Appendix F
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff
Greg J. Duncan (Cochair) is the Edwina S. Tarry chair in the Human Development and Social Policy Program at Northwestern University. An economist, Duncan has compiled a long history of research on poverty and welfare dynamics and their linkages to children’s development outcomes. Much of Duncan’s career was spent at the University of Michigan working on and ultimately directing the Panel Study of Income Dynamics data collection project. He is coeditor of Consequences of Growing Up Poor (with Brooks-Gunn) and the two-volume Neighborhood Poverty (with Brooks-Gunn and Aber). At the National Research Council, he was a member of the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development, which produced From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Child Development in 2000. He has been a member of the Child and Family Well-Being Research Network of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development since its inception in 1993. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.
Ruth E.K. Stein (Cochair) is professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and former vice chairman in the Department of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. Her research on children’s health and children with chronic conditions has been supported by a number of federal agencies and private foundations. For over a decade she was director and principal investigator of the National Institute of Mental Health–supported Preventive Intervention Research Center for Child Health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center. She has published extensively on children with chronic conditions and measurement of out-
comes for child health. She was a charter member of the Board of Directors and its Executive Committee of the Center for Child Health of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She is the editor of Caring for Children with Chronic Illness: Issues and Strategies and Health Care for Children: What’s Right What’s Wrong What’s Next. She is chair of the New York Forum on Child Health. At the National Academies, she served on the Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medical Services and is a member of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families. She has a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Yolie Flores Aguilar is executive director of the Los Angeles County Children’s Planning Council, the nation’s largest partnership network bringing together the public and private sectors in Los Angeles to improve conditions for children through data, planning, and coordination, and by developing and supporting partnerships and collaboratives. She has directed efforts to develop a children’s scorecard for the county with five outcome areas and indicators of child well-being, and works to help communities translate data into action. She has served as a senior consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation and its Making Connections initiative. She is the former director of child care policy and planning for the City of Los Angeles and the former work/family director of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, a nationally acclaimed employer-supported child care and work/family program. Between 1995 and 2000, she served as president and member of the Los Angeles County Board of Education, and vice president of the Pediatric and Family Medical Center. She is a former Coro fellow, a Casey fellow, and is an active member of the Annie E. Casey Foundation Children and Families Fellowship Network. She is a graduate of the University of Redlands and has an M.S.W. from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Cynthia Bearer is associate professor of pediatrics and neurosciences in the Department of Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University. She is board certified in both pediatrics and neonatal-perinatal medicine and is currently the director of the Neonatology Fellowship Training Program at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital and director of medical education of the Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health. Her primary research interests are the mechanisms of developmental neurotoxicity, cell adhesion molecules, and the development of biomarkers of prenatal exposures. She has served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific advisory board, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Environmental Health, and the advisory group to the director of the National Center on Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is currently on the editorial boards of Neurotoxicology and Alcohol Research & Health, serves as a member of the neurotoxicology and alcohol study section, is chair of the science committee of the Children’s Environmental Health Network, and is president of the Fetal
Alcohol Syndrome Study Group. She has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Cynthia García Coll (Consultant) is the Charles Pitts Robinson and John Palmer Barstow Professor; Professor of Education, Psychology and Pediatrics at Brown University. She has published numerous articles on the sociocultural and biological influences on child development with particular emphasis on at-risk and minority populations. She has also been on the editorial boards of many academic journals. She was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Network called Successful Pathways Through Middle Childhood. At the Society for Research on Child Development, she served as both chair and member of the Committee on Racial and Ethnic Issues; on the Governing Council from 1996–2002; and as its representative to the National Head Start Research Conference Committee from 1994 to 2001. García Coll has co-edited several books, including Mothering Against the Odds: Diverse Voices of Contemporary Mothers and Nature and Nurture: The Complex Interplay of Genetic and Environmental Influences on Human Behavior and Development. A fellow of the American Psychological Association, she also was a coeditor of the special issue for the journal Child Development entitled “Children and Poverty.” She is the incoming editor of Developmental Psychology and has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Harvard University (1982).
