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Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence (2013)

Chapter: Appendix C: Committee Biographies

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
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C

Committee Biographies

Alan I. Leshner, Ph.D. (Chair), is chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and executive publisher of the journal Science, a post he has held since December 2001. From 1994 to 2001, Dr. Leshner was director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health. Prior to that, Dr. Leshner was the deputy director and acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He went to NIMH from the National Science Foundation, where he held a variety of senior positions, focusing on basic research in the biological, behavioral, and social sciences; science policy; and science education. Dr. Leshner is an elected fellow of AAAS, the National Academy of Public Administration, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and many other professional societies. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and served on its governing council. He was appointed to the National Science Board by President George W. Bush in 2004 and reappointed by President Obama in 2011. Dr. Leshner received an undergraduate degree in psychology from Franklin and Marshall College and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physiological psychology from Rutgers University. He has been awarded six honorary doctor of science degrees.

Louis Arcangeli, M.Ed., is currently a part-time instructor in the department of criminal justice at Georgia State University, a position he has held since 2003. Mr. Arcangeli is retired from the Atlanta Police Department (APD), where his 33 years of service included 5 years as a deputy chief of police and 7 years as an elected pension fund trustee. While with the department, Mr. Arcangeli served as the deputy chief of APD planning for the 1996 Olympic Games and the implementation of a new

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
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E-911 Center and APD communications system. He has been a police instructor for the Georgia Public Safety Training Center and a Hunter Safety Instructor for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife Management Division. Mr. Arcangeli is a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy and holds a master’s degree in education from Georgia State University.

Alfred Blumstein, Ph.D., is university professor and J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research in the H. John Heinz III College of Public Policy and Information Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining Heinz in 1969, Dr. Blumstein was at the Institute for Defense Analyses, where he was director of the Office of Urban Research and a member of the Research Council. He also served as the director of the Science and Technology Task Force for the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. Dr. Blumstein was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Research on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice from its founding in 1975 until 1986, serving as chairman from 1979 to 1984. He also served from 1979 to 1990 as chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, the state’s criminal justice planning agency, and as a member of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing from 1986 to 1996. Dr. Blumstein’s research during the past 20 years has covered many aspects of criminal justice phenomena and policy, including crime measurement, criminal careers, sentencing, deterrence and incapacitation, prison populations, flow through the system, demographic trends, juvenile violence, and drugenforcement policy. Dr. Blumstein has also served as director of the National Consortium on Violence Research. He was appointed in 2012 as chair of the Science Advisory Board for the Office of Justice Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice. Dr. Blumstein was a 2007 recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Blumstein received a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics and a Ph.D. in operations research from Cornell University.

C. Hendricks Brown, Ph.D., is a professor of epidemiology and public health in the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami. He also holds adjunct professor positions in the departments of biostatistics and mental health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In addition, he is a senior research scholar at the American Insti-

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
×

tutes for Research and a collaborating senior scientist at the Oregon Center for Research to Practice. As director of the Prevention Science and Methodology Group, Dr. Brown leads a national network of 120 scientists and methodologists who are working on the design of preventive field trials and their analysis, particularly with advanced techniques for growth analysis and missing data. He is also the co-director of the multisite Center for Integrating Education and Prevention in Schools. Dr. Brown previously served as distinguished university health professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics in the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida. Recently, his work has focused on the prevention of serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia and the prevention of suicide. Funding from National Institute of Mental Health supports his research to evaluate the impact of antidepressants on suicide using multiple datasets. Dr. Brown has chaired or co-chaired a number of international meetings related to synthesizing the evidence of prevention studies and serves on numerous federal panels, advisory boards, and editorial boards. He completed his undergraduate work at Vanderbilt University and received an M.A. in chemistry and a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Chicago.

Donald Carlucci, Ph.D., is the U.S. Army senior scientist for computational structural modeling at the U.S. Army Armament, Research, Development and Engineering Center, Picatinny Arsenal, where he has been employed since 1989. He was formerly chief of the Analysis and Evaluation Technology Division, Fuze and Precision Munitions Technology Directorate, responsible for the modeling and evaluation of cannon-launched munitions programs at Picatinny, and chief scientist for the XM982 Excalibur guided projectile. He also teaches graduate classes at Stevens Institute of Technology on Interior, Exterior and Terminal Ballistics as well as undergraduate classes on engineering design. Dr. Carlucci formerly held the position of development program officer (chief engineer) for Sense and Destroy Armor (SADARM). Prior to employment at Picatinny, he was a design engineer for Titanium Industries in Fairfield, New Jersey, and held positions as chief engineer, quality assurance manager, and purchasing manager for Hoyt Corporation, located in Englewood, New Jersey. He is a licensed professional engineer in the states of New Jersey and New York. He earned a doctorate in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in engineering (mechanical) from Stevens Institute of Technology and a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
×

