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OUR STAFFMildred Z. Solomon, EdD
Mildred Z. Solomon, EdD, is Vice President of Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), an international non-profit research and development organization of more than 1200 professional staff, and Associate Clinical Professor of Social Medicine, Medical Ethics, and Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. At EDC, Dr. Solomon directs its Center for Applied Ethics, an interdisciplinary group of social scientists engaged in a variety of studies focusing on values questions, medical uncertainty and health system quality improvement. At Harvard, she directs the medical school’s Fellowship in Medical Ethics, a program aimed at building the bioethics capacity of the Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals. Fellows are physicians, nurses, social workers, and other professionals such as journalists and lawyers, interested in developing their skills in bioethics. An expert in professional education and physician behavior change, Dr. Solomon has more than 30 years’ experience researching, designing, and evaluating a wide variety of education and quality improvement programs for health professionals, health care organizations, and the public, particularly in areas of medical uncertainty, where values questions pose difficult policy and practice challenges. She has served as principal investigator on numerous grants from federal agencies, including the Agency for Health Research and Quality, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Palliative Medicine and frequently consults to government agencies, foundations, universities, and national organizations. Currently, for the National Institutes of Health, she is leading an effort to educate U.S. high school students about the ethical issues raised by advances in the life sciences. Solomon’s bioethics scholarship has focused most on empirical ethics, primarily researching health care professionals' knowledge and attitudes related to the ethics of end-of-life care in both adult medicine and pediatrics and on the ethics of organ donation. Examples of recent policy contributions include consultations to two committees of the Institute of Medicine in the areas of palliative care and organ donation and guidance to the U.S. Holocaust Museum with regard to its professional education initiatives on conflicts of interest and dual agency among police, the military and government leaders. Dr. Solomon sits on the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation, which makes national policy recommendations to the Secretary for enhancing organ donation and transplantation. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Solomon was honored by the Association of Academic Health Centers for a “distinguished career in educational research.” She received her BA degree from Smith College, and her doctorate from Harvard University. Deborah E. Sellers, PhD, MS,is Associate Director of Research and Development. She received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a master’s degree in biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Sellers, who specializes in research methods, has considerable experience in research design, survey methods, multivariate data analysis, evaluation research, and research administration. At the Center for Applied Ethics, Dr. Sellers has directed a number of projects, including the Adoption of Cancer Pain Guidelines in Managed Care, which involved designing a cancer pain management intervention and evaluating its impact on more than 1,000 cancer patients, the Project on Adult Care in Cystic Fibrosis, a 3-year longitudinal study of adults with CF, and Toward Optimal End-of-Life Care in the PICU, a study in which the views of parents and clinicians who cared for 300 children who died will be gathered in order to gain insight into how dying and death are experienced in the pediatric intensive care setting and to advance research methods in pediatric palliative care. Dr. Sellers also manages the data processing and analysis components of other projects in CAE that have included administration of needs assessment surveys to some 30,000 healthcare providers in over 90 hospitals and nursing homes across the country. David Browning, MSW, BCD is Director of the Initiative for Pediatric Palliative Care, an international educational project for health care professionals aimed at bringing compassionate and culturally respectful care to children with life-threatening conditions and their families. He is also Co-Founder and Senior Scholar at the Institute for Professionalism and Ethical Practice at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, and consultant to Advocating for Clinical Excellence, a project promoting transdisciplinary palliative care education project at the City of Hope National Medical Center. Mr. Browning serves on the core faulty for the Certificate Program in Palliative and End-of-Life Care at Smith College School for Social Work, and has been an advisor to the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine’s College of Palliative Care. He is a recipient of the Social Work Leadership Development Award from the Project on Death in America, and is a Fellow in Thanatology, Association for Death Education and Counseling. Alan Stockdale, PhD, a medical anthropologist, is the principal investigator on a study entitled “Consumer Perspectives on the Promise of Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy” and a co-investigator on “Parent Education on DNA Testing in the Newborn Screen” both funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Ethics Law and Social Implications (ELSI) Program. He also serves as co-investigator on two other federal grants. “Factors Influencing Use of Cancer Genetics by Physicians” is conducted in collaboration with the University of Vermont Medical School and funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI); “Quality of Life in Advanced Cystic Fibrosis in a Transplantation Era” collaboration between CAE and The Children’s Hospital Boston, is funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Other recent work at EDC includes collecting and analyzing public comments concerning the protections the public and lay consumer groups would like the federal government to initiate regarding new genetic screening tests. This work was done for the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Special Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing. Before coming to EDC, he was a Fellow in the Program in Genomics, Ethics, and Society at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and a Graduate Fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at MIT. Dr. Stockdale has a doctoral degree in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University and an MA. Edward J. Dill III, Ph.D, M.A., a statistician, is responsible for quantitative data analysis for a variety of complex research projects that include a 3-year longitudinal study of the quality of life of adults with Cystic Fibrosis, an observational study of end of life care in the pediatric intensive care setting that includes the development of a measure of the quality of dying and death, a factorial survey study of clinician and consumer views of their roles and obligations in sharing genetic information with family members, and a pilot assessment of an intervention to facilitate adolescent’s management of their CF. Dr. Dill received his B.A. from Georgetown University, his M.A in Clinical Child Psychology from the University of Kansas, and his Ph.D. also from the University of Kansas where he majored in Clinical Child Psychology and minored in Quantitative Psychology (Statistics). He completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Psychology at the Counseling Center of Nashua where he continued on as a Psychologist. Prior to his