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Committee Biographies

Dan G. Blazer, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H. (Chair), is the J. P. Gibbons Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Duke University. He served 9 years as chair of the Department of Psychiatry and dean of medical education at Duke School of Medicine. Dr. Blazer’s research interests include the epidemiology of late-life substance use disorders and depression, psychosocial predictors of adverse health outcomes, and trajectories of health outcomes. He has worked on the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (EPESE) and the National Comorbidity Study. He is the author or editor of 36 books, including The Age of Melancholy: Depression and Its Social Origins and a research methods textbook for clinical psychiatry research. He has produced a second edition of Emotional Problems in Later Life and authored or co-authored more than 200 published abstracts and more than 460 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Blazer was president of the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry and is a current member of the editorial board of JAMA Psychiatry. He has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine since 1995. Currently he is the chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (the Academies’) Board on the Health of Select Populations. He has served as a member or chair of many past Academies committees. He received the Walsh McDermott Award for Distinguished Service to the Institute of Medicine in 2014.

Brenda Battat, M.S., MCSP, is the retired executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA). During 24 years with the HLAA, 5 as executive director, she led nationwide advocacy efforts to change the way society views hearing loss, pushed for accessible and affordable hearing

health care and consumer choice in the marketplace, promoted hearing-friendly environments through technology such as looping and captioning, and successfully advocated for hearing-aid-compatible mobile products. She upheld the philosophy of self-help and encouraged and taught consumers to self-advocate. Ms. Battat has served on government, professional, and business advisory boards, including the U.S. Access Board’s Telecommunications Access Advisory Committee, the Federal Communications Commission’s Consumer/Disability Advisory Committee, the AT&T Advisory Panel on Access and Aging, the National Advisory Group—National Technical Institute for the Deaf, the American and Northwest Airlines Consumer Advisory Committees, and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Advisory Council of the National Institutes of Health. Ms. Battat received an M.S. in education from Indiana University and a B.Sc. in physical therapy from St. Mary’s Hospital, London, England. For her work she received the Sheldon Williams Itzkoff Leadership Award (2010); Robert H. Weitbrecht Telecommunications Access Award (2007); Oticon Focus on People Advocacy Award (2005); and Self Help for Hard of Hearing People National Access Award (2002).

Karen J. Cruickshanks, Ph.D., is a professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences and population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Her research program is studying the health problems of aging through epidemiological cohort studies. The Epidemiology of Hearing Loss Study (EHLS) is funded by the National Institute on Aging (AG11099) to study hearing, olfactory, and cognitive impairments in a population-based cohort of 3,500 older residents of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. The focus of this research is on the roles of inflammation and vascular factors on age-related disorders. The Beaver Dam Offspring Study funded by the National Institute on Aging follows the adult children of the EHLS to study generational differences in the risk of age-related sensorineural disorders. She is the director of the EpiSense Audiometry Reading Center which provides support for other cohort studies of hearing, including the Hispanic Community Health Study, a multicenter study of 16,000 Latinos, and the Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications study of hearing impairment. A major theme of her research is the links between subclinical atherosclerosis, inflammation, and the sensory and neurological disorders of aging. Dr. Cruickshanks has served on a number of Institute of Medicine committees, including the Committee on Gulf War and Health: Long-Term Effects of Blast Exposure.

Jennifer E. DeVoe, M.D., D.Phil., is a practicing family physician and doctorally trained health services researcher who studies access to health care,

disparities in care, and the impact of practice and policy interventions on vulnerable populations. Her research portfolio spans both Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Family Medicine and OCHIN, Inc., a health information technology network based in Portland, Oregon. Dr. DeVoe leads a multidisciplinary research team with expertise in informatics, sociology, epidemiology, biostatistics, economics, primary care, mental health, health-services research, clinical medicine, health care disparities, and anthropology. Using large health insurance claims, electronic health records (EHRs), and self-reported datasets, this OHSU/OCHIN team uses informatics and analytics to conduct policy-relevant and practice-relevant studies. Research findings inform community, practice, and policy interventions that help to improve the delivery of care for vulnerable populations and eliminate health disparities. Dr. DeVoe is chief research officer at OCHIN where she serves as executive director of the OCHIN practice-based research network of community health centers. Since 2004, Dr. DeVoe has led or supported more than 30 studies to conduct health services, primary care, and disparities research in primary care clinics in the OCHIN network. Dr. DeVoe is currently the principal investigator on six research studies funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute; the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; the National Cancer Institute; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with nearly $20 million in active grant funding. She also serves as the principal investigator of the ADVANCE Clinical Data Research Network, part of PCORnet, which is “horizontally” integrating outpatient EHR data, creating a unique community laboratory for including disadvantaged and vulnerable patients across the country. Dr. DeVoe earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1999. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar in 1996, she also earned an M.Phil. and D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1998 and 2001, respectively. She completed her family medicine residency at OHSU in 2004.

