The Community Preventive Services Task Force

The Task Force is an independent, nonfederal, uncompensated body of public health and prevention experts, whose members are appointed by the Director of CDC. Task Force members:

• Oversee the prioritization process for which systematic reviews to conduct
• Participate in development and refinement of review methods
• Serve as members of individual review teams
• Consider the findings of all reviews and issue recommendations and findings to help inform decision making about policy, practice, research, and research funding in a wide range of U.S. settings

 

Previous Task Force Members

 

Biographical Sketches

Jonathan E. Fielding, MD, MPH, MBA (Chair)

Jonathan E. Fielding is the chair of the Community Preventive Services Task Force. He is currently the director of public health and health officer for the County of Los Angeles Department of Health; professor of health services and pediatrics, Schools of Public Health and Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles; and a commissioner of the Los Angeles County Children and Families First–Proposition 10 Commission. He is also a director of the American Legacy Foundation. He has certification from the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Preventive Medicine, for which he has served as president and regent. He has authored or coauthored more than 175 original research articles and chapters on various aspects of public health, preventive medicine, and health services. Dr. Fielding received the Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Service from the American College of Preventive Medicine; the Roemer Prize for creative local public health work and the Sedgwick Memorial Medal for outstanding lifetime achievement in improving the public's health, both from the American Public Health Association; the Porter Prize for National Impact on Improving the Health of Americans; and the Outstanding Alumnus award from the Harvard School of Public Health. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and serves on their Population Health and Public Health Practice Board. Dr. Fielding is the editor of the Annual Review of Public Health. He graduated cum laude with his MD from Harvard University School of Medicine and has a master of public health in health services administration and health economics from the Harvard University School of Public Health. He received his MBA in finance from the Wharton School of Business Administration.

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Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH (Vice-Chair)

Barbara K. Rimer is dean of the Gillings School of Global Public Health and alumni distinguished professor of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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), director of cancer control and population sciences, National Cancer Institute (1997-2002); professor of community and family medicine at Duke University (1991-97); and director of behavioral research and a full member at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia (1981-91). Dr. Rimer has conducted research in a number of areas, including informed decision-making, long-term maintenance of behavior changes, 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 was one of the first researchers to test the impact of stepped interventions for cancer control. She currently leads an NIH-funded study to increase regular use of mammography and recently led a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to assess the impact of cancer-related mailing lists on cancer patients/survivors and caregivers.

Dr. Rimer has authored more than 238 peer-reviewed articles, 42 book chapters and six books, and she 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 is vice-chair for the Community Preventive Services Task Force and serves on the editorial board for MMWR.

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Ana F. Abraído-Lanza, Ph.D.

Ana F. Abraído-Lanza is an associate professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University in New York City. She teaches courses on Current Issues in Latino Health, Health Psychology, as well as a course entitled Seminar in Research and Professional Development. Her research focuses on cultural, psychosocial, and socioeconomic factors that affect psychological well-being, adjustment to chronic illness, and mortality and health among Latinos, as well as health disparities between Latinos and non-Latino whites. Her current research projects include the study of (1) Latina women’s beliefs and attitudes about breast cancer; (2) sociodemographic and cultural factors that influence breast cancer screening behaviors among Latinas and non-Latina whites; (3) acculturation and cancer screening behaviors among Latina women; (4) coping and psychosocial adjustment among Latinos with arthritis; and (5) socioeconomic status, disability, and disparities in arthritis between Latinos and non-Latino whites. These projects reflect her overall interest and expertise in the health of Latino populations in the United States; socioeconomic status and health; breast and cervical cancer screening; acculturation theory; psychological adjustment to chronic illness, especially arthritis; psychological thriving; social support and coping with illness; social roles and identity theory; and health disparities between Latinos and non-Latino whites.

Dr. Abraído-Lanza received her PhD in social-personality psychology with a concentration in health psychology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She also completed a post-doctoral training fellowship program in psychiatric epidemiology at Columbia University's School of Public Health.