Neal Halfon is professor of pediatrics in the School of Medicine of Community Health Sciences in the School of Public Health, and Policy Studies in the School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is currently director of the UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities and directs the Child and Family Health Program in the School of Public Health. He also directs the Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s National Center for Infancy and Early Childhood Health Policy Research. His primary research interests include the provision of developmental services to young children, access to care for poor children, and delivery of health services to children with special health care needs, with particular interest in children who have been abused and neglected and are being cared for by the foster care system. He has published investigations of immunizations for inner-city children, the health care needs of children in foster care, trends in chronic illnesses for children, the delivery of health care services for children with asthma, as well as investigations of new models of health service delivery for high-risk children. His recent work has focused on life-course models of health development. At the National Academies, he is a member of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families. He has an M.D. from the University of California, Davis, and an M.P.H. from the University of California, Berkeley and completed his residency in Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of California, San Francisco.
Peter Jensen is the director of the Center for the Advancement of Children’s Mental Health—Putting Science to Work, and Ruane professor of child psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Previously he was the associate director of child and adolescent research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). While at NIMH, he served as the lead investigator on the six-site study of Multimodal Treatment of ADHD (the MTA Study) and also as an investigator on other NIMH multisite studies. Dr. Jensen’s current major areas of research include the integration of research findings into clinical settings, effectiveness and dissemination research, and studies of optimal approaches to facilitate the adoption of evidence-based mental health approaches by practitioners and parents on behalf of children with mental disorders. The author of over 200 scientific articles, book chapters, and editor or co-editor of a dozen books, Dr. Jensen has received many national awards for his research, writing, and teaching, including awards from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and family advocacy organizations including the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. He has a bachelor’s degree (cum laude) from Brigham Young University and an M.D. from George Washington University Medical School. He did his postgraduate training at the Letterman Army Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.
Donald Mattison is senior advisor to the director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and Acting Chief of the Obstetrics and Pediatrics Pharmacology Research Branch in the Center for Research for Mothers and Children. In this role he chairs the advisory committee for the National Children’s Study and provides oversight to the obstetrical and pediatric pharmacology programs of NICHD. Previously, he was medical director of the March of Dimes, and prior to that dean of the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was professor of environmental and occupational health. He serves on various national committees related to environmental health, public health, and disease prevention, including the Children’s Environmental Health Advisory Committee of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Collegiate Commission on Nursing Education, and was chair of the Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention of the Institute of Medicine. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Academy of Medicine and a member of the Institute of Medicine. He is the author of numerous scientific journal articles, and coedited the seminal contribution on Male Mediated Developmental Toxicology. He has a B.A. from Augsburg College in Minnesota, an M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Toxicology and a fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences.
Mary Ellen O’Connell (Study Director) is a senior program officer with the Board on Children, Youth, and Families. Her work with the board includes development of two standalone workshops, on welfare reform and children and gun violence. She was also the study director for the Committee on Developing a Strategy to Reduce and Prevent Underage Drinking and currently serves as study director for the Committee on Housing-Related Health Hazard Research Involving Children, Youth, and Families. Previously she worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she spent eight years in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), most recently as director of state and local initiatives. During her tenure in ASPE, Mary Ellen focused on data, research, and policy related to homelessness and community-based health decision making. Prior to HHS, she worked at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on homeless policy and program design issues. She has a B.A. (with distinction) from Cornell University and an M.A. in the management of human services from the Heller School at Brandeis University.
