1997 Partnerships for Networked Consumer Health Information Conference

Biographies Of Conference Speakers - D-F

Christopher J. Dede, EdD

Dr. Dede is Senior Program Director at the National Science Foundation, heading the $25M program, "Research on Education, Policy, and Practice." Dr. Dede is on leave as a Full Professor at George Mason University. He has testified to Congress on learning technologies and served as an expert panelist on instructional technologies for U.S. AID, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the U.S. Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure.

Stephen J. Downs

Mr. Downs is the Acting Director of the Telecommunication and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) in National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. TIIAP provides matching grants to public sector and not-for-profit organizations to use information and telecommunication technology to enhance the delivery of social services such as health and education. Previously, Mr. Downs had been responsible for TIIAP grants relating to health care and public health applications of the National Information Infrastructure.

Gwen Edwards, MA, MBA

Ms. Edwards joined Pacific Bell in 1992, as Sales Vice President of Enterprise Accounts, and was then chosen to lead a statewide unit created to address health care delivery through innovative applications in California. Her career began in 1972 with the Stanford Research Institute directing projects which supported development and use of electronic mail, video and computer-based conferencing. She then held a wide range of executive positions in marketing, sales and product development with such organizations as Bell Canada and Northern Telecom.

She launched Data America Corporation where she was responsible for delivering information services over a new nationwide network interconnecting the RBOC's. Ms. Edwards holds a BA from the University of California, an MA from California State University, and an MBA from Pepperdine University's Presidential and Key Executive Program. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Center of Excellence in Health Care Management at the University of Southern California, the Adaptive Business Leaders Organization, and an elected leader of the Koop Foundation's Health Informatics Initiative.

Caswell A. Evans, Jr., DDS, MPH

Dr. Evans is the Assistant Director of Health Services and Director of the Office of Public Health Initiatives for Los Angeles County. Dr. Evans serves as Adjunct Professor for the School of Public Health, and the School of Dentistry, at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is also an Associate Professor for the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School.

Prior to his association with the Los Angeles County government, Dr. Evans was Director of the County Health Services Division of the Seattle-King County Department of Public Health in Washington state.

Dr. Evans received his DDS degree from the Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery in New York City. He earned his MPH degree from the University of Michigan, School of Public Health.

Dr. Evans is a Diplomat of the American Board of Dental Public Health. He also serves on the Board of Directors, National Association of County and City Health Officials. In 1992 Dr. Evans was elected into the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. In 1995 he served as the President of the American Public Health Association.

He has been recognized for achievement throughout his career. Most recently, in 1993, he was the first recipient of the Beverlee A. Myers Award for Excellence in Public Health, conferred by the California State Department of Health Services. In 1995, Dr. Evans was honored with the prestigious Champion of Prevention Award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for his leadership in establishing a National Public Health Week.

Joseph L. Fava, PhD

Dr. Fava is a Research Associate Professor at the Cancer Prevention Research Center at the University of Rhode Island. His specialties are in quantitative and health psychology. His primary applied research has been in the areas of smoking cessation, health promotion, and behavioral prevention of cancers. He is currently a co-principal investigator on several grants funded through the National Cancer Institute on intervention in behaviors for cancer risk using expert system intervention technologies.

David Feffer

Mr. Feffer is a healthcare consultant specializing in developing and implementing programs in the areas of demand management, consumer health information, healthcare decision making, disease management, and patient-provider interactions.

Mr. Feffer has spent over 20 years in the organization, financing and delivery of healthcare. His work has concentrated on the areas of health care cost containment, improving consumer healthcare decision making, enhancing patient-provider communications and health promotion. Mr. Feffer is co-founder and past Chairman and CEO of Employee Managed Care Corporation (EMCC) where he developed and brought to the marketplace the nation's first telephonic demand side health care cost containment and quality improvement programs for employer groups and managed care organizations. He also created and directed Aetna Health Plans' Informed Health Unit which developed and operated demand management, disease management and health promotion programs for Aetna's health plans and customers. Most recently Mr. Feffer was head of strategic business development with Patient Education Media, Inc., the developer of the Time-Life Medical patient education products.

Tom Ferguson, MD

Dr. Ferguson, is a self-care pioneer, a health futurist, and an award-winning author. He is a senior associate at Boston's Center for Clinical Computing, a medical computing think-tank associated with Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital. He is president of Self-Care Productions, an Austin-based health care consulting firm.

Dr. Ferguson received his MD from the Yale University School of Medicine. He founded the influential journal Medical Self-Care and served as its editor and chief from 1975 to 1989. He has served for many years as medical editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He wrote a chapter on the empowered medical consumer for the book that accompanied the Bill Moyers series on Mind/Body Medicine. His latest book, Health Online: How to Find Health Information, Support Groups and Self-Help Communities in Cyberspace, was recently published by Addison-Wesley Publishing.

He organized the world's first conferences on Consumer Health Informatics, a new field devoted to the development and study of consumer-oriented computer resources in health care. He has served as a consultant to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, the Clinton Health Reform Task Force, the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Public Health Service, AT&T, the Canadian Bell System, Kaiser-Permanente Health Plan, Tenet Health Care, and many other corporations and government agencies. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Wellness Institute.