Dr. Abraído-Lanza is the chair of the Diversity Committee of the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, and she co-chairs the Diversity Committee of the Mailman School. She also was recently appointed to serve on the Professional Schools Diversity Council at Columbia. Dr. Abraído-Lanza served as a faculty advisor to the department’s Community Scholars Program, and is currently the director of the Training Core of the NIH/National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities-funded EXPORT Center, the Columbia Center for the Health of Urban Minorities (CHUM). She served as the director of the Initiative for Minority Student Development at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, an education project grant funded by the NIH. She has also served as a committee member on scientific, professional and non-profit organizations, including the Board of Directors of Division 38 (Health Psychology) of the American Psychological Association, the Program Committee of the Association of Rheumatology Health Professions, the Board of Directors of inMotion (a New York City-based non-profit organization that provides free legal services to women), and the Medical and Scientific Committee of the New York Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation.

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Ned Calonge, MD, MPH

Ned Calonge is the President and CEO of The Colorado Trust, a grantmaking foundation dedicated to advancing the health and well-being of the people of Colorado. He is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the Colorado School of Medicine, University of Colorado, Denver, and an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health.

Outside of the Trust, Dr. Calonge is a member and past President of the Colorado Medical Board, which licenses and regulates physicians. He teaches epidemiology, biostatistics and research methods at the University of Colorado Schools of Medicine and Public Health. He is a member of the Delta Dental Foundation Board, and chairs the Board of Directors for LiveWell, Colorado.

Nationally, Dr. Calonge is the Chair of the CDC’s Evaluating Genomic Applications for Practice and Prevention (EGAPP) Workgroup, and is a member of the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children in the Maternal and Child Health Bureau in the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Dr. Calonge received his BA in Chemistry from The Colorado College, his MD from the University of Colorado and his MPH from the University of Washington; he is board certified in both Family Medicine and Preventive Medicine. Prior to coming to the Trust, Dr. Calonge was the Chief Medical Officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

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John M. Clymer

John Clymer is the chief strategy officer for the Alliance to Make the US Healthiest. Additionally, he is adjunct assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at Loma Linda University School of Public Health where he works with the new Center for Health Policy and Leadership.

From 2001-2008, Clymer was president of Partnership for Prevention. Under his leadership, PfP quadrupled its budget; won passage of landmark Medicare legislation that for the first time put prevention on a level playing field with disease diagnosis and treatment; developed a health reform framework on which Barack Obama based his prevention and public health agenda; formed the Leading by Example CEO Roundtable which was recognized in Harvard Business Review’s “Breakthrough Ideas” in 2006; and, with former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, established the National Commission on Prevention Priorities. Clymer leveraged PfP’s influence through strategic partnerships with AARP, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. Chamber of Commerce and World Economic Forum.

Clymer serves on the U.S. Community Preventive Services Task Force, World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Chronic Disease and Malnutrition, and several advisory boards.

Clymer often serves as a keynote and plenary speaker on health policy, health reform and human capital management. He authored a chapter in Igniting the Power of Community: The Role of CBOs and NGOs in Global Public Health (Springer, 2009) and co-authored a chapter in ACSM’s Worksite Health Handbook: A Guide to Building Healthy and Productive Companies (Human Kinetics, 2009). He has testified before various legislatures, given numerous formal Congressional briefings, and appeared on NBC Nightly News, Fox News, CNBC, public radio, and in print media such as The New York Times.

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Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH

Karen Glanz is a George A. Weiss University Professor in the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and Director of a new Center for Health Behavior Research at the University of Pennsylvania. She was formerly (2004–2009) Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education; Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Research Scholar; and Director of the Emory Prevention Research Center at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta. From 1993 to 2004, she was Professor and Director of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Program at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii at the University of Hawaii. From 1979 to 1993 she was a Professor in the Departments of Health Education and Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Dr. Glanz received her MPH (1977) and PhD (1979) degrees in health behavior and health education from the University of Michigan. Dr. Glanz has been recognized with several national awards, and was the 2007 recipient of the Elizabeth Fries Health Education Award from the James and Sarah Fries Foundation. She is a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force, a federally-appointed task force that oversees the Community Guide evidence reviews. Her scholarly contributions consist of more than 300 journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Glanz is senior editor of Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research, and Practice (Jossey-Bass Inc., 1990, 1996, 2002, 2008), a widely used text recently published in its fourth edition. She was recognized in 2006 as a Highly Cited Author by ISIHighlyCited.com, in the top 0.5% of authors in her field over a 20-year period.

