Faculty

FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES (alphabetical)

Stuart L. Abramson, MD, PhD
Dr. Abramson is associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He is also associate director for Clinical Research and Health Professional Education at the Children's Asthma Center at Texas Children's Hospital and he directs the Pediatric Allergy and Immunology Clinic at Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston. Dr. Abramson is an active clinician, teacher, and researcher and is currently principal investigator, co-investigator or consultant on several government and private foundation grants pertaining to asthma. His areas of focus include new approaches to asthma screening, medical management, self-management and environmental control that can be generalized to community health providers and schools. Dr. Abramson is board-certified in pediatrics, allergy and immunology, and diagnostic laboratory immunology. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in the fields of allergy, asthma and immunology. Dr. Abramson received his undergraduate BA in biology, with honors, from The Johns Hopkins University and received his MD and PhD degrees from Baylor College of Medicine as a graduate of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Medical Scientist Training Program. He completed his internship and residency in pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. His allergy and immunology fellowship was at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.

Reginald Adams
Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Adams is a public artist and community developer who lives in Houston, Texas. He is the co-founder and the executive director of the Museum of Cultural Arts, Houston (MOCAH; www.mocah.org), a nonprofit arts organization. In addition, he is president of the Board of Directors of the Land Assemblage Redevelopment Authority. He is also a member of the Houston Independent School District Community Advisory Council District II. Adams is also one of Houston's most prolific public artists, having produced over 80 community-based public art projects over the past six years. Inspired by his travels around the globe, Adams has observed how the arts and culture serve as the epicenter for social and community development. He has received numerous grants and awards for his artistic, social and environmental advocacy. Adams shares his time advocating for the environment, producing community-based public art and traveling abroad with his wife, Rhonda Radford-Adams, and their son, Jahlani Charif Adams.

Debra C. Cherry, MD, MS
Dr. Cherry has a unique background consisting of pediatrics training, epidemiology experience, and occupational and environmental medicine. She completed her intern year in pediatrics at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City in 1996 and then worked as a junior epidemiologist with the Kansas Cancer Registry for 2 years. She has been with UT Health Center since 1998, where she completed her masters of science in environmental sciences and her residency in occupational medicine. She is board-certified in occupational medicine, and she currently serves as medical consultant for the Southwest Center for Pediatric Environmental Health (SWCPEH) and assistant professor in occupational health sciences. She answers telephone inquiries regarding children's environmental health and recently submitted a review article entitled "Children's Health in the Rural Environment" for a special environmental issue of Pediatric Clinics of North America.

Devra Lee Davis, PhD, MPH
Dr. Davis is director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. She is also professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. In addition to her academic appointments, Dr. Davis has held multiple advisory roles in national and international agencies, including the World Health Organization, and has received numerous awards pertaining to her work in environmental health. Dr. Davis holds a BS in physiological psychology and an MA in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her PhD at the University of Chicago, followed by an MPH from the Johns Hopkins University as a senior National Cancer Institute postdoctoral fellow in epidemiology. She also is an honorary professor at London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and scientific advisor to the Women's Environment and Development Organization. She founded the International Breast Cancer Prevention Collaborative Research Group, and she serves on the Board of Directors of the Climate Institute. Dr. Davis was designated a 2002 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction for her book, When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution, which has been described by one reviewer as "the best book on public health and environmental pollution of the last 30 years." She is the author of more than 170 scientific publications and the editor of 11 books.

Henry Falk, MD, MPH
Dr. Henry Falk serves as director of the Coordinating Center for Environmental Health and Injury Prevention (CCEHIP), which is one of four Coordinating Centers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr Falk arrived at the CDC in 1972 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer. He is a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. This service culminated with his being named rear admiral and an appointment as assistant US surgeon general. While at CDC's National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), Dr. Falk led the Center's national effort to prevent and control environmental-related diseases, illnesses, and deaths. He served as director of the NCEH Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects for 14 years. At ATSDR, whose mission is to protect public health from hazardous releases of toxic substances, Dr. Falk led the federal agency from 1999 to 2005. Dr. Falk earned his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1968. He received a master's degree from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1976, and he is board-certified in pediatrics, public health and general preventative medicine. Dr. Falk is the author and coauthor of more than 100 publications in a variety of subjects, including vinyl chloride-induced liver cancer, prevention of lead poisoning, and the health effects of environmental hazards. During his distinguished career, Dr. Falk has received many honors including the Vernon Houk Award for Leadership in Preventing Childhood Lead Poisoning and the Homer C. Calver Award from the American Public Health Association. He has also received CDC's William C. Watson Jr. Medal of Excellence, as well as the Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Public Health Service.

