evaluating health care quality and
outcomes, and has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles on these topics. He currently directs a project entitled “Use of Computer Adaptive Testing to Assist with the Social Security Work Disability Determination Process.” He and his collaborators in the Department of Rehabilitation at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center are assisting the U.S. Social Security Administration in improving its work disability determination process by analyzing existing Social Security datasets and developing new measures to be used within the process. Currently, Dr. Jette directs the Boston Rehabilitation Outcome Measurement Center, funded by the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research/NIH; serves on the Executive Committee of the Boston Claude Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, funded by National Institute on Aging/NIH; and is project director of the New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center, funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR). For the past 13 years, he has directed the Boston University PostDoctoral Fellowship Program in Outcomes Research, funded by NIDRR, and from 1996 to 2004 he served as dean of Boston University’s Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences. He also has served on a number of Institute of Medicine and National Research Council study committees addressing issues in disability and rehabilitation, including the recent consensus study on the role of psychological testing in the Social Security Administration disability determination process. Dr. Jette has served as well on several international panels. In 2013, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He received a B.S. in physical therapy from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1973 and an M.P.H. (1975) and a Ph.D. (1979) in public health from the University of Michigan.
David A. Loewenstein, Ph.D., is professor and director of neuropsychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami School of Medicine. He formerly served as director of research for the Wien Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Florida. His research interests include the effects of exercise and cognitive training in mild cognitive impairment, cognitive testing in mild cognitive impairment and dementia, and predictors of progression from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. Dr. Loewenstein has a number of research interests centering on the early detection of early cognitive impairment in neurodegenerative and other brain disorders; the development of novel cognitive and functional measures; and the relationships among neuropsychological measures, neuroimaging, and other biomarkers of early Alzheimer’s disease. He and other investigators in his laboratory have been involved in developing cognitive and functional interventions for normal elderly patients, as well as those with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Dr. Loewenstein is a board-certified neuropsychologist.
He received both an M.S. in psychology and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Florida State University.
Marc A. Norman, Ph.D., is a clinical professor of medical neuropsychology and director of the Neuropsychiatry/Epilepsy Clinical Evaluation Program at the University of California, San Diego, providing pre- and postsurgery evaluations and intracarotid amytal procedure cognitive testing. He also conducts intraoperative (awake) language testing for the epilepsy and brain tumor surgery groups and provides assessments for the heart/lung, kidney/ pancreas, and liver transplant teams. Dr. Norman’s general practice includes assessments for traumatic brain injury, stroke, concussion, dementia, memory disorders, multiple sclerosis, and a variety of other cognitive issues. He was elected as a fellow and is on the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Neuropsychology. He also serves on the Professional Advisory Board for the Epilepsy Foundation of America San Diego Chapter, and holds several other national positions. Dr. Norman received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology, with emphasis in neuropsychology, from Brigham Young University. He is a board-certified neuropsychologist and holds a diplomate in clinical neuropsychology from the American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology.
Eldar Shafir, Ph.D., is William Stewart Tod professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University and is co-founder and scientific director of ideas42, a social science research and development lab. He studies decision making, cognitive science, and behavioral economics. His recent research has focused on decision making in contexts of poverty and on the application of behavioral research to policy. He is past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Behavioral Economics Roundtable, and a senior fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Dr. Shafir was a member of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, and is currently vice-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Behaviour. He was named one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013. Dr. Shafir has held visiting positions at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, the Kennedy School of Government, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Hebrew University Institute for Advanced Studies, Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, DiTella University in Buenos Aires, and Oxford University. He received his B.A. from Brown University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kelly A. Thompson, Esq., has worked in the trusts and estates field since 1977, as both a trust banker and a trusts and estates attorney. Since 1995 her practice has focused on planning for persons with special needs. She
serves as trustee, guardian, and representative payee for individuals with disabilities. She is a director of the Special Needs Alliance, a national group of attorneys serving the legal needs of individuals with a disability. She is a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and is regularly listed among Best Lawyers, Super Lawyers, and Washingtonian Top Lawyers. Ms. Thompson received her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and her juris doctor degree from the Fordham University School of Law. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, New York, and Virginia.