Judy R. Dubno, Ph.D., is a professor and the director of the Hearing Research Program in the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Her research, which is supported by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), focuses on auditory perception and speech recognition in adverse listening conditions and how perception changes with age, hearing loss, hearing aids, and training. She previously served on the NIDCD Advisory Council of the NIH, three Institute of Medicine committees, as President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, and as President and Vice President of the Acoustical Society of America. She is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Associa-

tion and the recipient of the James Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology.

Richard Ellenson, M.B.A., is chief executive officer of the Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation. He has spearheaded a major effort to transform basic health care for women with disabilities and developed a new initiative to use Kinect technology to provide an innovative gaming interface for people with disabilities. Prior to this, Mr. Ellenson was founder and chief executive officer of two assistive technology companies (Panther and Blink Twice) that helped transform the field of assistive technology for people with disabilities. He has worked tirelessly to create awareness about people with disabilities and to share stories about their vibrant lives. He and his son have been featured as ABC World News People of the Year, on CNBC’s Squawk Box, in a New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story, and as a feature on ESPN’s E:60. Prior to this work, he was an advertising executive who created campaigns for brands such as American Express and Remy Martin, and who penned the classic line, “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.” Mr. Ellenson has been honored with the 2012 Visionary Leadership Award from Resources for Children with Special Needs, as a Caregiver of the Year by United Cerebral Palsy of New York City, and by many other organizations within the world of disabilities. He has served on the Advisory Council of NIDCD and on the boards of the Center on Disabilities at California State University at Northridge, the United States Society for Alternative and Augmentative Communication, and the Assistive Technology Industry Association. He has also been the recipient of two NIH grants. He is a graduate of Cornell University and holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Barbara J. Evans, J.D., Ph.D., LLM, joined the University of Houston Law Center (UHLC) in 2007. She is the George Butler Research Professor and the director of the Center for Biotechnology and Law at UHLC and is an affiliated member of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. She was named a Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholar in Bioethics for the period 2010–2013 and conducts an active research agenda including projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Her research interests include governance, privacy, and financing issues with large health information networks; the regulation of genomic testing under FDA’s medical device regulatory framework and the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988; and legal barriers to the introduction of new medical technologies and care-delivery concepts. Earlier in her career, she was a partner in the international regulatory practice of a large New York law firm and subsequently advised clients on U.S. privacy, research, and medi-

cal device regulatory matters. Prior to joining the University of Houston Law Center, she was a research professor of medicine and the director of the Program in Pharmacogenomics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the Indiana University School of Medicine/Center for Bioethics. She holds an electrical engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin; M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University; a J.D. from Yale Law School; and an LLM in health law from the University of Houston; and she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical ethics at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Ellen J. Flannery, J.D., is a partner and past co-chair of Covington & Burling LLP’s global food and drug law practice group. She advises clients on regulatory strategies and compliance for medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and biological products. She has significant experience in successfully helping clients navigate the regulatory process. Ms. Flannery’s clients range from large multinational companies to development-stage companies, venture capital firms, clinical laboratories, and trade associations. She has experience with cutting-edge technologies, including, for example, companion diagnostics, software and mobile medical apps, imaging devices, combination products, and humanitarian use devices. She has successfully helped clients to develop strategic plans for obtaining FDA marketing clearance or approval; appeal from adverse determinations in investigational device exemption and 510(k) contexts; respond to FDA quality system inspections, including 483s and warning letters; and undertake product recalls. She has experience with Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments waiver applications and laboratory-developed tests. She advises clients on post-market reporting requirements and advertising and promotional issues. Ms. Flannery has served on Institute of Medicine committees that studied medical device and orphan drug matters, taught food and drug law seminars at three law schools, and regularly publishes and presents on regulatory developments. She is co-editor in chief of Covington’s InsideMedicalDevices blog.