Ralph D. Feigin, MD
Dr. Feigin is currently the J. S. Abercrombie Professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and physician-in-chief of Texas Children's Hospital. He is also physician-in-chief of Pediatric Services at Ben Taub General Hospital and chief of the Pediatric Service at The Methodist Hospital. In addition, he concurrently served as president and CEO of Baylor College of Medicine from 1996 to 2003 and before that served as Baylor's dean of Medical Education from 1994 to 1996. Dr. Feigin is an internationally renowned expert in pediatric infectious diseases and has published over 500 articles or chapters. He is also co-author or co-editor of numerous textbooks, including books on pediatric infectious diseases, clinical medicine, and pediatric nutrition and the developing nervous system. He is editor-in-chief of Seminars in Pediatric Infectious Diseases and associate editor of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Feigin is the principal investigator on numerous grants, including several pediatric Center grants from the National Institutes of Health. He has received numerous awards including the American Academy of Pediatrics Medical Education Lifetime Achievement Award. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, in 1995.

Joel Forman, MD
Dr. Forman is an associate professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City (NYC). For the last 7 years Dr. Forman has worked with Dr. Philip J. Landrigan to create a Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) at Mount Sinai. The PEHSUs were created by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to provide centers of excellence in the emerging field of pediatric environmental health across the U.S.. Dr. Forman designed the Mount Sinai curriculum for training fellows in Environmental Pediatrics based on competencies in developed by the Ambulatory Pediatrics Association, and is co-director of the fellow program. In addition he co-directs two courses in the masters in Public Health Program at Mount Sinai that focus on Pediatric Environmental Health. Dr. Forman has worked in a broad array of pediatric environmental health areas focusing lately on lead poisoning in pregnant women. Along with Nathan Graber, MD, one of the Pediatric Environmental Health fellows, he recently helped complete a report for the NYC Department of Health on Guidelines for the Identification and Management of Pregnant Women with Elevated Lead Levels in NYC and is currently a member of a CDC workgroup that is examining this issue on a national basis. Dr. Forman has also served as co-chair of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association’s Pediatric Environmental Health Special Interest Group and is currently a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Environmental Health.

Winifred J. Hamilton, PhD, SM
Dr. Hamilton earned her graduate degrees from the University of Michigan, Rice University, and the Harvard School of Public Health, the latter in environmental health epidemiology. She is an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine, with joint appointments in medicine and neurosurgery, and is director of the Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Research Center's Environmental Health Section. Recent projects include a survey of Texas primary care physicians about their knowledge of environmental health, organizational efforts to establish a Children's Environmental Health Center in the Texas Medical Center, geospatial and temporal analyses of the relationships between air pollution and hospital admissions in Harris County, development of a model to help target potential "hot spots" for childhood lead exposure in Galveston, and a community-driven regional website on environmental health issues. Dr. Hamilton has served on the Regional Air Quality Planning Committee for the 13-county region, and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Mothers for Clean Air, the Board of Directors of the Gulf Coast Institute and of Urban Harvest, the Strategic Health Effects Research Panel for the Houston-Galveston region, and on the Steering Committee for the City of Houston's Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. She has received numerous awards for her work in the area of environmental health, including the Citizens' Environmental Coalition's Synergy Award for Environmental Excellence. She is principal investigator on numerous grants, has published extensively, and speaks regularly to academic and community groups on environmental health topics.

Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc
Dr. Philip J. Landrigan is a pediatrician and director of the Center for Children's Health and the Environment at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He has been involved for many years in studying the impact of environmental toxins on the health of children. From 1988 to 1993, he chaired the Committee on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings of this Committee provide the basis for the current recognition in public policy in the United States of the special vulnerability of children to environmental toxins and set the stage for the unanimous passage by both houses of the US Congress of the Food Quality Protection Act, the principal federal statute regulating pesticide use. In 1997 and 1998, Dr. Landrigan served as Senior Advisor on Children's Health to the Administrator of EPA, and at EPA he helped to establish the Office of Children's Health Protection. Dr. Landrigan has been involved since 1999 in development of the National Children's Study, a major prospective epidemiological study that will follow 100,000 American children from conception to age 21 years in order to identify preventable environmental causes of disease and developmental dysfunction. Dr. Landrigan is a retired captain in the Medical Corps of the United States Navy.

Herman Mitchell, PhD
Dr. Mitchell is a senior research scientist at Rho Inc. and adjunct professor of biostatistics at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health. He has approximately 25 years of NIH multicenter coordinating experience, and for the past 16 years has been involved in clinical research related to asthma among inner-city children. In the 1980s he was co-founder and deputy director of the Epidemiology Data Center at Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and member of the faculty in both the Department of Epidemiology and the Department of Biostatistics. During his last four years at the School of Public Health he served as assistant dean. He also served as assistant to the Secretary of Health for the State of Pennsylvania and director of the State Health Data Center. Following this position he became vice president for research development at New England Research Institute in Boston. Dr. Mitchell has served as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI for more than a dozen NIH-sponsored clinical trials and epidemiologic studies. Starting in 1990 Dr. Mitchell has served as the PI of the Coordinating Centers for three major NIH-funded multicenter studies of asthma among children in the inner city, including the NIAID National Cooperative Inner City Asthma Study (NCICAS); the NIAID, NIEHS and EPA jointly sponsored Inner City Asthma Study; and the NIH/NIAID Inner City Asthma Consortium. Dr. Mitchell has gained invaluable experience working with sometimes hard-to-reach, vulnerable populations. In addition to these studies, Dr. Mitchell has worked with the NCI to established Coordinating Centers in Belarus and Ukraine for studies of the Chernobyl project and has served as co-PI for several Coordinating Centers for HIV-AIDS (NIAID) and obesity (NHLBI).

Nancy Moreno, PhD
Nancy P. Moreno received her Bachelor's degree in botany from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked as an investigator and editor of the Flora of Veracruz Project in Mexico until 1985. After earning her PhD in biology from Rice University, she joined Baylor College of Medicine, where she is associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and associate director of the Center for Educational Outreach. Dr. Moreno's research interests focus on developing effective collaborations among scientists and educators for the improvement of science education. Her activities involve leading the development and dissemination of interdisciplinary science and health educational materials for students, the development of partnership programs to promote systemic change in science teaching and learning in schools, and most recently, the application of web-based technologies for teacher support and professional development. Currently, she is principal investigator and director of science education partnerships funded by the National Institutes of Health (National Center for Research Resources, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Science Foundation. In addition, she is the Editorial Director of BioEd Online, a comprehensive web-based biology teaching resource that serves more than 3,000 users daily.

John Porretto, BA
John Porretto, now with Sustainable Building Solutions, Inc., is the former chief business officer of the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center. He has been involved in academic health center management for more than 37 years, including such positions as hospital cost accountant, chief hospital administrator for Executive Vice President for Administration, and finance/chief operating officer. He began his career auditing the IRS, NASA, and Public Health Service hospitals for the General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, and he has served as a member of Academic Health Centers, Association of American Medical Colleges, and Board of the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Mr. Porretto was a key promoter of the TMC's only LEED-certified sustainable building, the University of Texas Nursing/Student Community Center, designed by BNIM Architects and Lake + Flato Architects and completed in 2004. Mr. Porretto was the managing CFO at the UT Houston Campus throughout the design and construction process, and learned much about getting support for such a project including: (1) appeal to the university mission; (2) speak to the bottom line; (3) emphasize the requirements of tax-exempt status; (4) empower and involve students, faculty and staff throughout the process; (5) leverage the institution's risk management tolerance; (6) set attainable goals; (7) do all the right things first; (8) use known systems; (9) create flexible interiors; and (10) use a cost estimator who understands sustainable building and integrated systems.

