Edward L. Baker, Jr.

Dr. Edward Baker currently serves as Director of the North Carolina Institute for Public Health, the outreach and service unit of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health. He also holds the position of Research Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Administration. Prior to taking these positions in May 2003, he served as Assistant Surgeon General in the U.S. Public Health Service and Director of CDC’s Public Heath Practice Program Office since 1990. In that role, he led national initiatives to strengthen the public health infrastructure by improving workforce competency, enhancing information systems, improving access to practice-relevant knowledge, assuring organizational capacity, and supporting extramural prevention research. Initiatives developed or enhanced under his leadership include the Public Health Leadership Institutes, the Information Network for Public Health Officials, the Public Health Training Network, the Sustainable Management Development Program, the Health Alert Network, the National Public Health Performance Standards Program, the National Laboratory Training Network, the National Laboratory System, and the Management Academy for Public Health. Previously, he served as Deputy Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and on the faculty of Harvard School of Public Health’s Occupational Health Program. Dr. Baker trained in medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, in public health and occupational health at Harvard, and in preventive medicine and epidemiology (through the Epidemic Intelligence Service) at CDC. He has received numerous awards and published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He and his wife Pam have three outstanding children, Justin, Ryan, and Lindsay.

Joan Brewster

Joan Brewster, Director of Public Health Systems Planning and Development for the Washington State Department of Health, Office of the Secretary. Responsible for managing and directing the activities designed to improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of the state’s public health system. This includes oversight of the multi-agency Public Health Improvement Partnership, and the development of Standards for Public Health in Washington State.

Joan has served in the Office of the Secretary since 1990, and previously worked for a local health department, as a community health planner, and as staff for a state-wide long term care association

Joan was a scholar in the national Public Health Leadership Institute (1997), a member of the Governor’s Executive Management Program (1994), and received the Governor’s recognition as a “Sustaining Leader in State Government” in 2001.

Peter A. Briss

Dr. Briss is the Chief of the Community Guide Branch at CDC. The Community Guide Branch supports the non-Federal Task Force on Community Preventive Services and works with many partners to develop evidence-based community practice guidelines and encourage the adoption of effective practices in communities and health care systems. His work focuses on making the best available scientific information accessible to practitioners and policy makers in ways that are both scientifically credible and practically useful. He has participated in public health teaching, practice, and research at state and federal levels in the U.S. and internationally. He has authored or coauthored more than 50 scholarly publications and coedited the Guide to Community Preventive Services.

Dr. Briss received his medical degree and residency training in internal medicine and pediatrics at the Ohio State University. He has an MPH in Health Management and Policy from the University of Michigan, and completed training in epidemiology and preventive medicine at CDC. He is board certified in internal medicine, pediatrics, and preventive medicine. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Susan and their children Erin and Laura.

Jonathan E. Fielding

Jonathan E. Fielding, M.D., M.P.H. is Director of Public Health and Health Officer for Los Angeles County responsible for all public health functions including surveillance and control of both communicable and non-communicable diseases, and of health protection (including against bioterrorism) for the County=s 10 million residents. He directs a staff of 3,600 with an annual budget exceeding $650 million within the Department of Health Services. He is also a Commissioner of the First 5 L.A. Commission, which distributes over $100 million per year to improve health and development of children 0-5.

He chairs the US Community Preventive Services Task Force. He was also a founding member of the US Clinical Preventive Services Task Force. Dr. Fielding is also a Professor in the Schools of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA and has authored over 160 peer-reviewed articles, chapters and editorials on a wide range of public health and preventive medicine issues. He teaches the course “Determinants of Health” in the School of Public Health. He is Editor of Annual Review of Public Health, Chairman of the national Partnership for Prevention and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine.
Formerly Dr. Fielding was Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health and was a Vice President of Johnson & Johnson. He received his medical and public health degrees from Harvard University, and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Wharton School of Business.

George Isham

George J. Isham, M.D. is Medical Director and Chief Health Officer for HealthPartners, a large health care organization in Minnesota, representing nearly 800,000 members. Dr. Isham is responsible for quality, utilization management, health promotion and disease management, research, and health professionals' education at HealthPartners. He is active in strategic planning and policy issues. Before his current position, Dr. Isham was Medical Director of MedCenters Health Plan in Minneapolis. In the late 1980s, he was Executive Director of University Health Care, an organization affiliated with the University of Wisconsin in Madison. His practice experience as a primary care physician included eight years at the Freeport Clinic in Freeport, Illinois, and three and half years as Clinical Assistant Professor in Medicine at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Isham was
chair of the Institute of Medicine committee that produced the report, Priority Areas for National Action: Transforming Health Care Quality. Dr. Isham received his medical degree from the University of Illinois and served his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison. He also has a Master of Science in Preventive Medicine/Administrative Medicine from the University of Wisconsin Madison.

