Alumni

Chrisa Arcan received her PhD in Public Health Nutrition from the University of Minnesota in 2009. Currently, she is a postdoctoral associate in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota.

Erica Penn is president-elect of the Foundation for Science and Disability (FSD), which is affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (AAAS) She recently created a Group for FSD on Facebook:

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Elaine Wolff is currently the departmental pandemic influenza coordinator for the Department of the Interior Office of Emergency Management. Since January 2007, she has been responsible for overall coordination of the Department’s nationwide planning and preparedness activities for pandemic influenza and the H1N1 flu pandemic. In this role, she represents the Department to multiple interagency policy and planning groups, and coordinates with a broad spectrum of organizational units within DOI in the Department’s H1N1 Flu Pandemic planning/preparation and implementation activities.

A major function of this role has been communicating the evolving situation and public health guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other interagency partners to DOI’s bureaus and offices.

The information is communicated through guidance policy memos and the DOI H1N1 flu website (link).

Ruwan Ratnayake is a Fellow of the Canadian Field Epidemiology Program, Public Health Agency of Canada, and recently worked with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Belgium.

Eric Mah is the director of the human research protection program at the University of California, Davis.

Mona Sharma provides home-based clinical services to children in the United Arab Emirates who show early symptoms of psychiatric disorders.

Lisa Purvis is a senior research program manager at Dartmouth Medical School's Department of Pediatrics, working on research projects related to chidren and families.

She is on the faculty of Dartmouth's MPH program, where she teaches and works closely with Fogarty scholars visiting from Tanzania. Purvis is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of New Hampshire's MPH program and at the Bloomberg School.

Kenneth Spicer was deployed to Iraq less than a year after finishing the MHS program in Occupational and Environmental Hygiene in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences.

Recently promoted from captain to major, he currently serves as the division environmental science officer for Task Force Iron, Multinational Division-North. Spicer is responsible for the occupational and environmental health (O/EH) of over 25,000 coalition force military personnel and DOD civilians operating in Northern Iraq. He works closely with provincial reconstruction teams, providing O/EH subject matter expertise to local Iraqi public health officials and helping to build a more robust public heatlh system for the Iraqi populace.

He routinely travels the entire Division battlespace (about the size of Ohio) conducting O/EH assessments to facilitate the prevention of disease and non-battle injury.

Elizabeth Beachy recently returned to the U.S. after working with PSI overseas for 6 years in the Caribbean region, and am now consulting for international health NGOs.

Brett Lee is a vice president at Children's Medical Center of Dallas, one of the nation's largest children's hospitals.

He also completed his first book, "Growing Leaders in Health Care, Lessons from the Corporate World."

In April 2008, Rajendra Shukla was appointed a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Government of India, New Delhi with responsibilities for policy formulation and program implementation in respect of control of vector borne diseases and tuberculosis in India. He is also heading a team of ministry officials and consultants charged with the responsibility of developing new super speciality, tertiary care, teaching and research institutions in the public sector in India. He is the nodal officer in the ministry for policy and legal matters and international collaboration & cooperation in regard to his portfolios.

Thoai Ngo was recently named one of the Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholars to travel to the United Kingdom to pursue his MPhil/PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). The purpose of the Ambassadorial Scholars program is to further international understanding and friendly relations among people of different countries and geographical areas. As a Rotary Scholar, he will serve as a goodwill ambassador to the United Kingdom and give presentations to Rotary clubs and other groups. He will be concentrating in the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Unit within the Department of Epidemiology & Population Health at LSHTM. He hopes to conduct his disertation in Vietnam investigating the HIV-1 transmission pattern among injection drug users in the northern region.

Mona Sharma is starting a Mobile Treatment Team in New Delhi, India. She volunteered with the mobile psychiatric team at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and realized how useful it would be to have a similar program in India. It will be ready to launch in November 2008. She also got married on October 1, 2008.

