Alumni

Scott Bussell took a year off between his third and fourth year of medical school to pursue his master of public health degree in Epidemiology and Clinical Investigation at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was paired with Marlis Gonzales-Fernandez, MD, PhD, from the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and together they worked on a project examining acute post-stroke patients and their risk of dysphagia (swallowing difficulties) among people of different races/ethnicities. Their findings suggest that there is a much higher risk of dysphagia in Asians and other minority groups.

The abstract, Is Dysphagia Risk After Stroke Associated with Race? Further Evidence from Medical Provider Analysis and Review Data (MEDPAR), was presented at the Dysphagia Research Society's Annual meeting in San Diego, and submitted to the journal Stroke for review.

Scott’s independent research on post-stroke vaccinations, A Role for Pneumococcal Vaccine During Admission for Stroke? Observed Protective Effect Against Death in the Medicare Population, was published in the International Journal of Infectious Disease and has been accepted for publication in the October issue of Chest.

He was also awarded a travel grant by the 2010 Ditan International Conference on Infectious Diseases which allowed him to present his poster in Beijing, China in July. He will present his findings again at the American College of Chest Physicians Conference in Vancouver this November.

Elizabeth Arend recently moved back to the United States after four years of working abroad. She now works for Gender Action in Washington DC, analyzing African Development Bank and World Bank projects on reproductive health and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

Esther Johnston is currently an MD Candidate for 2011.

James Hinrichs has been named chief medical officer/executive director of medical affairs for SSM St. Joseph Health Center-Wentzville and SSM St. Joseph Medical Park.

He has been on staff at SSM St. Joseph Health Center since 1982 and has served in many capacities. He is a past chief of staff of SSM St. Joseph Health Center, a past medical director at SSM St. Joseph Hospital West, and has held several management positions at SSM DePaul Health Center.

Stephen A. Haering has been named Alexandria, Virginia's new health director. His appointment by the Virginia Department of Health was effective July 31, 2010.

Haering had served as health director for the Lord Fairfax Health District, which includes Winchester and the surrounding area, since 2008.

He has lived in California, Florida and elsewhere doing internships and working in private practice. He completed a preventive medicine residency at Johns Hopkins, after which he was selected as chief resident for the preventive medicine residency at Johns Hopkins.

After graduation, Kyden Creekpaum started work in the Washington, D.C. office of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed. He was quickly transfered to the New York office for three months, and then to the Paris office. He is doing anti-corruption internal investigations, all related to bribery in international business. While most of his work involves oil and gas companies, there is a health tie-in regarding pharmaceutical companies.

He is currently writing a book chapter on the FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) and its special application to international Pharma and medical device companies.

Harley Feldbaum was selected as a 2010-11 White House Fellow. Selection is highly competitive and based on a record o early career professional achievement, evidence of leadership potential, a proven commitment to public service, and the knowledge and skills necessary to contribute successfully at the highest levels of the Federal government.

Beatriz Tapia was recently accepted into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Environmental Public Health Leadership Institute (EPHLI) VI cohort (2010-11).

Elizabeth Arend recently began a new job as the Associate Director of Research for Partners in Health in Rwinkwavu, Rwanda.

Eileen Hederman married Corey Witherspoon on September 19, 2009 in Fairfax, VA.

David Windt produced a documentary film about a malaria prevention project that won nine film awards including a CINE Golden Eagle. Access to Survival, which describes the USAID-funded NetMark project, can be viewed at link

Xiaoxing He is an assistant professor in health sciences at Cleveland State University.

He received a Teaching Enhancement Award from the University's Center for Teaching Excellence for a STATA analytical project to develop health sciences graduate students.

Matthew Kelly is a health and human services program analyst for the Office of the City Administrator, Executive Office of the Mayor, Washington D.C.

Christina B. Khaokham was appointed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service.

She is the fourth nurse graduate of the National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health Educational Research Center’s Occupational and Environmental Health Nursing Program.

Julie Cook is a public health nurse and nurse psychotherapist with the Program for Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) team at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Previously, Cook was on the clinical faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing for undergraduate nursing students in public health nursing. She also worked with NAMI Metropolitan Baltimore (National Alliance for Mental Illness) in program coordination, and with Arlington County (Virginia) Department of Behavioral Health.

Nitish Dogra served as a temporary adviser to the WHO Regional Director for Southeast Asia in connection with a meeting on Chikungunya Fever held in India last September.