BG (Ret.) Rhonda Cornum, M.D., Ph.D., is director of health strategy at TechWerks and a private consultant for resilience building within large organizations. She previously served as the first director of the U.S. Army’s novel Comprehensive Soldier Fitness initiative. Before that, she served as assistant surgeon general for force projection. In this capacity, she was responsible for policies and procedures to prepare soldiers and units for deployment. She commanded the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, which is the evacuation hub for Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, and Europe, during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Dr. Cornum sits on numerous committees and advisory boards, including the Advisory Committee on Former Prisoners of War for the Department of Veterans Affairs and the External Advisory Board for the Millennium Cohort Study. Dr. Cornum is board-certified in urology, a fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and the Aerospace Medical Association, a member of the American Society of Nutrition, and an adjunct professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Her decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal (with four oak leaf clusters), Purple Heart, Air Medal, and Prisoner of War Medal. She received her Ph.D. in biochemistry and nutrition from Cornell University and an M.D. from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Paul K. Halverson, Dr.P.H., M.H.S.A., F.A.C.H.E., is the founding dean at the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health. He previously served as the director of health and state health officer of the Arkansas Department of Health and as the secretary of the Arkansas State Board of Health. He was a professor of public health and medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and an adjunct professor of public health at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. Dr. Halverson is also past president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials as well as past chair of the Public Health Accreditation Board. Prior to his move to Arkansas, Dr. Halverson served as a member of the Senior Biomedical Research Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As the director of the Division of Public Health Systems Development and Research, Dr. Halverson had responsibility for strengthening the effectiveness of public health systems throughout the world. Prior to his appointment at CDC, Professor Halverson was a member of the faculty in the Department of Health Policy and Administration at the University

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
×

of North Carolina School of Public Health. Prior to his appointment at UNC, Dr. Halverson served as a hospital administrator in Arizona, Minnesota, and Michigan. He earned a master’s in health services administration from Arizona State University and a doctor of public health in health policy and administration from UNC at Chapel Hill.

Stephen W. Hargarten, M.D., M.P.H., is professor and chair of the department of emergency medicine, associate dean for the global health program, and director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is also a member of the Injury Research Center’s Education Core, which is focused on the development of a model injury prevention and control curriculum integrated across all 4 years of the medical student curriculum and the development of targeted injury prevention and control research training initiatives for medical and graduate students to prepare the next generation of injury research scientists. His research interests reflect an intersection of injury prevention and health policy to address the burden of injuries. Dr. Hargarten was the first chair of the statewide Committee on Trauma System Development for the Wisconsin State Health Department. He also served as chair of the Wisconsin Seat Belt Coalition and devoted considerable effort toward seat belt legislation in Wisconsin. He serves as a board member for Advocates of Highway and Auto Safety and the Association for Safe International Road Travel. He was the founding president of the Society for the Advancement of Violence and Injury Research. Dr. Hargarten received his M.D. from the Medical College of Wisconsin and an M.P.H. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D., is the McNeil Family Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, where he has served on the faculty since 1994. Prior to his most recent position, he was a professor of sociology and a program director at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. Dr. Kessler is the principal investigator of the U.S. National Comorbidity Survey, the first nationally representative survey of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders in the United States, and a co-director of the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative, a series of comparative community epidemiological surveys of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders and treatment for those disorders in 28 countries around the world. He is also the principal investigator of the Harvard Medical School site for Army STARRS (Study To Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers), a

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
×

research program funded by the U.S. Army and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to study risk and protective factors for suicide among Army personnel. Dr. Kessler’s research deals broadly with the social determinants of mental health and illness as studied from an epidemiological perspective. He is the author of more than 600 publications and the recipient of many awards for his research, including the Senior Scientist and MERIT awards from NIMH. He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Kessler earned his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin.

Gary Kleck, Ph.D., is the David J. Bordua Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a courtesy professor of law at the Florida State University, where he has been on the faculty since 1978. Dr. Kleck’s research interests are in gun control, deterrence, crime control, and the study of violence. He is the winner of the 1993 Michael J. Hindelang Award, bestowed by the American Society of Criminology, which named his book Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America “the most outstanding contribution to criminology.” Dr. Kleck’s subsequent work Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control was featured in the Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Librarians 39th annual Outstanding Academic Title List, which recognizes books for “excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to their field, and their value as an important treatment of their topic.” Dr. Kleck is a member of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

John A. Rich, M.D., M.P.H., is professor and chair of health management and policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health. He is also the director of the Center for Nonviolence and Justice at Drexel. His work has focused on African American men in urban settings. In 2006, Dr. Rich was granted a MacArthur Fellowship for his work to design “new models of health care that stretch across the boundaries of public health, education, social service, and justice systems to engage young men in caring for themselves and their peers.” Prior to arriving at Drexel University, Dr. Rich served as the medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission. As a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center, he created the Young Men’s Health Clinic and initiated the Boston

