Gail D’Eramo Melkus, EdD, C-NP, FAAN – Chair
Dr. Melkus’ interest in eliminating health disparities in vulnerable populations earned her a reputation as a leader in development and testing of culturally competent models of diabetes care. Dissemination and translation of her work contributed to reshaping the delivery of diabetes care. She has consulted with the Indian Health Service, the Center for Disease Control, the American Diabetes Association, and NIH grant initiatives. In conjunction with the Diabetes Research and Training Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she developed and implemented the first specialty concentration in diabetes care for advanced practice nurses in the country. She has mentored numerous pre and post-doctoral candidates and faculty scientists.
Charles Safran, MD
Charles Safran is a primary care internist who has devoted his professional career to improving patient care through the creative use of informatics. He is Chief of the Division of Clinical Computing, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. He is a senior scientist at the National Center for Public Health Informatics at Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He is the immediate past President and Chairman of American Medical Informatics Association was previously Vice-President of the International Medical Informatics Association. He is an elected fellow of both the American College of Medical Informatics and the American College of Physicians.
Ira Wilson, MD, MSc
Dr. Wilson was Chief Medical Resident at Beth Israel and a fellow in the Harvard General Medicine Program. In 1993 he joined the faculty at Tufts Medical Center where he rose to the rank of Professor in 2006. In 2010 he moved to Brown to become Chair of the Department of Health Services, Policy & Practice. Dr. Wilson is interested in how structural features of healthcare systems affect the interactions between physicians and patients, and how those interactions in turn affect patients’ health outcomes. To study these relationships he has studied patients with chronic conditions such as the elderly, persons with depression, and persons with HIV. Recently he his research has focused on understanding and improving the quality of medication prescribing and medication management.
Jacquelyn Taylor PhD, PNP-BC, RN, FAAN
Jacquelyn Taylor is an Associate Professor in the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Specialty at Yale University. Her undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees in nursing are from Wayne State University College of Nursing in Detroit Michigan. She is prepared as both a pediatric nurse practitioner and a school nurse practitioner. She holds a certificate in molecular genetics from Georgetown University and has completed additional coursework in cardiovascular epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. Dr. Taylor also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Urban Health of Older Populations at the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University in Detroit. Prior to coming to Yale, Jacquelyn Taylor served as a faculty member and coordinator of the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
James Lubben, PhD, MSW, MPH
James Lubben, PhD, is the inaugural holder of the Louise McMahon Ahearn Chair in Social Work at Boston College School of Social Work (BCSSW). Dr. Lubben is also Professor Emeritus at UCLA where he taught for 20 years and was Associate Dean and Chair of the Department of Social Welfare. Dr. Lubben is the founding director of the University Institute on Aging at Boston College. He is also director of the Center of Excellence in Geriatric Social Work at BCSSW. His research considers social isolation as a behavioral health risk among older adults. To carry out this research, he developed the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS), an abbreviated measure designed for both research and clinical use among older populations.