Glen P. Mays

Glen P. Mays recently joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Public Health after four years at Mathematical Policy Research as a senior health researcher. He currently serves as associate professor, vice chair, and director of research for the College’s Department of Health Policy and Management. Dr. Mays’ research focuses on strategies for organizing and financing public health services, health insurance, and medical care services for underserved populations. His work in public health has included a series of CDC-supported studies examining how public health services are organized, financed, and delivered across local communities, and what factors influence the performance of essential public health services. His work in health insurance has included economic evaluations of state strategies to expand health insurance coverage, as well as studies of health promotion and disease management activities pursued by private health insurers and employers. As part of this work, he serves as a senior researcher on the Center for Studying Health System Change’s Community Tracking Study, where he analyzes the decisions of insurers and employers regarding health benefits. Dr. Mays was recently nominated to serve on the Institute of Medicine’s new committee for studying the use of performance measures and incentives to improve health care quality. Dr. Mays received the Dissertation of the Year award from the Association for Health Services Research in 2000 for his study of how managed care contracting arrangements affect the ability of community health centers to provide care for the uninsured. He has published more than 40 journal articles, books, and chapters on issues involving public health systems, health insurance, and safety-net health care programs for the uninsured. He received Ph.D. and M.P.H. degrees in health policy and administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in health economics at Harvard Medical School.

James A. Pearsol

Jim has 26 years of experience in public health and medical education. He is currently Assistant Director at the Ohio Department of Health (ODH), having worked there since 1995. Jim has led the design and implementation of the state and local public health performance measurement activities in Ohio.

Ohio has established, in statute, a local public health performance standards program for local health departments that requires annual agency performance measurement, includes a subsidy incentive for local agency participation, is jurisdictionally-based and focuses on minimum standards. At the state public health agency, Ohio has a long-established agency strategic planning process that includes identification of annual strategic priorities and associated performance measures and is also jurisdictionally based. At both the state and local levels, web-based assessment tools have been designed to support the measurement and reporting processes. Ohio plans to use of the CDC National Public Health Performance Standards Tools in 2005 and 2006. The combination of the current process in combination with the CDC tools will produce a comprehensive, state-of-the-art mix of jurisdictional and systems-based performance assessments by which to best position state and local agencies for future accreditation.

Barbara K. Rimer

Barbara K. Rimer, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, became dean of the School of Public Health on June 1, 2005. Dr. Rimer received an MPH (1973) from the University of Michigan, with joint majors in Health Education and Medical Care Organization, and a DrPH (1981) in Health Education from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Previously, she served as Deputy Director for Population Sciences at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC-Chapel Hill (2003-2005), as Director of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, one of four extramural divisions at the National Cancer Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health), from 1997-2002; as Professor of Community and Family Medicine at Duke University (1991-97); and as Director of Behavioral Research and a full member at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia (1987-91). Dr. Rimer has conducted research in a number of areas, including informed decision-making, long-term maintenance of behavior changes (such as diet, cancer screening and tobacco use), interventions to increase adherence to cancer prevention and early detection, dissemination of evidence-based interventions and use of new technologies for information, support and behavior change. She currently leads an NIH-funded study to increase regular use of mammography and a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to assess the impact of cancer-related listservs on cancer patients/survivors and caregivers.

Dr. Rimer is the author of over 250 publications and serves on several journal editorial boards. Her numerous awards and honors include the Healthtrac Foundation Award for Health Education (2004), the Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2000), the Director’s Award from the National Institutes of Health (2000) and the American Cancer Society Distinguished Service Award (2000). Dr. Rimer was the first woman and behavioral scientist to lead the National Cancer Institute’s National Cancer Advisory Board, a Presidential appointment. She currently is Vice-Chair for the Task Force on Community Preventive Services at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lee Thielen

Lee Thielen is a consultant on public health issues, especially workforce and infrastructure initiatives. Prior to 2000, she worked for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment where she served as Associate Director for 16 years. She authored a report for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on Accreditation and Standards for Public Health Agencies and is the Chair of the Multi- State Learning Collaborative on Performance and Capacity Assessment or Accreditation of Public Health Departments.

She is an elected board member to the Health District of Northern Larimer County, a member of the Larimer County Board of Health, past chair of the Public Health Leadership Society, and serves as the Executive Director of the Colorado Association of Local Public Health Officials.

Lee has a bachelor’s degree in international economics from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Colorado.

She received the Noble J. Swearinger Award from ASTHO in 1990, the Roy Cleere Award from the Colorado Public Health Association, the Distinguished Service Award from Governor Romer, and was awarded the highest honor of the Colorado Public Health Association, the Florence Sabin Award for service to public health.