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
×

HealthCREW, a program to train inner-city young men to become peer health educators. He published a book about urban violence titled Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). In 2009, Dr. Rich was inducted into the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He earned his A.B. degree in English from Dartmouth College, his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine, and his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Jeffrey W. Runge, M.D., is a principal at The Chertoff Group, a firm providing business risk management and security sector advisory services, and president of Biologue, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in biodefense, medical preparedness, and injury prevention and control. He is also an adjunct professor in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 2005 to 2008, Dr. Runge served as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) first chief medical officer and led the reorganization of biodefense operations into a new Office of Health Affairs (OHA). OHA acts as the principal adviser to all DHS component agencies on medical, biodefense, and workforce health issues. From 1984 to 2001, Dr. Runge practiced and taught emergency medicine in a North Carolina emergency department and trauma center and researched injury prevention, trauma care, and emergency service delivery. His leadership and innovation in road traffic safety brought him to Washington, DC, as the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, where he instituted programs that led to the first absolute declines in U.S. motor vehicle deaths in almost a decade and the lowest highway fatality rate in history. Dr. Runge is board-certified in emergency medicine and has published more than 60 articles in medical literature in the fields of emergency medicine, traffic injury control, and medical preparedness. Dr. Runge is a graduate of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and received his medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina.

Susan B. Sorenson, Ph.D., is professor of social policy and practice and professor of health and societies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a senior fellow with the Center for Public Health Initiatives and the director of the Evelyn Jacobs Ortner Center on Family Violence. She previously taught and conducted research for 20 years at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Public Health. Dr. Sorenson has published widely on the epidemiology and prevention of

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
×

violence, including the areas of homicide, suicide, sexual assault, child abuse, battering, and firearms. A primary focus of her work is the social context in which violence occurs, specifically, the norms that shape whether and how violence is tolerated. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Sorenson has served on the board of directors and advisory boards of local community-based organizations, state government agencies, and university injury prevention centers. In 1991, she co-founded the Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater Los Angeles. She was a consultant to President Clinton’s National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women; a consultant to the United Nations Children’s Fund May 2000 report Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls; and a member of the advisory panel for the 2001 U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Youth Violence. She is the author of a 2008 World Health Organization report on health indicators of violence against children in low- and middleincome countries. Dr. Sorenson earned a B.S. in sociology and psychology from the Iowa State University, an M.S. in psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Sorenson completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the UCLA School of Public Health.

David Vlahov, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN, is dean and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing. He previously served as professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University and held adjunct positions at the New York University (NYU) College of Nursing and at the medical schools of Cornell, Mount Sinai, and NYU. He also served as co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health and Society Scholars program. Dr. Vlahov’s research interests are in epidemiology, infectious diseases, substance abuse, and mental health. He has conducted studies of urban populations in Baltimore for more than 20 years and has led epidemiological studies in Harlem and the Bronx that have served as a platform for subsequent individual- and community-level intervention studies and community-based participatory research to address social determinants of health. Dr. Vlahov established the International Society for Urban Health, serving as its first president, and also served on the New York City Board of Health. He was a visiting professor at the Medical School in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, developing its programs in urban health, and an expert consultant to the World Health Organization’s Urban Health Center in Kobe, Japan. Dr. Vlahov is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Urban Health, has edited 3 books on urban health, and has published

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
×

more than 610 scholarly papers. He received his baccalaureate in history from Earlham College, his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from the University of Maryland, and his doctorate in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.
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Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence Get This Book
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In 2010, more than 105,000 people were injured or killed in the United States as the result of a firearm-related incident. Recent, highly publicized, tragic mass shootings in Newtown, CT; Aurora, CO; Oak Creek, WI; and Tucson, AZ, have sharpened the American public's interest in protecting our children and communities from the harmful effects of firearm violence. While many Americans legally use firearms for a variety of activities, fatal and nonfatal firearm violence poses a serious threat to public safety and welfare.

In January 2013, President Barack Obama issued 23 executive orders directing federal agencies to improve knowledge of the causes of firearm violence, what might help prevent it, and how to minimize its burden on public health. One of these orders directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to, along with other federal agencies, immediately begin identifying the most pressing problems in firearm violence research. The CDC and the CDC Foundation asked the IOM, in collaboration with the National Research Council, to convene a committee tasked with developing a potential research agenda that focuses on the causes of, possible interventions to, and strategies to minimize the burden of firearm-related violence. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence focuses on the characteristics of firearm violence, risk and protective factors, interventions and strategies, the impact of gun safety technology, and the influence of video games and other media.

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