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James A. O’Hara, III, has served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health since September 1997, having assumed that position in an acting capacity in June 1997. From April 1993 until June 1997, Mr. O’Hara was the Associate Commissioner for Public Affairs at the Food and Drug Administration. Before joining the FDA, Mr. O’Hara was a senior vice president and the media relations director for the Washington office of Burson-Marsteller, an international public affairs and public relations firm. From 1973 until joining Burson-Marsteller in September 1990, Mr. O’Hara pursued a career in journalism at The Tennessean in Nashville, TN. Before covering politics, Mr. O’Hara was an education writer, editorial writer, week-in-review section editor and general assignment reporter at the newspaper. During his career, he received a number of national and state journalism awards, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting in 1990.

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Helga E. Rippen, MD, PhD, MPH, is the Director of the Health Information Technology Institute, which she co-founded in June of 1996. Her primary interest is in the development and application of technology to improve health. She is board certified in public health and general preventive medicine. Dr. Rippen is designing and beta testing personalized Internet health applications on their effectiveness in impacting health. Currently she is leading the effort to develop an Internet-based tool to help consumers assess the quality of health information on the Internet (see http://www.mitretek.org/hiti/showcase/documents/ criteria.html). Dr. Rippen serves as an External Liaison to HHS’s Science Panel on Interactive Communications and Health, and she is a Board member of the Internet Healthcare Coalition.

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David Satcher, M.D., Ph.D., was sworn in as both the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service and the Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on February 13, 1998. The Assistant Secretary for Health serves as the Secretary’s Senior Advisor on public health issues and Director of the Office of Public Health and Science. From 1993 to 1997, Dr. Satcher was the Director of HHS’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ASTDR). Dr. Satcher served as President of Meharry Medical College from 1982 until 1993. Dr. Satcher also served as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Community Medicine and Family Practice at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. Dr. Satcher is a former faculty member of the UCLA School of Medicine and the King-Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Satcher has received the 1996 American Medical Association’s Dr. Nathan B. Davis Award and the John Stearns Award for Lifetime Achievement in Medicine from the New York Academy of Medicine.

Donna E. Shalala, Ph.D., Secretary of Health and Human Services, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Jan. 22, 1993 to lead the federal government’s principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. As Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1988 to 1993, she was the first woman to head a Big Ten University. Prior to that, she served as president of Hunter College at the City University of New York for eight years, and as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Carter Administration. Dr. Shalala has held tenured professorships at Columbia, CUNY and Wisconsin. From 1975 to 1977, she served as director and treasurer of the Municipal Assistance Corporation, the organization that helped reverse New York’s financial collapse. From 1962 to 1964, she served in the Peace Corps in Iran. In 1992, BusinessWeek named her one of the top five managers in higher education. Since taking the helm at HHS, Secretary Shalala has shifted the focus of the Department to the everyday needs of all Americans. She is a leader in the Clinton Administration’s efforts to reform the nation’s welfare system and improve health care while containing health costs.

Warner V. Slack, MD, is Co-President, with Dr. Howard Bleich, of the Center for Clinical Computing. He is also Associate Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and the Editor in Chief of M.D. Computing. During the past twenty years, Dr. Slack and his colleagues at the Center for Clinical Computing (CCC) and the Harvard Medical School have developed, implemented, and evaluated an integrated, hospital-wide clinical computing system (the CCC system) that is used in patient care at Beth Israel Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. His early work in computer-based medical interviewing at the University of Wisconsin led to the development of the first computer-based medical history. Over the past thirty years he has done extensive research in the field of patient-computer dialogue. He has developed and studied programs that provide direct assistance to the patient in the management of common, important medical and psychological problems. He was an early advocate of the patient’s right to participate in decisions about diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Slack is the author of Cybermedicine: How Computing Empowers Doctors and Patients for Better Health Care, published by Jossey-Bass.

Victor Strecher, PhD, MPH, is Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education and Associate Director for Cancer Prevention and Control at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. He has been and currently is principal investigator of NIH-funded research studies. He serves as a reviewer for several national journals including American Journal of Public Health, Health Education Research, and Annals of Internal Medicine. His research has focused on the impact of computer-tailored minimal-contact behavior change interventions for individuals in the areas of smoking, cancer screening, nutrition, and other health-related behaviors. His recent publications include Do Tailored Behavior Change Messages Enhance the Effectiveness of Health Risk Appraisal? Results From a Randomized Trial (1996) and The Health Belief Model (1996). Dr. Strecher has created the Health Media Research Laboratory -- a group of behavioral and medical researchers, computer programmers, instructional designers, and creative artists organized to develop innovative health education interventions using advanced communications technologies.

Agenda

http://odphp.osophs.dhhs.gov/confrnce/partnr98/Biosn-s.htm