Michael Shannon, MD, MPH
Dr. Shannon is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and chief and chair of the Division of Emergency Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston. He is also co-director of the recently created Center for Biopreparedness at Children's Hospital, which is charged with developing models for managing a biological, chemical or radiation event affecting children and their caregivers. His clinical interests include emergency preparedness, with an emphasis on outbreak detection, pediatric emergency response, medical toxicology and pediatric environmental health, particularly the epidemiology and management of childhood lead poisoning. Dr. Shannon's research has focused on various aspects of medical toxicology, including substance abuse and drug interactions. As co-director of the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Center, he has explored such topics as the relationship of lead poisoning to iron-deficiency anemia and overdoses of therapeutic drugs and dietary supplements. As a designated Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit for EPA Region 1, the Pediatric Environmental Health Center provides comprehensive, coordinated services for children exposed to environmental toxins. Dr. Shannon received his MD from Duke University School of Medicine. He completed an internship at Duke University Hospital, a residency at Boston City Hospital and a fellowship at Children's Hospital, Boston. He is board certified in pediatrics, pediatric emergency medicine, emergency medicine and medical toxicology. Dr. Shannon is chair of the Committee on Environmental Health of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and in 2003 he received the AAP's Ogden Burton Lectureship award.

Katherine M. Shea, MD, MPH
Katherine M. Shea is a board-certified pediatrician with specialty training in preventive medicine and environmental health. She is an adjunct professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health of the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and on the adjunct faculty of Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Shea is a technical consultant and scientific editor for World Health Organization and works part time at North Carolina State University Student Health Service as a staff physician. She has served as medical consultant to Physicians for Social Responsibility National Office, was a member of the Climate Change Task Force convened by Environmental Defense, and she has served as a volunteer with her local public school system's School Health Advisory Committee. Currently she is vice president and member of the board of the Agricultural Resources Center, a nonprofit public interest organization which engages in research and public education on issues and policies related to safe food, family farm agriculture and preservation of natural resources with a special interest in pesticides. Dr. Shea is also actively involved in children's environmental health policy development with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the North Carolina Pediatric Society.

Teri Lee Turner, MD, MPH, MEd
Dr. Turner is an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. Her research interests are in curriculum development and evaluation, with a particular focus on individual teaching and learning styles and how these affect learning. She is involved in all levels of education at Baylor including medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty and has won numerous awards recognizing her educational excellence and leadership. She has created a learning module entitled Lead Poisoning in Children: What You Can Do In Your Practice in conjunction with the Southwest Center for Pediatric Environmental Health in Tyler, Texas. Dr. Turner serves on numerous task forces with regard to pediatric training and is the associate director of Housestaff Education for the Department of Pediatrics. She makes frequent presentations to academic and lay audiences, from potty training to teething to the genetics of hearing loss in children. She is also a BCM-designated media expert in the area of general pediatrics.

Kristen Welker-Hood, RN, MSN, ScD
Dr. Welker-Hood recently relocated to Silver Spring, MD, where she is the senior policy fellow for the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health program of the American Nurses Association, where one of her key focus areas will be green healthcare. From 2003 to 2006 Dr. Welker-Hood was on the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) School of Nursing faculty in Galveston, TX. While at UTMB, she was involved in teaching both didactic and clinical nursing courses, including Case Management, Community Health and Pediatric Nursing, and was awarded a 2005 President's Cabinet Award for programs to benefit the Galveston area and beyond. She received her BSN at State University of New York at Binghamton in 1992, and her MSN in Community Health Nursing at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1999. Dr. Welker-Hood subsequently received her ScD from Boston University School of Public Health. Her doctoral work centered on indoor air pollution and validating an environmental assessment survey for HUD-funded U.S. public housing. Her nursing experience has focused mainly in oncology and pediatric public health. She has worked as a cancer nurse at the Lahey Clinic in Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Visiting Nurses Association of Greater Philadelphia, and the Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia. Her pediatric public health nursing experience includes program evaluation at the National Center for Lead Safe Housing of state and city directed clinical case management programs for lead-poisoned children.

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