Alumni

Zahidul Huque is currently the Country Representative for the United Nations Population Fund in Indonesia (Jakarta) after having worked in both Indonesia and Sudan.

I recently retired from the World Health Organization and would like to share my 20 years of experience with former colleagues.

Debora Kuchka-Craig has been elected to serve as the Healthcare Financial Management Association's voluntary Chair of the Board of Directors for 2010-11.

Richard Steele's lecture "The limits of evidence-based medicine, and what we can do about disability due to medically unexplained symptoms" has been awarded 30 minutes of oral time at the Jerusalem International Conference on Integrative Medicine, Oct. 19-22, 2010. See link for more details.

Cathie Borrie has launched two titles on alzheimer's. Her mother's voice weaves through the text, drawn from conversations recorded over the seven-year caregiving experience. Borrie launched both titles at a MoMa presentation for World Alzheimer's Day.

Daniel E. Jimenez assumed the position of Chief, Occupational Medicine at DeWitt Health Care Network's Preventive Medicine Department in Fort Belvoir Virginia on March 1, 2009.

Ridgely Bennett received the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' 2009 Distinguished Service Award.

He was previously an obstetrics and gynecology medical officer with the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Sono Aibe is a senior adivser for strategic initiatives at Pathfinder International, focusing on the expansion of reproductive health programs, globally and on the West Coast.

Previously, Aibe spent 13 years with the Population and Reproductive Health Program at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Susan Strand is a technical adviser in Dakar, Senegal, in the Department of Lanuguage Instruction at the Ministry of Education. Her position is through the English Language Fellowship Program of the U.S. Department of State.

Victor Vogel is the national vice president for research at the American Cancer Society.

He is responsible for overseeing the research operations of the Society, the largest non-governmental funder of cancer research.

Dr. Vogel has more than 20 years of leadership experience in cancer research, focusing on breast cancer risk assessment and prevention. He is the author of more than 250 articles, book chapters, and abstracts.

Ping Ki has been working for the past ten years as a consultant in the field of chemical and life sciences in Hong Kong and southern China.

Janet Hiller, professor of public health at the University of Adelaide, directs the Adelaide Health Technology Assessment group, which undertakes evaluations to inform reimbursement decisions for pharmaceuticals, medical devices, tests and programs.

She was recently awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council grant to investigate disinvestment from existing health care interventions that are cost-ineffective or inappropriately applied within health care.

Holly Wieland works at the the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, mainly on bacterial vaccine submissions.

Mark B. Johnson is the president of the American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM), the national professional society for physicians committed to disease prevention and health promotion. \

He follows fellow alumnus, Michael Parkinson, in the office, and will be working with fellow alumna, Miriam Alexander, as the new president-elect.

Susan Shochet-Abramson is the director of the Center for Public Health Policy with the American Public Health Association in Washington, D.C.

After 15 years teaching public health in Brazil and working with the consumer movement on access to health care and medicines, and a stint in International Health at the Karolinska Institute, Lynn has been back home since 2004 working as Assistant Commissioner for New York City's Health Department on chronic disease prevention. She has been working on making NYC a better place to stay healthy by making it the first city in the nation to restrict trans fat and to post calories in chain restaurants, working across city government and with the architectural community on FIT-CITY - to create a physical environment more conducive to exercise and healthy eating, creating the New York City A1c registry to help improve diabetes care, increasing access to low cost medications, and promoting programs for physical activity and healthy eating from public procurement to day care centers to workplaces. Basic Hopkins lessons like Susan Baker's approach to accident prevention by changing the default, or Navarro's comparisons of health systems have long guided her work. She has two daughters ages 18 and 11.

Carl W. Dieffenbach was recently appointed as the Director of the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a component of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Dieffenbach has been with DAIDS since 1992 and has held a number of senior positions including Associate Director of the Basic Sciences Program from 1994-2007. In 2007, Dr. Dieffenbach agreed to serve as the Acting Director of DAIDS and was officially appointed to the position in July 2008. As the DAIDS Director, Dr. Dieffenbach oversees a billion dollar research portfolio encompassing: 1) fundamental basic laboratory research, 2) discovery and development of therapies and treatment strategies for HIV/AIDS and its co-infections through basic research and clinical trials, and 3) discovery and development of vaccines, topical microbicides, and other prevention strategies through basic research and clinical trials.

Alan Lambert is the founder and president of Prosalud Inter-America Foundation (PSIA). PSIA works to improve reproductive health in six South American countries through member NGOs. It is a recognized leader in emergency contraception, having distributed more than 7 million cycles since 2000.