Kristin Kelling is currently in Salvador, Brazil on a Fulbright grant studying local PMTCT efforts. Upon completing her Fulbright research, she will return to the CDC in Atlanta to resume her Presidential Management Fellowship position with the Global AIDS Program. Kristin is a public health analyst and focuses on PMTCT-related public health evaluation efforts.

Alena Groopman is the Global Community Health Coordinator at the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University working on the formation of a new regional initiative in the Asia and Pacific region to reduce viral hepatitis transmission.

Judith Hagedorn has finished medical school at Stanford School of Medicine in June 2008 and has started her residency in Urology at Stanford Hospital and Clinics.

Bradley E. Jones, age 40 of Duluth, died February 17, 2010. Mr. Jones was born in Bristol, TN and was senior vice president and division president for Health Management Associates of Naples, FL. He graduated from Virginia Tech with a bachelors degree in public administration. He also played football and was a member of the German Club while at Virginia Tech. He is survived by his wife of 15 years Deborah Jones, daughter Anna Katherine Jones and son Burke Hamilton Jones all of Duluth, mother Bonnie Jones of Lebanon, VA, many aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins and two godchildren.

Ranit Mishori, assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, has received the 2009 "Emerging Leader Award" from the Family Medicine Education Consortium (FEMC) and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) at their annual Northeast Region conference.

The award, presented in October, is part of the FEMC’s Emerging Leaders Initiative, a program aimed at identifying those with the potential to be future leaders in family medicine, academic and community service efforts.

Dr. Mishori is director of the Family Medicine Clerkship program at the GUSOM. In addition to her service to patients and students, Mishori is contributing health editor at Parade Magazine and a regular contributor to the Washington Post health section.

For the past 10 years, Dev has worked with U.S. NGOs in health system capacity building and outreach to marginalized and vulnerable populations. She has focused on provider training to improve knowledge and quality of care, health policy analysis and enforcement, and health status improvement of children with special needs, ethnically marginalized communities, and those at risk for TB and HIV infection.

Since 2003, Dev has been leading the implementation of TB control projects in Kosovo, Romania and Mexico, focused on capacity building of the TB program and inclusion of minority areas. In Romania, she also participated in the development of the country proposal to the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria. Her most recent work in Mexico was to develop a community TB care strategy for rural and ethnic minority communities, which is currently being piloted.

Dev is currently providing technical assistance on TB operations research in Romania, community TB care in Mexico, and Global Fund proposal development in Vietnam.

She also works with New York-based arts organizations that present issues of marginalization, social justice and human rights through the visual and performing arts.

Jennifer Wagman is a doctoral student at the Bloomberg School in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. Previously, she worked for the School's Rakai Health Sciences Program, 6 years in Uganda and 3 in Baltimore.

Nicole Cheetham is the director of the International Division of Advocates for Youth, a non profit organization that implements and promotes programs and policies to help young people around the world make responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.

She oversees programs in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean that focus on youth-led advocacy, life skills education, community mobilization and parent-child communicaiton, as wel as a U.S.-based youth council that advocates for science-based U.S. and international HIV and family planning policies aimed at youth.

Mark Danese recentky celebrated his fifth anniversary as president of his own epidemiology and health economics consulting company, Outcomes Insights, Inc. Currently, the company has 5 full-time and 3 part-time employees, and is based in Southern California.

Chaloupka James graduated with a PhD from the Pharmacology program at Cornell Weill Medical College in June 2006, and is currently employed as an Associate Medical Director at BGB New York, a pharmaceutical marketing and medical communications agency located in lower Manhattan.

Mindy Wyttenbach-Lindsey took on a new position as Executive Director of the Department of Internal Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University/Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia in March 2007.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Ellen Rautenberg continues to serve as the President and CEO of Public Health Solutions and was recently appointed to both the NYS Public Health Council and the Insitute of Medicine's Committee on a Comprehensive Review of the DHHS Office of Family Planning Title X Program.