Kelly Sarti Wroblewski got married at the end of 2007 and started work as a public health program manager for a non-profit in Washington, D.C.

Rich Dressler and his family have moved from Baltimore to Maale Adumim, Israel. He will start serving as a medical officer in the Israel Defense Forces in November, 2008.

Awori Hayanga was named a 2008 World Health Organization Patient Safety Scholar and was also selected as a 2008 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Fellow and Senior Medical Adviser to the Deputy Secretary in Washington, D.C. In addition, he was awarded the 2008 American Medical Association Leadership in Medicine Award and the 2007 American College of Surgeons Resident Leadership Award.

Winston De La Haye is the Chairman of the Academic Committee for a new Online Certificate in Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment, offered through the Fourth (Virtual) Campus of The University of the West Indies. The certificate commenced in September 2007. link

Parul Divya Parikh was selected by the PIAA to serve as the new Director of Loss Prevention and Research.

Jennifer Mark has completed 2 years of research with the CDC Division of STD prevention in International Activities.

Veronica Barcelona de Mendoza and Martin have moved to New Orleans. She has recently taken a job as a faculty instructor of community health nursing at LSU School of Nursing. She is enjoying New Orleans with her two children, Sofia (3) and Marco (10 months).

John Tyburski's recent paper entitled "Radiation Metabolomics. 1. Identification of Minimally Invasive Urine Biomarkers for Gamma-Radiation Exposure in Mice" (Radiation Research. 2008 Jul;170(1):1-14) was selected as Paper of the Month by the journal editors. He is lead author on this paper.

Jieun Lee is in her senior year at Temple University School of Dentistry.

Dae Hyun Kim received a Young Investigator Award at the American Heart Association Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke meeting in May 2007. He received 1st prize at the research abstract competition of the American College of Physicians Southeast Pennsylvania regional meeting in October 2007. He was selected as a winner at the Associate Research Competition in Internal Medicine in May 2008. He also received the Kowlessar Award for Excellence in General Medicine at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, PA in June 2008.

Vikrum Vishnubhakta recently started as a Health Intelligence Consultant for APS Healthcare, a behavioral health care consultancy. He was previously conducting independent research at Harvard University.

Elizabeth Yi is currently the Clinical Research Site Manager at the Children's Hospital of Orange County, the largest community children's hospital in Orange County, California. She oversees and manages all aspects of industry-sponsored clinical research activities.

Vijay Singh is in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He works as a family medicine physician, teaches social work and medical students, and conducts research in domestic violence prevention.

Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharya recently joined the faculty at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Health Law and Policy in the Department of Medical Humanities.

Michael Freitag has been the Deputy Director of the Dept. of General Practice and Family Medicine at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany since June 2008

Sally McCormack received her doctorate in physical therapy in May. She also was promoted to Clinical Assistant Professor and Academic Coordinator of Clinical Education in the physical therapy program at the University of New England in Portland, Maine.

Alicen Burns Spaulding is currently pursuing a PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and continues to focus her research on HIV/AIDS in Latin America. She would like to encourage her classmates to contact me if they, too, are interested in this area of research or happen to be stopping by Minneapolis!

Jacqueline Francis is currently working as a Medical Officer with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in device evaluation and post-market safety. She is also practicing pediatrics at Kids Mobile Clinic with Georgetown Medical Center and the baby nursery at Sibley Hospital.

Mohamed Atta was promoted to Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in July 2008.

Abdourahman Diallo recently moved to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as Country Director for the PEPFAR funded project - SCMS (Supply Chain Management Systems) managed by John Snow Inc. After working with John Snow, Inc. He had previously worked in JSI's Arlington office for five years. The project procures HIV/AIDS commodities (ARV drugs, HIV test kits and other Lab reagents, OI drugs, etc.) and provides technical assistance in strengthening the in-country management of those commodities.

Shaun Morris has been awarded a Fellowship of the Pediatric Scientist Development Program. He will be conducting population-based research on vaccine preventable pediatric infectious diseases under the supervision of Dr. Prabhat Jha. His research is part of the Million Death Study in India, one of the largest cohort studies ever conducted.

Farley Cleghorn spent a 10-year stint at the University of Maryland Medical Center/Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore before moving in 2004 to the Futures Group in Washington, D.C., where he is now Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer.

