Practice Pathways PHield Trip RTI International Featured Speakers

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1 Practice Pathways PHield Trip RTI International Featured Speakers Welcome and Introduction Leah Devlin, Professor of the Practice BS, Dentistry, UNC Chapel Hill DDS, Dentistry, UNC Chapel Hill MPH, Public Health, UNC Chapel Hill Leah M. Devlin, DDS, MPH, who until recently was North Carolina's State Health Director, has been appointed as a Gillings Visiting Professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. The position is based in the Department of Health Policy and Management. In her new role, Devlin will work with faculty, students and staff throughout the public health school to effectively talk with state leaders and residents about the many ways the School can and does serve North Carolina. She also will strengthen the relationships between the School and the practice community, including student involvement with the N.C. Institute for Public Health. Terry Pierson, Vice President, Global Climate Change and Environmental Sciences PhD Environmental Policy and Planning, UNC Chapel Hill MRP, Environmental Planning, UNC Chapel Hill BS, Psychology and Biological Sciences, Ohio State University Dr. Pierson is vice president of RTI s Global Climate Change and Environmental Sciences Unit. The unit s multidisciplinary staff of economists, engineers, and environmental scientists conducts research and technical assistance in support of sustainability programs, air quality management, global climate change policies, water resource management, ecosystem services, waste management, exposure and risk assessment, remediation solutions, land use management, brownfields redevelopment, geospatial analysis, and environmental management systems. Dr. Pierson is responsible for the strategic direction of the unit, development of new programs and initiatives, globalization of our environmental research and services, and the fostering of collaboration with other RTI research units, as well as financial performance and quality of work performed within the unit. The four divisions/centers in this unit include environment, health and economics; water and ecosystems management; sustainable business solutions; and international programs. He also has a leadership role with RTI s executive team in corporate strategic planning and implementation with regards to RTI s programs in climate change, water, waste and sustainability. Dr. Pierson has more than 25 years of experience in environmental research and policy analysis. He has been providing policy and risk assessment support to government and commercial clients for hazardous waste, Superfund, air toxics, and

2 indoor air programs, including the evaluation of health and ecological effects, development and application of innovative risk assessment methods and mathematical models, development of risk and exposure assessment training courses and communication materials, and technical support in decision making regarding regulations, remediation activities, and Reports to Congress. Most recently he is leading projects in capacity building, technical support and training for environmental and life sciences regulatory programs in the United Arab Emirates. Panel Experts Hear first-hand from RTI experts about the various ways public health practice is applied. After the panel, there will be time to connect with the following speakers: Cecilia Casanueva, Research Psychologist and Public Health Analyst, Child Maltreatment and Domestic Violence PhD, Maternal and Child Health, UNC Chapel Hill PsyD, Clinical Psychologist, Catholic University of Chile Dr. Casanueva is a research psychologist and public health analyst with a special interest in child maltreatment and domestic violence. Dr. Casanueva s specific activities include basic research, prevention, and intervention. Her research experience includes design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions to prevent child emotional and developmental problems; prevention of child maltreatment; service delivery systems related to the mental health needs of children; intimate-partner violence; parenting; and pathways and risk processes leading to child and adolescent problem behaviors. She manages data analysis tasks using stratified samples and weighted data with various forms of regression, including multivariate linear regression and logistic regression, use of propensity scores matching for services evaluation, and other analytical strategies. She also conducts implementation and translational research on evidence-based interventions that promote safe, supportive, and nurturing caregiving environments. Dr. Casanueva is an alumna of the prestigious Leaders for the 21st Century Fellowship of the ZERO TO THREE National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families ( ). Diane J. Catellier, Senior Statistician, Multicenter Clinical Trials and Public Health Epidemiological Studies DrPH, Biostatistics, UNC Chapel Hill BS, Mathematics, St. Francis Xavier University Dr. Catellier is a senior research statistician with 20 years of experience in collaborative research and coordination of large-scale public health studies. Her areas of statistical expertise include application of methods to reduce bias resulting from missing data, longitudinal and multilevel modeling, design of clinical trials, and methods for monitoring data quality. She has been principal investigator for the coordinating centers for five multisite clinical trials and four prospective cohort studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, including grants from the

