Appendix B
Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff
David H. Wegman (Chair) is emeritus professor in the School of Health and Environment at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, where he previously served as dean of the School of Health and Environment. He also serves as adjunct professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research focuses on epidemiologic studies across a range of health conditions, including respiratory disease, musculoskeletal disorders, and cancer. He has also written on public health and policy issues concerning hazard and health surveillance, methods of exposure assessment for epidemiologic studies, the development of alternatives to regulation, and the use of participatory methods to study occupational health risks. He is a national associate of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He has a B.A. from Swarthmore College and an M.D. and an M.Sc. from Harvard University. He is board certified in preventive medicine (occupational medicine).
Beth Angell is associate professor in the School of Social Work at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on serious mental illness, including predictors of treatment-seeking and treatment engagement and adherence; consumer-provider interactions and relationships; and mandated treatment. Her current projects focus on vulnerable populations, including incarcerated persons and those with serious and persistent mental illness. She has an M.S.S.W. and a Ph.D. in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Joseph N. Cappella is the Gerald R. Miller professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His research areas include social cognition, communication theory, health communication, persuasion and politics, nonverbal behavior, and statistical and mathematical methods. He also conducts studies on cognitive processing of verbal and visual materials, organization of social interaction, and message effects. His book with Kathleen Hall Jamieson on the spiral of cynicism has won prizes from the American Political Science Association and the International Communications Association. He is a fellow of the International Communication Association, a past president, and a recipient of its B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award. He is also a distinguished scholar of the National Communication Association. He has a Ph.D. in communication from Michigan State University.
Patrick Corrigan is distinguished professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Previously, he was associate dean for research in the Institute of Psychology at Illinois Institute of Technology and professor of psychiatry at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and at the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. His research examines psychiatric disability and the impact of stigma on recovery and rehabilitation. Currently, he is principal investigator of the National Consortium for Stigma and Empowerment, a collaboration of investigators from more than a dozen research institutions. He has a Psy.D. in clinical psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology.
William L. Holzemer is dean and distinguished professor of nursing at Rutgers University. Previously, he was associate dean for research and chair of the Department of Community Health Systems at the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. His research has focused on living well with HIV/AIDS, including the aspects of adherence, stigma, symptoms, and quality of life. He recently completed studies exploring the impact of HIV stigma on quality of care for people living with HIV infection in five African nations. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine). He has a B.S. in nursing from San Francisco State University and a Ph.D. in education from Syracuse University.
Clarence Jordan is vice president of wellness and recovery at Value Options, Inc., where he leads a multidisciplinary team devoted to providing recovery-based services, including a network of peers who work directly with adults and families. Previously, he was manager of the consumer recovery services for Magellan Health Services, Inc. He has held
various positions with the National Alliance on Mental Illness at both the state and national levels, including serving as vice chair of its Veterans Committee and a member of its National African American Leaders Group and Multicultural Action Committee, working to improve outreach initiatives to the African American community. His work focuses on peer specialist services, wellness and recovery, and the stigma of mental illness and substance abuse. He is a recipient of the Consumer Leadership Award of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. He has an M.B.A. from the Naval Postgraduate School and an M.S. from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Annie Lang is distinguished professor of telecommunications and cognitive science at Indiana University. Her research seeks to explain how people process mediated messages, and she has developed a general data-driven model of mediated message processing. She is a fellow of the International Communication Association and a recipient of its Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award. She has a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Vanessa Lazar (Research Associate) is on the staff of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Her other recent work has included a study assessing intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies and on the Academies Gulf Research Program. Previously, she was a science assistant at the National Science Foundation in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences and a research assistant at Brown University. She has a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in marine affairs from the University of Rhode Island.
Bernice A. Pescosolido is distinguished professor of sociology at Indiana University and director of the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research. Her research addresses how social networks connect individuals to their communities and to institutional structures, providing the “wires” through which people’s attitudes and actions are influenced. She has led teams of researchers on a series of national and international stigma studies, including the first U.S. national study in 40 years, the first national study of children’s mental health, and the first global study of 16 countries representing all six inhabited continents. She is the recipient of numerous career, scientific, and community awards, including the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal from Yale University, the Carl A. Taube Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Field of Mental Health Services Research from the Mental Health Section of the American Public Health Association, and the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health from the American
Sociological Association. She has an M.A., an M.Phil., and a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University.
Jeanne C. Rivard (Senior Program Officer) is on the staff of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Most recently, she served as the study director of a major project on proposed changes to federal regulations for protecting human participants in research and the costudy director of an evaluation of the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research and its grantees. Previously, she was with the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute and on the faculty of the Columbia University School of Social Work. Her work has focused on interagency collaboration and evaluation of mental health services and trauma interventions. She has an M.S.W. from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ruth Shim is vice chair of education and faculty development in the Department of Psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Formerly, she was an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Morehouse School of Medicine and the associate director of behavioral health at the National Center for Primary Care. Her research interests include mental health stigma, integration of primary care and behavioral health care, and mental health disparities. She has ongoing collaborative relationships with the Carter Center Mental Health Program, the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine, and the Center for Behavioral Health Policy Studies at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and is a member of the Preventive Psychiatry Committee and the Fellowship Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. She has an M.P.H. in health policy and an M.D. from Emory University.
Rebecca Palpant Shimkets is assistant director for the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism of the Carter Center Mental Health Program at Emory University. In that position, she developed and oversees a journalism fellowship program that each year awards stipends to 10 professional journalists in the United States, Romania, and Colombia to produce a significant work on mental health or mental illnesses. She is also responsible for designing new initiatives related to stigma reduction and measurement and advising on programming, including the annual national symposium and a program for new initiative development at the center. She is an active participant on advisory boards and in national work groups related to stigma and accurate portrayals of mental illnesses
in the media. She has an M.S. in community counseling from Georgia State University.
Lisa M. Vandemark (Study Director) is a senior program officer at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She is also a psychiatric nurse practitioner in the District of Columbia, working with children and families and adjunct faculty in the Department of Acute and Chronic Care at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. Her previous studies focused primarily on social and environment influences on health and health outcomes in the United States and in developing countries. Previously, she was on the faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina, where she taught in the psychiatric nurse practitioner and global health programs. She has a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing from Rush University and a Ph.D. in geography from Rutgers University.
Eric R. Wright is professor of sociology and public health at Georgia State University and a Second Century Initiative faculty in the university’s Atlanta Census Research Data-Health Policy and Risky Behaviors Cluster. Previously, he was a professor and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management and director of the Center for Health Policy at the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. As a medical sociologist, his research interests center on social and public policy responses to mental health and illness, substance use and addictions, sexual health, and HIV/STI prevention. His research focuses on understanding and ameliorating health problems and disparities in minority and other vulnerable communities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. He also works with community organizations and local and state governments to better understand community health needs and improve the effectiveness of health- and health care-related programs and policies. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University, Bloomington.
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