Darrell J. Gaskin, Ph.D., is an internationally known expert in health care disparities, access to health care for vulnerable populations, and safety net hospitals. He is the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions. He seeks to identify and understand barriers to care for vulnerable populations and to develop and promote policies and practices that will improve access to care for the poor, minority, and other vulnerable populations and eliminate racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health care. His current projects explore the relationship between “place” and health care disparities and examine racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in hospital care. Dr. Gaskin’s research has been

published in Health Services Research (HSR), Health Affairs, Medical Care Research and Review, American Journal of Public Health, Medical Care, and Inquiry. Currently, he serves on the editorial boards of HSR, Medical Care Research and Review, and Medical Care. He served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Valuing Community-Based, Non-Clinical Prevention Programs and the Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the U.S. Health System. He is vice chair of the board of directors of Academy-Health and a member of the Center for Health Policy Development Board, the board of directors for the National Academy of State Health Policy. He is involved in federal and state health policy. He was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus Commission on the Budget Deficit, Economic Crisis, and Wealth Creation. He is a former member of the board of directors of the Maryland Health Insurance Plan, the state’s high-risk pool. He served as the vice chair of the board of directors of the Maryland Health Benefits Exchange Commission from 2011 to 2015.

William R. Hazzard, M.D., is a professor of internal medicine who has recently returned to the Wake Forest School of Medicine at the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His focus on aging began approximately 40 years ago in Seattle when, following training in endocrinology and metabolism and initiating the Northwest Lipid Research Clinic, he was asked to develop the program on gerontology and geriatric medicine at the University of Washington. Following a sabbatical year in the United Kingdom learning the British approach to geriatrics, he successively initiated programs in geriatrics at three American academic health centers, in so doing moving progressively toward the center of the Department of Internal Medicine as a Division Head at Washington, vice chairman at Hopkins, and finally in 1986 as chairman at Wake Forest, where his negotiated recruitment goal was specifically to “gerontologize” the department and the institution, notably from a newly designed and constructed Sticht Center on Aging, which opened in 1997. Now in semi-retirement, his greatest satisfaction continues to derive from promoting career development with a focus on aging across the life span with students, fellows, and faculty at the Sticht Center and as a leading institutional priority to witness how deeply and broadly its program has continued to expand throughout the university and community. Through all of this he remains fascinated by the question that first drew him to this field: Why do women live longer than men?

Frank R. Lin, M.D., Ph.D., is an associate professor of otolaryngology, geriatric medicine, mental health, and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Lin completed his medical education, residency in otolaryngology, and

Ph.D. in clinical investigation, all at Johns Hopkins. He completed further otologic fellowship training in Lucerne, Switzerland. Dr. Lin’s clinical practice is dedicated to otology and the medical and surgical management of hearing loss. His epidemiological research focuses on how hearing loss affects the health and functioning of older adults and the role of hearing rehabilitative strategies in potentially mitigating these effects. In particular, his research group has demonstrated that hearing loss in older adults is strongly and independently associated with the risk of cognitive decline, incident dementia, impairments in physical functioning and mobility, and greater health care resource utilization in multiple epidemiological studies. He collaborates extensively with researchers across multiple fields, including gerontology, cognitive neuroscience, audiology, and epidemiology, and he has collaborative working relationships with individuals in industry, government, and nonprofit advocacy organizations. In January 2014 he co-chaired for the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council a 2-day workshop on hearing loss and healthy aging in Washington, DC.

Nicole Marrone, Ph.D., CCC-A, holds the James S. and Dyan Pignatelli/Unisource Clinical Chair in Audiologic Rehabilitation for Adults at the University of Arizona and is an assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Her research investigates hearing loss and rehabilitation in adults, with a focus on reducing hearing health care disparities, maximizing communication access, and living well with hearing loss. Her laboratory-based research centers on understanding the effects of hearing loss and amplification on speech communication and memory; her community-based research efforts are focused on the implementation of group audiologic rehabilitation programs and rural health access. Dr. Marrone is the principal investigator of an interdisciplinary research project funded by NIDCD that is developing and testing the effectiveness of a community health worker program to increase access to hearing health care among older Spanish-speaking adults. Dr. Marrone earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in audiology from Boston University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University prior to joining the faculty at the University of Arizona in 2011. Dr. Marrone’s research is currently funded by the University of Arizona Foundation, the University of Arizona ConfluenCenter for Creative Inquiry, the SERTOMA Community Foundation, and NIH.

José A. Pagán, Ph.D., is the director of the Center for Health Innovation at the New York Academy of Medicine and a professor in the Department of Population Health Science and Policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health & Society Scholar with expertise in health economics and health ser-

vices research. Dr. Pagán received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of New Mexico, and he is also an adjunct senior fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Pagán has served as a consultant on health insurance coverage for the Institute of Medicine and is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the RWJF Health & Society Scholars Program. He is also a member of the board of directors of the American Society of Health Economists. Dr. Pagán was the principal investigator of a 3-year, $7.3 million Health Care Innovation Award from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to develop and implement the Brookdale Senior Living Transitions of Care Program. He was also a professor and the chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy, School of Public Health, University of North Texas Health Science Center.