PSIA also works to guarantee contraceptive security through its one-of-a-kind social commercial marketing programs.

Robin Prothro is in her eighth year as the executive director of the Maryland Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Amado Freire, former Division Chief of Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine was promoted to Professor of Medicine at UTHSC at Memphis, TN

Victor Vogel will be leaving the University of Pittsburgh on December 31, 2009 to become the national Vice President for Research for the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. He was previously a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology.

He will be responsible for the strategic direction, management and development for the intramural (Behavioral Research Center & Surveillance and Epidemiology with 200 individuals) and the extramural research programs of the ACS that awards $160 million in research grants annually to scientists across the country. He will act as a spokesperson for the research program and the ACS and work to strengthen interactions with other departments through the application of his expertise in cancer prevention and control science. He will also serve as the scientific advisor to the Washington, DC lobbying office of ACS that employs 60 individuals who work on Capitol Hill to secure funding for cancer care and research (ACS Cancer Action Network). Finally, he will advise the ACS executive committee on operational issues relevant to the National Home Office and divisions of the ACS.

Patricia O'Campo was the 2008 recipient of the Greg Alexander Award for Advancing Knowledge Award-Advancing public health knowledge through epidemiology and applied research. The purpose of this award is to recognize individuals and organizational teams from a variety of disciplines who have made a substantial contribution to advancing the knowledge base aimed at improving the health of women, children and families.

Sandy Singer is currently directing a small non-profit that works to reduce the risk of fire and falls in the rural elderly. She previously worked with the uninsured and underinsured populations in rural Vermont.

Daniel Jimenez is now the Medical Director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, United States Department of Treasury. Dr. Jimenez also serves as a Representative of the Transportation Subsection of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, House of Delegates.

Gus Birkhead was recently appointed Deputy Commissioner, New York State Department of Health, Office of Public Health. He is also the chairman of the U.S. National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC). In April, the American Medical Association honored him with the Nathan Davis Award for outstanding career public service at the state level.

Diane Becker is currently a Professor of Medicine, Director the GeneSTAR Research Program, and Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Promotion. In 2008, she received the 2008 Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Alumni Award. Her work has ranged from community based trials in minority cardiovascular risk reduction, to US federal health policy with a stint in the US Senate working on Medicaid and low income families, and more recently to extended research in the genetics of cardiovascular disease in high risk families. The latter, The Johns Hopkins Sibling and Family Heart Disease Research Program, has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for over 20 years and was the basis for the 1984 ScD with Dr. David Levine, then Director of the Division of Health Education and Behavioral Sciences, now Professor of Medicine.

Ray Martin received the Distinguished Service Award of the International Health Section of the American Public Health Association for his work in re-energizing the Section. In his "retirement," he is Executive Director of Christian Connections for International Health, link, a network of organizations and individuals involved in global health.

Susan Freisem Birkhead was appointed Director of the Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing in Troy, NY in July 2007. She has been teaching at the school since 1997.

Ruth McKay received an Honorable Mention for the 2008 Lawrence R. Klein Award in Labor Economics for a Monthly Labor Review article on a Baltimore African Community entitled "A Black Community with Advanced Labor Force Characteristics, 1960."

John Akinyemi retired from the US Marine Corps, where he served as the Industrial Hygiene Program Manager on 30 September, 2006. As a retired private citizen, he spends most of his time enjoying his first grandson, Isaiah, reading, writing, gardening, managing family investment, and occassionally traveling to visit friends and family. He and his wife, Agnes, live in Bel Air, MD. They have two adult children, Doyin, and Tobi.

Ann Biro-Thompson worked as a public health nurse in a refugee camp in Ban Vaini, Thailand with World Vision for six months after her graduation. She traveled to Africa six times with World Vision, writing multi-million, three-year Child Survival proposals, most of which were selected for funding by USAID. After getting married (1987) to her college sweetheart, she worked in a variety of international public health consulting jobs (the National Council for International Health, PRITECH, ARS). She then joined USAID as an Administrative Appointee, as a program analyst, helping to oversee the child survival grants given to PVOs. She went back into consulting work in order to raise four children for the last eighteen years, the eldest of which recently left for Stanford. In June and July 2008, she volunteered with a medical mission team and worked in a orphanage in Bangula, Malawi, doing outreach to remote villages with little access to healthcare. She is in the process of assisting an orphanage apply for grants from USAID and looks forward to getting back into the arena of international public health in the very near future.

Elayne Kornblatt Phillips received the NIOSH award examining the "Impact of Needlestick Safety & Prevention Act (HR5178) on Hospital Worker Injury"