3 National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute of Mental Health. In this role, she has contributed to the design, implementation (data management and monitoring), analysis, and publication of study data. Dr. Catellier has helped develop and evaluate interventions for treatment of depression in cardiac patients and treatment of schizophrenia or metabolic disorders associated with use of antipsychotic medications for treatment of the disease and to increase physical activity in children and adolescents. She co-led initiatives to extend the research objectives of NHLBI s Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study from examining risk factors for heart disease, heart failure, and stroke to exploring risk factors for cognitive impairment and progression of decline in a 16,000-person cohort of black and white men and women from four U.S. communities. She also played a leadership role in coordination of the baseline examination of NHLBI s Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, a study designed to study the impact of acculturation on the health of the U.S. Hispanic/Latino population. Phillip Graham, Senior Public Health Researcher, Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice, Prevention and Surveillance Research Practice Area DrPH, Maternal and Child Health, UNC Chapel Hill MPH, Maternal and Child Health, UNC Chapel Hill BA, Psychology, UNC Chapel Hill Dr. Graham is a senior public health researcher in RTI International s Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice Division and heads the Prevention and Surveillance Research Practice Area. Dr. Graham has more than 20 years of experience conducting community-based participatory research and evaluation among diverse populations including urban, rural, and tribal communities. Since joining RTI, Dr. Graham has directed or collaborated on projects focusing on the prevention of adolescent interpersonal violence and substance use. He has investigated the effects of witnessing community violence, the development of ethnic identity among African American male adolescents, the effectiveness of science-based interventions to reduce youth substance use, and the impact of comprehensive school-based interventions and services to promote healthy child development. He currently directs several state-level evaluations of initiatives designed to promote the implementation of evidence-based prevention strategies to reduce substance abuse in local communities across the lifespan. His training and technical assistance with communities includes using data-driven decision making, needs assessment development, selecting evidence-based prevention strategies (individual programs and environmental strategies), and local evaluation capacity building. His methodological focus includes the use of mixed-methods approaches and latent class analysis, and his research emphasizes the importance of community context, systems change, and place-based strategies.

4 Jon A. Poehlman, Medical Anthropologist and Health Communication Researcher, Health Behavior, Health Promotion, and AIDS/HIV PhD, Applied Anthropology, emphasis in Medical Anthropology, International Health, and Public Health, University of South Florida MA, Applied Anthropology, Georgia State University BA, Anthropology, University of Virginia Dr. Poehlmanis an applied anthropologist with more than 12 years of experience in public health and health communication research. His education and work experience includes conducting research to support the design and development of health communication campaigns, ethnographic research into at-risk populations, and evaluation planning. Dr. Poehlman s current projects include developing social marketing campaigns aimed at promoting routine testing for HIV/AIDS in the United States, addressing sexually transmitted disease (STD) health disparities among African Americans, and promoting demand for male circumcision in African countries. Dr. Poehlman has also conducted HIV/AIDS prevention research in the country of Malawi and continues to assist with international HIV/AIDS projects. Methodologically, his expertise is in qualitative research methods, including unstructured and semistructured interviews, focus group discussions, and analysis of structured qualitative data using techniques such as multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and cultural consensus analysis. Suzanne L. West, Pharmacoepidemiologist, Health Care Quality Assessment PhD, Epidemiology, UNC Chapel Hill MPH, Epidemiology, University of Minnesota BS, Microbiology, Cornell University Dr. West, an RTI fellow, is an internationally recognized pharmacoepidemiologist with more than 30 years of research experience. Dr. West has used a variety of data sources for her research, including administrative claims databases, electronic health records, paper medical records, and questionnaires. Her primary research interests include methodological issues related to the linkage of electronic data across data sets and the valid ascertainment of pharmacoepidemiologic data, both from the respondent and instrument design perspectives. Dr. West has held leadership roles in a variety of research projects, including systematic reviews, comparative effectiveness research using electronic medical records, and multimillion dollar data collection efforts funded by both the federal government and the pharmaceutical industry. She has led studies in varied research areas, including diabetes, mental health, substance abuse, cancer, autoimmune diseases, urinary tract infections, asthma, female sexual dysfunction and prenatal conditions. Her recent activities focus on the development of a readmission quality measure for skilled nursing home patients using Medicare claims. She has also been involved with the use of electronic health records for research and for evaluating diseasespecific quality of care, an area that is gaining increasing national interest.