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Ron Z. Goetzel, PhD

Ron Z. Goetzel wears two hats. He is both the director of the Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health Institute for Health and Productivity Studies (IHPS) and vice president of Consulting and Applied Research at Thomson Reuters. The mission of the IHPS is to bridge the gap between academia, the business community, and the healthcare policy world – bringing academic resources into policy debates and day-to-day business decisions, and bringing health and productivity management issues into academia. At both Emory and Thomson Healthcare, Dr. Goetzel is responsible for leading innovative research projects and consulting services for healthcare purchaser, managed care, government, and pharmaceutical clients interested in conducting cutting-edge research focused on the relationship between health and well-being and work-related productivity. He is a nationally recognized and widely published expert in health and productivity management, return-on-investment (ROI), data analysis, program evaluation and outcomes research.

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Goetzel’s work has focused on large-scale evaluations of health promotion, disease prevention, and demand and disease management programs. He is principal investigator for Medicare’s Senior Risk Reduction Demonstration (SRRD) and New Opportunities for Healthy Aging in Medicare project. He is also principal investigator for a project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) focused on obesity prevention and management at the worksite. For the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Goetzel is the principal investigator for a New York City project supporting collaborative efforts between the private and public sectors in health promotion and disease prevention programs directed at employers. He has functioned as principal investigator for research efforts directed at employer health and productivity management initiatives at Applied Materials, Boeing, Chevron, Pacific Bell, Citibank, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Florida Power & Light, Duke University, Sharp Health Care, Saturn Corporation, PG&E, The Associates and HERO. He has also been a principal on several health and disease management evaluation projects for Blue Cross Blue Shield Association Federal Employee Program (FEP), General Electric, Ford, PSE&G, Dow Chemical, Motorola, Delta, Lucent, International Truck and Engine, First Tennessee Bank and Texas Instruments. His pharmaceutical industry work with Aventis, Schering-Plough, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, and Eli Lilly has focused on establishing the health and productivity cost burden of certain illnesses.

Before joining Thomson Healthcare in 1995, Dr. Goetzel was vice president of Assessment, Data Analysis and Evaluation Services at Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems. Before joining Johnson & Johnson, Dr. Goetzel was one of the original members of the core development and marketing group at Corporate Health Strategies, currently a division of Ingenix. Earlier in his career, Dr. Goetzel was the medical school education program evaluator at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he was appointed to the psychiatry faculty.

Dr. Goetzel earned his doctorate in organizational and administrative studies and his MA in applied social psychology from New York University (NYU), and his BS degree in psychology from the City College of New York (CCNY). He is located in Washington, DC.

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Lawrence W. Green, DrPH DSc(Hon.)

Lawrence W. Green is professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in the School of Medicine and Co-leader of the Society, Diversity and Disparities Program in the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California at San Francisco. He joined CDC in 1999 as Distinguished Fellow-Visiting Scientist to study what accounted for the success of tobacco control in the last third of the 20th century, and how we might take those lessons to other areas of public health. He served as director of CDC’s World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Global Tobacco Control and as acting director of the Office on Smoking and Health. He then served as the director of CDC’s Office of Science and Extramural Research and as associate director for Prevention Research and Academic Partnerships in the Public Health Practice Program Office. He was also visiting professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and later health and society visiting professor at the University of Maryland and visiting professor at the UC School of Public Health, Berkeley. For most of the 1990s, Dr. Green was the director of the Institute of Health Promotion Research and professor and head of the Division of Preventive Medicine and Health Promotion, Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Dr. Green has broad experience in health education, prevention, population health, and community interventions for health promotion and risk reduction. He served as the first director of the U.S. Office of Health Information and Health Promotion in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health under the Carter Administration, and as vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. He has been on the public health faculties at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Texas and Emory. Dr. Green is a past president and Distinguished Fellow of the Society for Public Health Education and recipient of the American Public Health Association's highest awards (the Distinguished Career Award, the Award of Excellence, and the Mayhew Derryberry Award), the American Academy of Health Behavior first Research Laureate Medal, and an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and 12 other journals in his field, and as associate editor of the Annual Review of Public Health. His textbooks have been widely adopted. Community and Population Health with Judith Ottoson is in its 8th edition; Health Program Planning: An Educational and Ecological Approach with Marshall Kreuter is in its 4th edition. The latter has been the repository for description of his Precede-Proceed model and the more than 1,000 published applications of this social-environmental model in case studies, research, and other textbooks (see www.lgreen.net).