Dr. Ferguson is a popular speaker and workshop leader and has been interviewed by All Things Considered, 60 Minutes, the Today Show, Cable News Network, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many other print and electronic media. His hobbies include squirrel-watching, collecting old poker chips, and writing medical mystery novels. He lives in Austin Texas with his wife, Meredith, their two unpredictable cats, and a squirrel named Einstein.

Dennis A. Fey

Mr. Fey directs interfaith health promotion and protection programs, which mobilize both volunteers and paid professionals among 25 congregations and more than 20,000 families. A founder of IHP-NET with The Carter Center, Mr. Fey links his local programs with this national network of persons "acting in faith and working on health." He is both a certified chaplain of the National Association of Catholic Chaplains and a business graduate of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Ross D. Fletcher, MD

Dr. Fletcher has been Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine since 1994. From 1991-1994 he was a Clinical Instructor in Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. Prior to this, he completed residencies at Stanford School of Medicine (1990-1991 and 1988-1989), and the University of Washington Affiliated Hospitals (1989-1990).

His current activities are that of a clinician/educator, teaching medical students and residents in training at Stanford University School of Medicine. He also works with the Stanford Sports Medicine Program, and acts as the Lead Physician for Stanford Medical Group, a group of eight faculty general internists at Stanford Clinic.

Dr. Fletcher received his BS from Colorado State University in 1980 (Chemistry), his MS from the University of Colorado in 1985 (Biometrics), and his MD from the University of Colorado in 1988.

His residency was in Internal Medicine, Stanford University Hospital, 988-1989; University of Washington Affiliated Hospitals, 1989-1990; and Stanford University Hospital, 1990-1991. He was Clinical Instructor in Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine from 1991-1994.

Paul M. Ford, MS, MD

Dr. Ford has been an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine from 1994 to the present. His current activities are that of a clinician-educator and teaching medical students and residents in training at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Ford also works with the Stanford Sports Medicine Program, and acted as Lead Physician for Stanford Medical Group, a group of eight faculty general internists at Stanford Clinic. He is currently gathering prospective data on email use in our practice, utilizing a email system in which patients have access to a single email address to communicate with our group. Dr. Ford's current protocol for Electronic Mail is available on our web page at http://www-med.stanford.edu/shs/smg.

David W. Forslund

Dr. Forslund, a fellow of the American Physical Society, is a Theoretical Plasma Physicist who has worked in a broad range of plasma physics, from space plasma physics to magnetic fusion to laser fusion and, more recently, in computer science. Besides developing tools that have been used to solve a number of fusion problems, he has been involved in various projects linking desktop computing to high performance computing. As Deputy Director of the Advanced Computing Laboratory, he has helped guide the installation and operation of one of the largest massively parallel supercomputers in the world, and led a research project in the practical applications of distributed computing. He has directed a project designed to enable portable massively parallel scientific applications. He has been directing a major research project aimed at developing integrated technologies for the National Information Infrastructure. This includes developing a fully functional Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver, Colorado, and being deployed by the Department of Defense. He is the Technical Coordinator and creator of a Department of Commerce funded rural telemedicine project in northern New Mexico.

William G. Foster

Mr. Foster is the President of The Marshall Legacy Institute, a non-profit corporation dedicated to improving global access to knowledge through the use of emerging information technologies. A graduate of West Point and Harvard Business School. He has extensive experience in strategic development and execution planning to integrate technological change with new concepts and innovative organizational designs. A career Army officer, he held a variety of leadership positions in both the United States and overseas, culminating in an assignment as the strategic planner for the reshaping of the Army to address the global environment of the 1990's.

Vicki S. Freimuth, PhD

Dr. Freimuth is the Associate Director for the Communication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and is an internationally recognized leader in health communication. Formerly she was the Director of Health Communication and a Professor in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park, and taught courses in health communication, diffusion of innovations, and research methods. Her research focuses on the role of communication in health promotion in the U.S. and in developing countries. As Associate Director for Communication, she administers the health communication and media relations programs and strengthens the science and practice of health communications throughout the CDC.

Dr. Freimuth is the author of Searching for Health Information, and co-editor of AIDS: A Communication Perspective. Her publications have appeared in Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, American Journal of Public Health, Health Education Quarterly, and Science Technology and Human Values.

She has been elected Chair of the Health Communication Division of the International Communication Association and has provided strategic vision on health communication to many private and federal health organizations including: the National Cancer Institute; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; the Agency for International Development and the World Bank. She has also been Director of Research at Porter Novelli and Associates, a public affairs firm in Washington, D.C. and she serves on a number of advisory boards. She has a BS with honors in Education from Eastern Illinois University, a MA in Rhetoric and Public Address from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Communication Theory and Research from Florida State University.

James F. Fries, MD

Dr. Fries' professional interests include self-care and self-management (Take Care of Yourself), long-term outcomes of chronic diseases and aging (health assessments, ARAMIS, Compression on Maladity), computer-based triage and primary prevention (health, clinical guidelines for parents and public policy).

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