NEWS

Diaz elected to Institute of Medicine of National Academies

Dr. Luis A. Diaz, C.E. Wheeler Jr. distinguished professor at the UNC School of Medicine, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, a sister organization of the National Academy of Sciences.

The institute and NAS are both part of the National Academies, an entity that also includes the National Research Council and the National Academy of Engineering.

Sixty-five new members were recently elected to the Institute of Medicine, raising the total active membership to 1,358. Current active members elect new members from among candidates chosen for their major contributions to health and medicine or to related fields such as social and behavioral sciences, law, administration and economics.

Diaz, who is chairman of the department of dermatology, received his medical degree from Universidad Nacional de Trujillo in Peru. He completed his residency at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1974.

His research focuses on human autoimmunity and autoimmune blistering diseases; his studies focus on defining the immunopathological mechanisms involved in three human autoimmune diseases.

UNC ranks 11th among public research institutions for the number of members in the National Academies, including the National Academy of Science (eight), the National Academy of Engineering (five), and the Institute of Medicine (20). In addition, UNC counts 16 of its faculty among the members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

For more information on the institute, click on www.iom.edu.

McLamb named to national task force on disaster preparedness, response

John McLamb, director of informatics in the UNC School of Medicine’s department of emergency medicine, has been named to a national task force on disaster preparedness and response.

He was chosen by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society to be part of the National Disaster Preparedness and Response Task Force. The group’s mission is to use health-care information technology to support U.S. homeland defense. It plans to define and address the needs of health-care industry information technology to handle bioterrorism and other disaster events. The task force will also provide recommendations to industry professionals about how to meet these challenges.

Members of the task force were selected through a search conducted by HIMSS within its membership for health-care information technology experts in disaster management. McLamb was chosen, in large part, because of his role as technical director and project manager for the N.C. Emergency Department Database, a project that collects information from North Carolina hospital emergency departments in a central database to aid in the early detection of and response to a possible biological or chemical terrorist attack.

The project is funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Homeland Defense Initiative.

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Weinberger honored for research on improving the quality of patient care

Dr. Morris Weinberger, Vergil N. Slee distinguished professor of healthcare quality management in the UNC School of Public Health department of health policy and administration, was recently presented the Vision Award by Improving Chronic Illness Care at its National Congress on Improving Chronic Care, Innovations in Research and Practice.

Weinberger was recognized for his innovative and methodologically rigorous research on methods to improve the care of patients with arthritis, diabetes and other major chronic conditions.

The Vision Award was established to recognize achievement and leadership in linking the fields of chronic care research and clinical quality improvement. Improving Chronic Illness Care is a national program supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and based in Group Health Cooperative’s MacColl Institute in Seattle.

Weinberger’s research interests include health services research, primary care, patient-centered outcomes research, pharmaceutical care and quality of care.

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Epidemiology student honored for investigative accomplishments

Kristen Kucera, a graduate student in the UNC School of Public Health’s department of epidemiology, won honorable mention for the best contribution by a young investigator at the 16^th International Symposium on Epidemiology in Occupational Health, held recently in Barcelona, Spain.

Her winning abstract, titled "Biomechanical assessment of North Carolina commercial crab fishermen," looked specifically at the biomechanics of tasks done by fishermen and how they may lead to musculoskeletal injury. The paper was co-authored by Dr. Gary Mirka, associate professor of industrial engineering at North Carolina State University.

Kucera was promoted to the doctoral program in epidemiology this past May and is on track to earn her MSPH in December. She is advised by Dr. Dana Loomis, an epidemiology professor in the UNC School of Public Health.

Kucera is from McMinnville, Ore. Her research interests include sports injury and occupational injury.

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Dean Roper named to national public health preparedness council

Dr. Bill Roper, dean of the UNC School of Public Health and a former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been appointed to the Secretary’s Council on Public

Health Preparedness by Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Roper, along with 20 other appointees from across the nation, is advising the department on appropriate actions to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies, including acts of bioterrorism.

The panel’s first meeting, held recently in Washington, D.C., covered bioterrorism preparedness and response programs, states’ preparedness programs, lessons learned from the last fall’s anthrax mail attacks, research and development efforts, development of new products related to bioterrorism and public health emergency planning.

The UNC School of Public Health is home to one of the nation’s CDC-funded centers for public health preparedness.

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Center for Public Health Preparedness, department of epidemiology gain faculty member

Dr. Pia MacDonald has joined the UNC School of Public Health as project director for the Center for Public Health Preparedness and as a research assistant professor in the department of epidemiology.

As project director, MacDonald is developing and piloting an active surveillance system in western North Carolina, training the state’s regional public health response teams, organizing and supervising UNC graduate student projects in state and county health departments, and assisting neighboring states to improve their infectious disease surveillance systems.

MacDonald recently completed her training as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention assigned to the Division of Public Health in North Carolina.

She earned a doctorate in epidemiological sciences from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, a master’s of public health in infectious disease epidemiology from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of California at Berkeley.

MacDonald’s professional interests include infectious disease surveillance and outbreak investigation, applied epidemiology, spatial statistics, Geographic Information Systems, remote sensing, vector-borne diseases and international health.

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Active Living by Design’s Killingsworth honored by bicyclists’ group

The League of American Bicyclists, the national membership organization of cyclists, presented Richard Killingsworth with its most prestigious award at BikeFest 2002, the league’s annual National Rally of Cyclists, held recently in Amherst, Mass.

Killingsworth is the director of Active Living by Design, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and part of the UNC School of Public Health.

Killingsworth was presented with the Dr. Paul Dudley White Award in recognition of his outstanding and inspirational contributions to bicycling. Known as the "father of modern cardiology," White was a founder of the American Heart Association and a leading advocate of aerobic exercise, especially bicycle riding, to prevent coronary artery disease.

At Active Living by Design, Killingsworth directs efforts to establish and evaluate innovative approaches to increase physical activity through community design, public policies and communications strategies. Previously, Killingsworth was a health interventionist in the Active Community Environments initiative, a national effort sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also aims to increase physical activity and improve health through community design and transportation alternatives.

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Public health’s Tilson receives distinguished service award from pharmacoepidemiology society

Dr. Hugh Tilson, clinical professor of epidemiology and health policy and senior adviser to the dean at the UNC School of Public Health, has received the Distinguished Service Award from the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.

The award was presented recently by Jacques LeLorier, International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology president, at the society’s annual general membership meetings in Edinburgh, Scotland.

This represented the second time in the society’s 12 years that the award has been given. A bronze medal, the award reads "for your leadership, dedication, and contributions to the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology with deep appreciation."

Tilson, who is founding co-president of the society, is a long-active member, a program participant and currently chairs the committee on policies and bylaws.

He served as health officer and director of the Division of Health Services and the Department of Human Services in Oregon in the late 1970s and later as state health officer and director for the Division of Health Services in North Carolina. He also worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years.

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School of Public Health contact: Lisa Katz at (919) 966-7467 or lisa_katz@unc.edu
News Services contact: Deb Saine at (919) 962-8415