clinical work, Dr. Dill was the Project Coordinator and Statistician of the Peaceful Schools Project, an educational study designed to test the effectiveness of a school-wide violence prevention program among 3,000 students and 200 teachers in 11 schools in Topeka, Kansas. Adena Cohen-Bearak, M.Ed., M.P.H. started working in the field of health education in 1983. She worked for various non-profit agencies as a health educator and trainer, curriculum developer, and content specialist over a 15 year span. After receiving her M.P.H. in 1999 from Boston University, she shifted her focus to research, working at Harvard School of Public Health on a qualitative study of an instrument to help schools assess their physical activity and nutrition programs, and at Boston Medical Center on a quantitative study of a telephone intervention to improve diet, exercise, and medication adherence in African American hypertensive adults in Boston. Now at EDC, Ms. Cohen-Bearak is focusing on the PICU study, and will be helping to coordinate the different elements of the study as it moves into development of the PICU-QODD instrument. Given her focus in qualitative research, she looks forward to performing the qualitative interviews for this study as well as the analysis of the qualitative data. Robert D. Truog, MD, is Director of the Multidisciplinary Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital in Boston and Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Anesthesia and Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University. Dr. Truog grew up in Southern California and received both his undergraduate and medical school training at UCLA. After completing a residency and chief residency in pediatrics at the University of Colorado in Denver, he returned to UCLA for a residency in anesthesiology. In 1986 he completed his fellowship training in pediatric anesthesia and critical care at Boston Children's Hospital, and he joined its faculty in 1987. After developing an interest in medical ethics, Dr. Truog undertook a two-year sabbatical to complete a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Brown University and the Program in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University. In addition to his clinical and administrative responsibilities, Dr. Truog co-chairs the Children's Hospital Ethics Advisory Committee and is the Associate Director of the Office of Ethics. At Harvard Medical School, he is the Director of Clinical Programs in the Division of Medical Ethics. His academic work has focused on the ethical issues that arise in anesthesia and critical care, and in 1993 he was awarded The Christer Grenvik Memorial Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine for his contributions and leadership in the area of ethics. Loring Conant, M.D. is a member of the Department of Medicine at the Cambridge Health Alliance, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. Formerly, Senior Physician at the Harvard University Health Services, and Medical Director of the Hospice of Cambridge. Dr. Conant has been a leader in palliative care and in innovative ways to educate physicians. He is currently a member of the Core Faculty for the Program in Palliative Care Education and Practice at the Harvard Medial School Center for Palliative Care. Walter Robinson, M.D. is currently Chief of the Division of Pulmonology at IWK-Grace Health Centre in Halifax, Canada. Prior to that, Dr. Robinson was an Assistant Professor of Social Medicine and Pediatrics as well as Associate Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, where he directed the Fellowship in Medical Ethics program for five years. Dr. Robinson was also a pediatric pulmonologist at Children’s Hospital Boston, where he led ethics and palliative care consultation teams and served on both the Ethics Advisory Committee and the Pediatric Advanced Care Team. He also served on the Institutional Review Boards of both Children’s Hospital and HMS. Robert D. Truog, M.D. is Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Anesthesia and Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University. Dr. Truog received both his undergraduate and medical school training at UCLA. After completing a residency and chief residency in pediatrics at the University of Colorado in Denver, he returned to UCLA for a residency in anesthesiology. In 1986 he completed his fellowship training in pediatric anesthesia and critical care at Boston Children’s Hospital, and he joined its faculty in 1987. After developing an interest in medical ethics, Dr. Truog undertook a two-year sabbatical to complete a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Brown University and the Program in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University. Formerly director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Boston, Dr. Truog co-chairs the Children’s Hospital Ethics Advisory Committee and is the Associate Director of the Office of Ethics. At Harvard Medical School, he is the Director of Clinical Programs in the Division of Medical Ethics. His academic work has focused on the ethical issues that arise in anesthesia and critical care, and in 1993 he was awarded The Christer Grenvik Memorial Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine for his contributions and leadership in the area of ethics. Dieter Koch-Weser, M.D., Ph.D. is a Senior Associate in Medicine at CAE and a Senior Advisor to EDC. Dr. Koch-Weser is the former chairman of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine and Dean for International Programs of the Harvard Medical School. He has been the medical liaison for the Decisions Near the End-of-Life program since its beginning in 1987. He is the author of more than one hundred presentations on medical education, tuberculosis, social medicine, and medical ethics. Carol Wood-Nutter, B.S. is CAE’s Financial Manager responsible for managing financial and business transactions involving general funds, grants, and contracts. Ms. Nutter performs comprehensive analyses and projections at the project and Center levels; oversees the development and monitoring of budgets and contractual relationships for grants, contracts and general funds; analyzes financial data and coordinates financial planning to ensure efficient use of resources and compliance with EDC and funder regulations and restrictions. Ms. Nutter began her career in program management within the private, non-profit sector following completion of a B.S. degree from Bentley College. She then transitioned to private industry where she honed her accounting, analytical, and management skills. Prior to joining EDC, Inc., Ms. Nutter worked as Northeast Regional Business Analyst, supporting 23 branch locations in 8 states, for a nationwide company. Jean C. Doherty, B.A. is the Project Coordinator of the Initiative for Pediatric Palliative Care (IPPC), the NIH High School Bioethics Curriculum Design project, and Gems of Care. A graduate from the University of Hawai'i in English Literature, she has recently returned to the Boston area to work at EDC. While in Hawai'i she worked as a microbiology laboratory technician for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) where she received acknowledgement in the journal 'Plant Disease' for her work on the association of Enterobacter Cloacae with Rhizome Rot of 'edible' Ginger in Hawai'i. Diana Metrick, B.A. currently works as Project Assistant for the Project on Adult Care in Cystic Fibrosis (PAC-CF) and the End-of-Life in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). Within these projects, Ms. Metrick does background research to inform the design of instruments which are used in measuring the quality of dying and death in the pediatric ICU. In addition, much of her work focuses on database management and development of IRB applications.
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