Naveed Afzal is the chief executive officer and medical director of a private medical institute in Pakistan.

Marguerite J. Ro is the deputy director for Policy and Programs at the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum in San Francisco.

Stephen Nurse-Findlay was appointed programme officer for governance with the Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunizations (GAVI Alliance) in Geneva, Switzerland.

He works closely with the GAVI Governance Team to ensure the proper functioning of the GAVI Board of Directors and the Executive and Policy committees, and manages the organization's relationships with the developing countries with which it collaborates, as well as GAVI's partner community agencies.

Dr. Goehlert is Board Certified in Family Practice, Emergency Medicine, Forensic Medicine, Quality Assurance and Utilization Review, and Managed Care Medicine, and is eligible in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. He has been practicing medicine for more than 20 years and holds active state medical licenses in Vermont, Florida and Maryland.

He has extensive clinical and administrative experience in ambulatory, emergency and urgent care medicine for all age groups. He has particular medico-legal and bio-ethical interest and expertise in standard of care issues and utilization management. International healthcare network development, medical tourism, process improvement and implementation are some of his global interests. He has also been involved in managing and educating all level of providers, in the emergency healthcare system.

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

Louis Hugo Francescutti is a Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. Recently he founded the Coalition for Cellphone Free Driving and Injury Alberta. In 2005, he was selected as one of the hundred most influential physicians in Alberta in the past one hundred years. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American College of Preventive Medicine. He looks forward to reconnecting with other Hopkins Preventive Medicine Residents from 1993-1995.

Ingrid Kohlstadt published 'Food and Nutrients in Disease Management' (CRC Press, Boca Raton) in January, 2009. The text brings together 65 experts, including seven from Johns Hopkins.

Devon McGraw is the new Director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C., where he promotes workable privacy and security policies and practices for health information in electronic and paper formats.

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.

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.

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.

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

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"

Irene Hiscock will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of her graduation from JHSPH in 2011.

Linda Hart published a paper titled 'Standardized Protocols and Processes Enhance Compliance with Recommended Care, Improve Staff Perceptions of Patient Safety at a Birthing Center' on the AHRQ Innovations Exchange website in 2009 with a recent update in 2010. She hopes all her classmates are doing well and enjoying their worklife as much as she is!

Heddy Hubbard is the director of guidelines for the American Urological Association (AUA). Dr. Hubbard joined the AUA upon her retirement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after more than 30 years with the federal government, most recently with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Jeanne Brinkley retired on February 1, 2008, after more than 38 years in public health, first for the Baltimore City Health Department, then Maryland's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

She returned to Baltimore in 2005 after living in Hoopers Island, Dorchester County, Md., for 19 years. After retiring, Brinkley began volunteering with an inner-city grade school that has 40 children in the one kindergarten class. She also works part-time as a massage therapist.

William A. Robinson retired in 2007 after more than 35 years of service in the federal government. He had served more than 25 of those years in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the agency's Chief Medical Officer. He concurrently held other senior management positions in HRSA as a member of the Senior Executive Service. In addition, he served as the HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health, and later as the Acting Administrator of HRSA.

Last June, Dr. Fine retired from a more than 30 year full-time career in public health for the State of Maryland and Baltimore County. This included state Director of Preventive Medicine Administation, Deputy Director of AIDS Administration, and county Bureau Director of Child, Adolescent and Reproductive Health. On August 4th, he was honored with the Annual Leadership Award by the Maryland State School Health Council. He is currently taking classes in Fine Art at Towson University.

Graciela Alarcon is currently The Jane Knight Lowe Chair of Medicine in Rheumatology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham. He was also honored as Master of PANLAR (Pan America League of Associations of Rheumatology) in Guatemala City in August 2008.

Hideyasu Aoyama is a Professor Emeritus of Okayama Medical School and was President of the Kochi Women's University from 2003 to 2007. She is an honorary lifetime member of the Japanese Society of Public Health and the Japanese Society of Occupational Health, the Japanese Society of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, and was a past-chairman of the National Comittee of Community Medicine and Medical Education from 1994 to 1997.

Carl Helvie has started hosting a radio show, The Holistic Health Show, at link. His guests include Dr. Bernie Siegel, Dr. Patricia Garfield, Dr. Anne Marie Evers, Dr. Patricia Crane and Dr. Carolyn Chambers Clark.