Peter Simon is assistant medical director, Rhode Island Department of Health. He also is the deputy medical director of the Division of Family Health and the medical director of the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program and the Newborn Screening Programs. His programmatic responsibilities range across the spectrum of core public health functions for the traditional maternal and child health populations. He is certified by the American Board of Preventive Medicine and the American Board of Pediatrics. He has had multiple roles with the Title V program at the state, regional, and national level as well as serving the American Academy of Pediatrics at the state and national levels. He served as the chairman of the local chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and presently coedits the chapter newsletter and serves as the CATCH (Community Access to Child Health) coordinator. Since giving up his private practice in 1985, he continues to see pediatric patients at the Providence Community Health Centers and volunteers at the Hospital Albert Schweitzer in rural Haiti. He has an undergraduate degree from Cornell University, an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University (1976), and an M.D. from the State University of New York, Upstate Medical School.
Bonita Stanton is professor and Schotanus family chairperson of the Department of Pediatrics at Wayne State University. Previously she was professor and chairperson at West Virginia University and had been professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She has published extensively in the fields of risk prevention, behavioral change, vaccine development, diarrheal diseases, and maternal child health care. She serves on the editorial board of Youth and Society and has served on advisory boards and study sections to numerous organizations, including the Child Health Foundation and the National
Institutes of Health. She has consulted with numerous national and international groups on issues related to urban health, HIV/AIDS transmission in youth, and health services research. Her special interests are pediatric infectious diseases, AIDS, HIV prevention in adolescents, and adolescent risk reduction low-income adolescents and community health. She has a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Wellesley College and an M.D. (cum laude) from Yale University; she completed her pediatric residency at the University Hospitals of Cleveland.
Barbara Starfield, a physician and health services researcher, is university distinguished professor and professor of health policy and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. Internationally known for her work in primary care, her books Primary Care: Concept, Evaluation, and Policy and Primary Care: Balancing Health Needs, Services, and Technology are widely recognized as the seminal works in the field. She has been instrumental in leading projects to develop important methodological tools, including the Primary Care Assessment Tool, the CHIP tools (to assess adolescent and child health status), and the Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups for assessment of diagnosed morbidity burdens reflecting degrees of comorbidity. She was the codeveloper and first president of the International Society for Equity in Health, a scientific organization devoted to furthering knowledge about the determinants of inequity in health and ways to eliminate them. Her work thus focuses on quality of care, health status assessment, primary care evaluation, and equity in health. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and has been on its governing council, as well as on the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, and many other government and professional committees and groups. She has a B.A. from Swarthmore College, an M.D. from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, and an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.
Fredia Stovall Wadley is medical director for the Delmarva Foundation for Medical Care, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to improve health care and human services. Previously she served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Health and the director of the Nashville/Davidson County Metropolitan Health Department. Her academic affiliations include the University of Tennessee Center for Health Sciences (Pediatric Department), Meharry Medical College (Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine), East Tennessee State University (Preventive Medicine), the University of Tennessee, and Vanderbilt Schools of Nursing; she is a board member of the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. Her areas of interest include early intervention services for children, health services for foster children, and integrating children’s health data across multiple departments of state government. She is currently a board member of the Public Health Foundation, has served on various committees of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the National Association for State Health Policy, has been on the board of directors for a hospital managing corporation, and received rec-
ognition for accomplishments in public health and improving the health for children in Tennessee. She has an M.D. from the University of Tennessee Center for Health Sciences and an M.A. in health planning and administration from the University of Cincinnati.
Michelle Williams is professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Her areas of expertise are reproductive and perinatal epidemiology. Her current research involves identifying genetic and nongenetic biological markers of placental pathology and relating those markers to potentially modifiable exogenous risk factors of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm delivery, abruptio placentae, pregnancy-induced hypertension (preeclampsia), and gestational diabetes. As codirector of the Center for Perinatal Studies at Swedish Medical Center, her current research includes both clinical epidemiological studies, such as assessment of prenatal screening protocols for diagnosing birth defects and infant chromosomal abnormalities. She is director of the university’s Multidisciplinary International Research Training Program, which provides research training opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students. She has a B.A. from Princeton University, an M.S. from Tufts University and S.M. and Sc.D. degrees from Harvard University.