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Robert L. Johnson, MD

Robert L. Johnson began his appointment to the Community Preventive Services Task Force in February 2003. He is dean and professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the New Jersey Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. His active interest in the health and well-being of youth is evidenced by his chairmanship of the Board of the Adolescent Health Center and of the Medical Board of The Door, New York, NY; he was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Newark (NJ) Boys' Clubs, Inc. Dr. Johnson is a member of National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine Health Care Services Board; the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council Committee on Improving Research Information and Data on Firearms; the DHHS Council on Graduate Medical Education; and is the DHHS Region II chair of the Male Involvement Advisory Committee. He also serves as the chair of the NIH Consensus Panel on Antisocial Behaviors in Youth, and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Health Professions Education Summit. Dr. Johnson received his MD from the College of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ in 1972. He is the recipient of many awards, including the New Jersey Governor's Award (1997) and the Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Crystal Award (2001).

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C. Tracy Orleans, PhD

As the senior scientist and Distinguished Fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), C. Tracy Orleans has led or co-led the Foundation’s public policy- and healthcare system-based grant-making in the areas of tobacco control, physical activity promotion, childhood obesity prevention, and chronic disease management. She served as convener of the Foundation’s Tobacco Working Group and its first Chronic Disease Management Working Group, and as leader of its Health & Behavior Team. She has developed and/or led or co-led numerous RWJF national initiatives -- including Addressing Tobacco in Health Care, Smoke-Free Families, Helping Young Smokers Quit, Bridging the Gap/Impact Teen, Substance Abuse Policy Research, Improving Chronic Illness Care, Prescription for Health, Active Living Research and Healthy Eating Research. A clinical health psychologist, Dr. Orleans has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications, served on numerous journal editorial boards, national scientific panels and advisory groups (e.g., Institute of Medicine, National Commission on Prevention Priorities, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force) and as president of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

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Nicolaas P. Pronk, PhD, MA, FACSM, FAWHP

Nico Pronk, Ph.D. is vice president for health management and health science officer for JourneyWell at HealthPartners in Minneapolis, Minnesota and also a senior research investigator at the HealthPartners Research Foundation. Dr. Pronk holds an adjunct faculty position as professor of society, human development, and health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is widely published in both the scientific and practice literature, and he is a national and international speaker on population health and health promotion. He is president of the International Association for Worksite Health Promotion (IAWHP) and a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force. Formerly, Dr. Pronk served on the Clinical Obesity Research Panel at the National Institutes of Health, the Carter Center Medical Home initiative, the Defense Health Board (Armed Forces Epidemiological Board), the Health Promotion Advisory Panel at NCQA, and the Institute of Medicine’s Committee to Assess Health Promotion Programs at NASA. He is the senior editor of ACSM’s Worksite Health Handbook, Second Edition and the author of the scientific background paper for the U.S. National Physical Activity Plan for Business and Industry. Dr. Pronk received his doctorate degree in exercise physiology at Texas A&M University and completed his post-doctoral studies in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Gilbert Ramirez, DrPH

Gilbert Ramírez is Professor and Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work, Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He serves as an editor with the Cochrane Collaboration Public Health Review Group and the Campbell Collaboration Social Welfare Group. He teaches courses in biostatistics and research synthesis/meta-analysis. His research portfolio includes numerous systematic reviews and meta-analyses, several of which have been conducted as part of the AHRQ Evidence-based Practice Center (San Antonio) and the Cochrane Collaboration.

Dr. Ramírez received his DrPH from the University of Texas at Houston and his MPH from the University of Hawaii. His academic preparation and career have focused on research synthesis methodologies. Dr. Ramírez’s professional career also includes thirteen years as a public health officer in the United States Army.

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