5 Roundtable Discussions Engage directly with RTI researchers at a variety of levels, in a small group setting; this is your chance to really get to know more about work at RTI and see how your studies could apply. Experts include: Katherine Bronstein, Research Environmental Engineer, Sustainability and Environmental Assessment (environmental policy and public health) MESE, Environmental Science and Engineering, UNC Chapel Hill BA, Environmental Studies, Dickinson College Ms. Bronstein is an environmental scientist in RTI International s Sustainability and Environmental Assessment group with 5 years of experience in environmental policy, emissions inventory development, all stages of regulatory development for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air quality and climate change programs, and solid waste and wastewater management in both professional and academic settings. She currently assists EPA s Climate Change Division (CCD) with rulemaking support for the Greenhouse Gas Mandatory Reporting Rule implementation and standards development for municipal solid waste and industrial waste landfills. For the past 3 years, she has been the primary leader on EPA s Solid Waste Inventory, which involves nationwide data collection, emissions modeling, and uncertainty analyses. She was also the lead editor of the 2011 technical report of the Arctic Council Task Force on Short-Lived Climate Forcers that compiled black carbon and organic carbon emissions inventories and mitigation opportunities for nations in the Arctic Region. Internationally, she provides industrial sector and environmental policy support to the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi (EAD) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. She is also engaged in a biomass cookstoves field study in Sri Lanka to monitor personal exposure to indoor air pollution and is conducting a literature review on historical and ongoing field studies and emission factors specific to climate forcers. Betty Markatos Brown, Research Health Analyst, Public Health Policy Research (tobacco-related research) MPH, Health Behavior and Health Education, UNC Chapel Hill BS, Psychology and Sociology, UNC Chapel Hill Ms. Brown is a research health analyst in RTI International s Public Health and Environment Division. Ms. Brown has strong experience in social science research, specializing in tobacco-related research. She has worked at RTI for more than 10 years on multiple components of comprehensive tobacco control program evaluation efforts. Ms. Brown has led complex studies regarding tobacco cessation interventions and community-level tobacco control programs, including qualitative and quantitative study elements. She designs study protocols, instruments, and analysis plans and prepares reports and presentations. She oversees Web-based and multimodal projects. These include surveys on how health care organizations and providers identify and treat patient tobacco use and surveys on how substance abuse treatment facilities integrate tobacco dependence policies and treatment. Additionally, she has conducted key informant interviews with tobacco control stakeholders and researched school tobacco policy and education activities. Ms..

6 Brown has experience conducting process and outcome evaluations of communitylevel tobacco control interventions, working with research teams on evaluations for multiple states Mary Council, Health Policy Analyst, Primary Prevention Research and Evaluation Program BA, Public Policy Analysis, UNC Chapel Hill Ms. Council is a health policy analyst in RTI International s Primary Prevention Research and Evaluation Program. She has 4 years of experience implementing and evaluating health promotion and disease prevention programs. She specializes in obesity and tobacco use prevention and control research and has experience in various qualitative research methods, including case studies, structured and semistructured interviews, and focus groups. In addition, she has experience in survey development, data collection and analysis, and technical report writing. She has assisted with a variety of research projects, including several state or communitylevel tobacco prevention and control program evaluations; formative health communications research with high-risk populations; environmental and systems research to increase physical activity and reduce obesity; as well as communitybased interventions with Native American populations. In her current role as the project manager for the Communities Putting Prevention to Work National Case Studies Evaluation, Ms. Council coordinates a 3-year, $3.5 million project staffed by 30 team members. This project, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, includes case studies with 18 communities and 6 states that will describe and understand how public health improvements are implemented and their contribution to improvements in health. Sonya Goode Green, Research Public Health Analyst, Community Health Promotion Program BA, Anthropology, UNC Chapel Hill MPH, Health Behavior/Health Education (Research Track), UNC Chapel Hill Ms. Green is a research public health analyst in RTI s Community Health Promotion Research (CoHPR) Program. Ms. Green has more than 14 years of experience in cancer control research, including project management and planning with multidisciplinary teams, questionnaire development, quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, and reporting of research findings. Her research interests include sociocultural and community influences on health-seeking behaviors and access to health care, health risk communications research, and mixed-methods approaches to research design, data collection, and analysis. Before joining RTI, Ms. Green was a clinical research coordinator at Duke University s Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she coordinated numerous studies involving tailored cancer risk communications based on theories of health behavior change and the testing of various modalities in communicating cancer risk. Since joining RTI in July 2004, she has served many roles for multiple projects, including project management, conducting systematic literature reviews, evaluation planning and implementation, qualitative data analysis, and reporting of research findings. Ms.

