American College of Epidemiology
2008 Election Results

ACE President-Elect

Lorann Stallones, MPH, PhD, FACE is a Professor in the Department of Psychology, head of the Graduate Program in Public Health, Colorado State University, Fort Collins and Adjunct Professor, Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center.

Background: Dr. Stallones received a BA in 1974 in cultural anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara; an MPH in International Health in 1975, and a PhD in Epidemiology in 1982 at the University of Texas, School of Public She served in the Peace Corps in Micronesia. She was a Public Health Analyst at NIH, NHLBI, Epidemiology Branch. She became as Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky, Department of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health in 1984. Dr. Stallones moved to the Department of Environmental Health at Colorado State University in Fort Collins in 1990. In 2001, she moved from the Department of Environmental Health to the Department of Psychology. She served APHA as a member of the Epidemiology Section Council (1986-1990); on the Action Board (1989-1994); and on the Joint Policy Committee (1994). She served as Secretary-Treasurer for Society of Epidemiologic Research (1990-1993). She was a member of the Epidemiology Committee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute pre-doctoral fellowship panel (1996, 1998, 1999) and Chair of the Committee (2000, 2001). She was on the first panel convened for the Vietnam Education Foundation Fellowship Program, hosted by the National Academy of Sciences (2003). She just completed serving on the Safety and Occupational Health Study Section of NIOSH (2003-2007) and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee to Review the Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing Research Program at NIOSH (2006-2007). She has served on and chaired numerous grant review panels for the CDC/ NIOSH and CDC/NCIPC. Her primary research is related agricultural safety and health. She is the Principal Investigator of an NIH/Fogarty International Center project to provide training to Chinese scholars on agricultural injury prevention research. She is Director of the Colorado Injury Control Research Center, an academic research and training program funded by CDC (1995-present).


Board of Directors 
Fellows

Melissa M. Adams, M.P.H., Ph.D. is a Senior Research Epidemiologist of the Chronic and Infectious Disease Program at RTI, International. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, College of Public Health, University of South Florida.

Background: Dr. Adams received an M.P.H. (epidemiology) from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Ph.D. (epidemiology) from the University of Washington. Professionally, she has worked in government, in academia, and in the non-profit private sector. Her career started at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), where she worked for more than 20 years. Her activities at CDC included conducting epidemiologic studies in maternal and child health, consulting with state health departments, mentoring junior staff, and serving on the IRB. Subsequently, she was a Professor of Maternal and Child Health at the School of Public Health, University of Alabama, Birmingham. In 2006, she assumed her current position, where her duties include conducting perinatal research, serving on RTI’s IRB, and preparing proposals. Her professional service has included filling the presidency of the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research, conducting peer reviews of many articles submitted to professional journals, and participating on advisory committees. She is a Fellow of ACE and vice chair of ACE’s Publications Committee. She is a member of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research.

Ross C. Brownson, Ph.D. is professor of epidemiology and director of the Prevention Research Center at the Saint Louis University School of Public Health in Missouri.

Background: Dr. Brownson is involved in numerous community-level interventions designed to reduce modifiable risk factors such as physical inactivity, obesity, and tobacco use. In particular, he is interested in the impacts of environmental and policy interventions on health behaviors. Dr. Brownson also conducts research on dissemination of evidence-based interventions. He is the author of six books, over 220 peer-reviewed articles, and is on numerous editorial boards. His books include Chronic Disease Epidemiology and Control, Applied Epidemiology, Handbook of Obesity PreventionCommunicating Public Health Information Effectively: A Guide for Practitioners, and Evidence-Based Public Health. Related to the last book, Dr. Brownson has led in the development of the internationally recognized training course in evidence-based public health. He is the recipient of the Award for Excellence in Prevention Research and Research Translation in Chronic Disease (2000, from CDC) and the Abraham Lilienfeld Award for outstanding contributions in teaching and mentoring (2003, from APHA). Dr. Brownson served APHA as a member of the Epidemiology Section Council and on the Joint Policy Committee. Prior to joining academe, Dr. Brownson was a division director with the Missouri Department of Health. In this capacity he wrote or co-wrote bills on tobacco access to minors, state clean indoor air, and private insurance coverage of screening mammography/Pap testing.

