Consultants to the Task Force

The Task Force also invites experts in methods or broad public health issues to participate in certain aspects of its work. Task Force consultants:

• Provide feedback on specific reviews
• Assist in methods refinement or methods issues

 

Previous Consultants

 

Biographical Sketches

Kay Dickersin, PhD

Kay Dickersin is currently professor of epidemiology and the director of the Center for Clinical Trials at Johns Hopkins where she oversees the clinical trials curriculum in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Dickersin also serves as the director of the U.S. Cochrane Center (USCC), one of 12 Centers worldwide participating in The Cochrane Collaboration. She was a founding member of the Cochrane Collaboration and has directed a US-based Cochrane Center since 1994. Dr. Dickersin is an editor of the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Review Group, and she oversees efforts in the United States to coordinate and contribute to the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Review Group (CEVG) with support from the National Eye Institute. Her major research contributions have been related to clinical trials, publication bias, trials registers, systematic reviews, and evidence-based healthcare.

Dr. Dickersin currently co-chairs the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Scientific Advisory Group to the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. Other appointments have included the National Cancer Advisory Board (appointed by President William Jefferson Clinton); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Community Preventive Services Task Force; committees for the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council; international and national data and safety monitoring boards; and the editorial and advisory boards of major journals in the field of clinical trials (Clinical Trials, Trials, and PLoS Clinical Trials), as well as the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Health Expectations and BioMed Central. She was elected to the American Epidemiological Society in 1999 and to the Institute of Medicine in 2007.

Kay Dickersin received her bachelor’s and master’s degree in zoology (specializing in cell biology) from the University of California Berkeley in 1974 and 1975, respectively, and her doctorate in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1989.

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Robert S. Lawrence, MD

Robert S. Lawrence is professor of environmental health sciences, health policy, and international health and director of the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, and trained in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He served for three years as an epidemic intelligence service officer at the Centers for Disease Control, US Public Health Service.

Dr. Lawrence is a Master of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine, the Society of General Internal Medicine, and the American Public Health Association, and he is a founding member of Physicians for Human Rights. From 1970 to 1974 he was a member of the faculty of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he helped develop a primary health care system funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity. In 1974 he was appointed the first Director of the Division of Primary Care at Harvard Medical School where he subsequently served as the Charles S. Davidson Associate Professor of Medicine and chief of medicine at the Cambridge Hospital until 1991. From 1991 to 1995, he was the director of health sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation.

From 1984 to 1989, Dr. Lawrence chaired the US Preventive Services Task Force of the Department of Health and Human Services and served on the successor Preventive Services Task Force from 1990 to 1995. He serves as a consultant to the Community Preventive Services Task Force, as a member of the advisory board of the Open Society Institute's Global Health Program, as a member of the board of the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Program, and he chairs the board of Physicians for Human Rights.

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J. Michael McGinnis, MD, MPP

Michael McGinnis is senior scholar at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, leading its initiative on evidence-based medicine. From 1999 to 2005, he served as senior vice president and founding director of the Health Group, and as counselor to the president, at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. From 1977 to 1995, he held continuous appointment as assistant surgeon general, deputy assistant secretary for health, and founding director, disease prevention and health promotion, through the Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations. Programs and policies created and launched at his initiative include: the Healthy People process on national health objectives, now in its 3rd decade; the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which develops the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, now in its 4th iteration; the work of the Public Health Functions Steering Committee to develop the 10 Essential Services of Public Health; the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (with USDA), now in its 6th edition; the RWJF Health & Society Scholars Program; the RWJF Young Epidemiology Scholars Program; and the RWJF Active Living family of programs. His international service includes appointments as chair of the World Bank/European Commission Task Force on post-war reconstruction of the health sector in Bosnia (1995 to 1996); and state coordinator for the World Health Organization smallpox eradication program in Uttar Pradesh, India (1974 to 1975). He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, and Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine. Current and recent board memberships include: the Nemours Foundation Board of Directors, the IOM Committee on Children’s Food Marketing (Chair); the NIH State-of-the-Science Panel on Multivitamins in Chronic Disease Prevention (Chair); the Partnership for Prevention (Chair, Policy Committee); the Health Professionals Roundtable on Preventive Services (Chair); the FDA Food Advisory Committee/Subcommittee on Nutrition; and the Board of the United Way of the National Capital Area (Chair, Resource Development).

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Alonzo Plough, MA, MPH, PhD

Alonzo Plough joined The California Endowment in July 2005. As vice president of strategy, planning and evaluation, Dr. Plough is responsible for the leadership, and overall direction of The Endowment's planning, evaluation, research and organizational learning.

Plough served for 10 years as director and health officer for the Seattle and King County Department of Public Health, one of the foremost metropolitan health departments in the nation. He was also professor of health services at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine in Seattle.

Prior to that, Plough served for eight years as director of public health for the Boston Department of Health and Hospitals. During his many years in Boston he held academic appointments at the Harvard University School of Public Health, Tufts University Department of Community Medicine, and Boston University School of Management.

Plough's career includes many awards recognizing exemplary public service and leadership, service on numerous boards of directors of nonprofit organizations and an extensive body of scholarly publications.

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Steven M. Teutsch, MD, MPH

Steven M. Teutsch became the chief science officer for Los Angeles County Public Health in February 2009. He had been in the Outcomes Research and Management program at Merck since October 1997, where he was responsible for scientific leadership in developing evidence-based clinical management programs, conducting outcomes research studies, and improving outcomes measurement to enhance quality of care. Prior to joining Merck he was director of the Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods (DPRAM) at CDC where he was responsible for assessing the effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness of disease and injury prevention strategies. DPRAM developed comparable methodology for studies of the effectiveness and economic impact of prevention programs, provided training in these methods, developed CDC’s capacity for conducting necessary studies, and provided technical assistance for conducting economic and decision analysis. The Division also evaluated the impact of interventions in urban areas, developed the Guide to Community Preventive Services, and provided support for CDC’s analytic methods.

Dr. Teutsch has served as a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force as well as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force which develops the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services. He currently chairs the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetics Health and Society, and serves on America’s Health Information Community Personalized Health Care Workgroup, and the Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Prevention and Practice Workgroup as well as Institute of Medicine panels. 

Dr. Teutsch joined CDC in 1977, where he was assigned to the Parasitic Diseases Division and worked extensively on toxoplasmosis. He was then assigned to the Kidney Donor and subsequently the Kidney Disease Program. He developed the framework for CDC's diabetes control program. He joined the Epidemiology Program Office and became the director of the Division of Surveillance and Epidemiology where he was responsible for CDC's disease monitoring activities. He became chief of the Prevention Effectiveness Activity in 1992.

Dr. Teutsch was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences at Harvard University in 1970, an MPH in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health in 1973, and his MD from Duke University School of Medicine in 1974. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at Pennsylvania State University, Hershey. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1977, the American Board of Preventive Medicine in 1995, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and American College of Preventive Medicine.  Dr. Teutsch is an adjunct professor at the Emory University School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management and University of North Carolina School of Public Health.

Dr. Teutsch has published more than 150 articles and 6 books in a broad range of fields in epidemiology, including parasitic diseases, diabetes, technology assessment, health services research, and surveillance.

He resides in Los Angeles with his wife Carol Teutsch, MD.

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