7 Green is experienced in various qualitative and quantitative research methods, including survey development, focus groups, and case studies involving telephone and in-person interviews with key stakeholders. She also has experience in designing and developing reporting forms and data management/analysis systems using QSR Nvivo 9, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Access to help clients collect, maintain, and analyze information relating to various components of their programs. Kim Hayes, Public Health Analyst, Primary Prevention Research and Evaluation Program MPH, Health Behavior Health Education, UNC Chapel Hill BA, Psychology, Sexuality Studies Minor, UNC Chapel Hill Ms. Hayes is a public health analyst in RTI s Primary Prevention Research and Evaluation Program. Ms. Hayes has 5 years of experience in public health research on topics such as cervical cancer; adolescent vaccination; and obesity, tobacco use, and alcohol use prevention among children. She has aided in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of home-based health communication parenting materials for kids and their parents, quantitative and qualitative surveys, and participant recruitment and management protocols. She also has experience hiring and supervising data collectors and conducting and coding semistructured in-depth interviews. Michael A. Penne, Senior Manager, Program Evaluation and Outcome Measurement MPH, Biostatistics, UNC Chapel Hill BS, Biostatistics, UNC Chapel Hill Mr. Penne, the senior manager of program evaluation and outcome measurement, has more than 15 years of experience in the design and conduct of probability sample surveys. He has led analysis teams for large-scale surveys and has experience in aspects of probability sampling, household interview surveys, analysis of survey data to take proper account of special clustering and stratification features, and development and implementation of design optimization features. He has extensive experience working on the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH, formerly the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse [NHSDA]), the National Analytic Center for NHSDA/NSDUH and Other Data, and the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) Data Collection Program. Additionally, he is an experienced SAS and SUDAAN programmer, specializing in programming nonstandard, complicated modeling and analysis procedures.

8 Brian G. Southwell, Senior Research Scientist, Health Communication Program PhD, University of Pennsylvania MA, University of Pennsylvania BA, University of Virginia Dr. Southwell joined RTI International as senior research scientist in He is also a Research Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Adjunct Associate Professor at UNC s Gillings School of Global Public Health, as well as an Adjunct Professor at Duke University. Before moving to North Carolina, he served for almost a decade at the University of Minnesota, most recently as Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication with an adjunct appointment in the School of Public Health. In addition, Dr. Southwell has worked for a variety of nonprofit and government organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Ogilvy Public Relations. He has conducted research on topics such as campaign measurement and evaluation, with emphasis on exposure measurement, the intersection of interpersonal communication, social networks, and mass communication, and the role of aging and memory. (His new book on social networks and popular understanding of health is available here: Dr. Southwell s large-scale evaluation work has spanned a number of behaviors and audiences, including the Office of National Drug Control Policy s antidrug efforts, CDC s cancer prevention and screening promotion efforts, the National Science Foundation (NSF) s efforts to reach local television news viewers, and various state-level campaigns. At RTI, Southwell has helped to develop a national survey of consumer energy perceptions, led projects for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and advised numerous national evaluation efforts. His work has been funded by the NSF, the National Institutes of Health, and other sources. Olivia Taylor, Public Health Research Analyst, Health Communication Program MPH, Health Behavior Health Education, UNC Chapel Hill BA, Psychology, Scripps College Ms. Taylor is a public health researcher in RTI s Health Communication program. Ms. Taylor has extensive public health experience, with specialized training in health communication ranging from formative research to evaluation and dissemination. Her work covers a variety of health topics, including violence and injury prevention, HIV, and adolescent health. Much of her work incorporates the use of new media and Web 2.0. Additionally, Ms. Taylor has several years of project management experience leading multifaceted public health initiatives at the national and local levels.

9 Nathan West, Health Services Research Analyst, Health Care Quality (Medicare and Medicaid) MPA, Public Administration, concentration in Research and Evaluation, NC State University BA, Public Policy Analysis, concentration in Health Policy and Administration, UNC Chapel Hill Mr. West has nearly 15 years of professional experience in health services and policy research. He is proficient in data analysis and report writing, evaluation design, qualitative data collection, and day-to-day project and task management. Mr. West s research efforts focus on health care quality and outcomes, pay for performance, post-acute care payment reform, and patient safety. He is also proficient evaluating medical home models being tested under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, and effective outreach and enrollment strategies targeted to children eligible for Children s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP) and Medicaid. He has considerable experience leading tasks on large and complex projects sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), evaluating Medicare and Medicaid demonstrations, and conducting policy research related to quality measurement, payment reform, and value-based purchasing. Peyton Williams, Research Associate, Health Communication Program BA, Public Policy Analysis with a concentration in Health Policy and Administration, UNC Chapel Hill Mr. Williams is a research associate in the Health Communication program at RTI International. Mr. Williams is a trained focus group moderator and interviewer specializing in conducting individual interviews and focus groups around sensitive subject matter, including HIV, sexually transmitted disease, substance use, and disability with consumers and health care providers. He has extensive experience conducting and managing challenging recruitment tasks. Some examples of the populations from which Mr. Williams has direct experience recruiting or managing participant recruitment include HIV-positive and at-risk men who have sex with men (MSM), heterosexual men and women, male-to-female transgender individuals, injection drug users, people with disabilities, and health care providers. He also has experience securing data collection sites at both professional market research facilities and in community-based settings across multiple U.S. cities. He routinely selects and oversees the efforts of professional recruitment firms and collaborates with local activists and community-based organizations to recruit participants from hard-to-reach populations. In addition to his research experience, Mr. Williams is responsible for managing several large task orders, including a $10 million task order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).