Thomas Pippin, BC-HIS, has worked in the hearing health field as a hearing instrument specialist since 1967. From 1973 to 2014 he owned his own practice with multiple offices. He retired in 2014. Mr. Pippin served on the Wisconsin state licensing board for hearing instrument specialists for 10 years, serving as chairman of the board for 9 years. While serving on the board he worked to promote interdisciplinary teamwork in hearing health care. He was active for more than 23 years in working with the Wisconsin licensing exam, including testing oversight and a rewriting of the exam. Mr. Pippin has served on numerous state and national committees related to hearing health, particularly regarding licensing and regulation. His work has focused on consumer service and ensuring quality hearing health care. Mr. Pippin has an extensive collection of antique hearing aids and has written several books on the topic.

Katherine D. Seelman, Ph.D., is the associate dean of disability programs and a professor of rehabilitation science and technology at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Pittsburgh. She holds secondary appointments in the School of Public Health and the Center for Bioethics and an adjunct position at Xian Jiatong University, China. Formerly serving as co-research director, she became senior policy adviser for the National Science Foundation–supported Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center which is housed in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Seelman has a lifetime interest in science, technology, public policy, and disability. She is a member of the National Council on Disability and has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) blindness and deafness unit and to the World Bank. She was one of two from the United States serving on the WHO/World Bank’s nine-member international editorial committee to guide the development of the first World Report on Disability and presented a chapter

of the report, for which she was a principal section author, in 2011 at the United Nations. During the Clinton Administration, she served for 7 years as the director of the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research in Washington, DC. She was the recipient of the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Award in 2007. Dr. Seelman, who is hard of hearing, serves as adviser to the University’s Students for Disability Advocacy and is co-chair of the City of Pittsburgh-Allegheny County Task Force on Disability. She is widely published and the recipient of many awards.

Debara L. Tucci, M.D., M.S., M.B.A., is a professor of otolaryngology head and neck surgery, at Duke University. Dr. Tucci has a subspecialty practice in otology, neurotology, and skull base surgery, and she also conducts basic science and clinical research. Prior to medical school, she received an M.S. in audiology from the University of Michigan and worked as a clinical audiologist for 4 years at University of Virginia Hospital. She is co-principal investigator on an NIH–funded grant focused on establishing a network of academic and community-based research sites to conduct clinical research in hearing and balance disorders. In this effort she interfaces with the Duke Clinical Research Institute and has been able to access the resources of that institute for program development. She is also the principal investigator of a grant designed to develop a protocol for hearing screening of older adults in primary care practices and to investigate the need for medical evaluation of adults who are considering hearing aid purchase. Dr. Tucci’s leadership roles in professional societies include president of the American Auditory Society, secretary-treasurer and president of the American Neurotology Society, president of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, board of directors for the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, and research fund trustee and current president of the American Otological Society. She completed a year-long leadership training program, Executive Leadership for Academic Medicine, and holds an M.B.A. degree with a certificate in health sector management from the Duke Fuqua School of Business.

David A. Zapala, Ph.D., is an associate professor of audiology in the College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic Foundation. He is also a senior consultant in otorhinolaryngology and the chair of the Audiology Section at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. He is active in direct patient care; resident, fellow, and postdoctoral mentorship; clinical research; and clinical information management. From a research perspective, he has focused on mathematical modeling methods to improve audiological and vestibular diagnostics and quantify the functional consequences of hearing impairment. He also studies the perceptual and functional consequences of vestibular and bal-

ance disorders. Dr. Zapala received a master of science degree from Utah State University in 1983 and a Ph.D. from the University of Memphis in 1993. Early in his career he developed the Mid-South Lions Infant Hearing Center and the Methodist/University of Tennessee Hearing and Balance Center at Methodist Healthcare in Memphis. He also served as a clinical professor in otolaryngology at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Zapala has published and taught in the areas of vestibular assessment and diagnostic audiology. He has served on the American Board of Audiology and the board of the American Academy of Audiology and the American Balance Society and is a past president of the Tennessee Academy of Audiology. He is the recipient of the Edward Dalstrom Distinguished Service Award by the Mid-South Lions Sight and Hearing Service (2001); Distinguished Service Award from the American Board of Audiology (2007); Jerger Mentor Award in Clinical Research (2009); Outstanding Alumnus of the Year by School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Memphis (2013); and the Arnold D. Tuttle Award for co-authorship of the winning paper in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine (2013). His research is supported by the Mayo Clinic, the Knowles Foundation, and NIH. He is currently funded by NIDCD to study how well consumers and audiologists can assess ear disease risk prior to hearing aid purchase.