Victor M. Cardenas, M.D., M.P.H., PH.D. is Associate Professor of the Division of Epidemiology and Disease Control, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston-School of Public Health, Regional Campus in El Paso, Texas.

Background: Cardenas earned his MD degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1979. Cardenas completed a course in Epidemiology of Communicable Diseases at the School of Public Health of Mexico (1981) to join the Division of Epidemiology of Mexico's Ministry of Health where he worked as a field epidemiologist (1982-1987). He was a trainee of Mexico's Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP), and shared in one of Mexico's greatest public health accomplishments investigating the last outbreak of paralytic poliomyelitis in the country that led to the adoption of "mop-up" vaccination of hard to reach areas. Afterwards, he became a faculty of the (Mexican) National Institute of Public Health where he conducted planned research. He pursued a more formal education attending Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University where he completed a Master in Public Health (1990) and a PhD degree in Epidemiology (1995). He then served as CDC consultant to the (Colombian) National Institute of Health (1994-1996), where he contributed to establish the Applied Epidemiology Service, the Colombian FETP. Since 1997, he has been a faculty member of the Division of Epidemiology and Disease Control at the University of Texas-School of Public Health at the Regional Campus in El Paso, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2007. Dr. Cardenas's currently studies the epidemiology of H. pylori -related diseases (atrophic gastritis, stomach cancer, possibly iron deficiency and iron deficiency anemia), conditions that have eradication potential. He is a member of APHA, SER, and IEA and served from 1998-2001 as founding Executive Director of Training in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network, a non-governmental organization that supports FETPs around the world.

Deborah (Debbie) Winn, Ph.D. is the Acting Associate Director of the Epidemiology and Genetics Research Program, the National Cancer Institute’s extramural epidemiology program in Rockville, Maryland. She describes her job as having two key parts: one is to work directly with individual investigators to provide them with the best possible options, opportunities, tools and advice to obtain funding for promising and important epidemiologic studies in cancer. The second part is to move the field of cancer epidemiology forward through identifying research opportunities and gaps and finding and directing resources and attention to them.

Background: With extensive experience in epidemiologic research and numerous publications primarily in cancer epidemiology and oral epidemiology, she has increasingly focused on the challenges of large-scale, transdisciplinary science, particularly as it relates to cancer epidemiology. For example, she has played critical roles in NCI’s bioinformatics efforts in population sciences and cancer control and in think tanks and initiatives to move findings from cancer epidemiology into public health practice and from basic biology to epidemiology. She has been a key spokesperson for the Institute on epidemiologic topics of high congressional and public interest, for example, the role of environmental factors in the etiology of breast cancer.

Dr. Winn received her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. After a fellowship at NCI, she worked at the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For 5 of her 7 years there, she was the Deputy Director of the Division of Health Interview Statistics, with broad responsibilities for planning, implementing, and analyzing National Health Interview Surveys. Subsequently she was a Branch Chief in the intramural oral epidemiology program at the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research before returning joining the NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences in 2000.

In 2006, Dr. Winn received the H. A. Tyroler Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she has received of a number NIH Group and U.S. Public Health Service Awards.


Board of Directors
Member

Melissa Perry, ScD, MHS is Associate Professor of Occupational Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Background: Dr. Perry received Master of Health Science and Doctor of Science degrees from Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. Over the past fifteen years she has conducted epidemiology and public health promotion studies targeting a number of health endpoints including occupational injury and disease. Her lab is currently conducting studies on the genotoxic and hormone disrupting properties of occupational and environmental pesticide exposures and she is collaborating on pesticides studies in South Africa, Tanzania, and China. She teaches public health graduate courses at Harvard in environmental health and injury epidemiology. She has been a member of ACE for almost a decade and a membership committee member since 2000, on which she currently serves as co-chair.