NPA Foundation Board of Directors
Barbara Brookmyer, MD, MPH
Barbara Brookmyer leads a local health department with 350 staff and a $27 million budget.
She earned her medical degree from Hahnemann University (now Drexel University) in Philadelphia. She earned a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University before completing residency training in Family Medicine at the Ventura County Medical Center in Ventura, California. Prior positions include serving as Deputy Health Officer for 2 rural Maryland counties, working as a family physician in two migrant and community health centers, and serving in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Health Resources and Services Administration where she developed policies to increase the availability of primary care clinicians and other health professionals in unde rserved areas, enhance the diversity of the health professions, and improve the quality of health care.
Laurel Cappa, M.D., M.P.H.
Laurel Cappa has been actively involved in reproductive health, both in managerial and technical roles in the U.S. and abroad, for more than 25 years. Her diverse academic and experiential background -- medicine, public health, education, and counseling -- provides her with a broad programmatic perspective. Dr. Cappa has managed large centrally-funded projects and is particularly skilled in assessment, program design and implementation management. She has worked directly in almost 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and other post-Soviet countries. Dr. Cappa has recently expanded her focus to include international tobacco control, especially as viewed from a maternal and child health perspective.
Christine Cassel, M.D., M.A.C.P
Dr. Cassel is the president and chief executive officer of the American Board of Internal Medicine and ABIM Foundation in Philadelphia. She is the former Dean of the School of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. She is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics and quality of care. Among her many professional leadership positions, Dr. Cassel is immediate past-Chair of the ABIM Foundation Board of Trustees, served as Chair of the Board of the Greenwall Foundation, which supports work in bioethics; immediate past-President of the American Federation for Aging Research; and was a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director at the National Institutes of Health. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine Governing Council and has served on previous IOM committees responsible for influential reports on quality of care and medical errors, chaired a recent report on end-of-life care, and co-chaired a report on public health. In 1997-98, Dr. Cassel served on the President's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry.
She was formerly Chair of the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development and Professor of Geriatrics and Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. During ten years at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Dr. Cassel was Chief of the Section of General Internal Medicine, Professor of Geriatrics and Medicine, Founding Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, and Founding Director of the Center for Health Policy Research.
She has edited and authored a number of books, including Geriatric Medicine (Fourth Edition), A Practical Guide to Aging (1997), Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions (1993), Ethical Patient Care (2000), Approaching Death (1997), Encyclopedia of Bioethics (1995), and Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear War: A Sourcebook for Health Professionals (1984), and Medicare Matters: What Geriatric Medicine Can Teach American Health Care (2005).
Charlie Clements, MD
Charlie Clements is self-described as a ‘human rights activist and public health physician.' He is currently President and CEO of Cambridge-based UUSC, a human rights NGO with both a domestic and an international focus. He earned an M.D. and M.P.H from the University of Washington, where he also became active in the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), eventually serving as its President. His professional interests have centered on human rights and humanitarian affairs. Dr. Clements was a founding board member of Physicians for Human Rights, where he served as President when it shared the 1997 Nobel peace prize for its role in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Before coming to UUSC, he spent almost a decade as founder and CEO of WaterWorks, assisting American communities along the border of Mexico with self-help construction of desperately needed water and wastewater systems. His book, Witness to War (Bantam, 1983), describes his journey of conscience from pilot in Vietnam to physician serving in a rebel-held zone in the civil war in El Salvador.
David Evans, MD
David Evans is a board-certified family physician offering a broad scope of services, including operative obstetrics and endoscopy, to members of his rural community. He is the recipient of several community service and teaching awards. Viewing the marketing tactics of the pharmaceutical industry as a negative force on patient care, his practice, Madras Medical Group, is pharm-free. He practices in Madras, Oregon where he lives with his wife and two children.
Amy Lu, MD, MPH, MBA
Amy Lu is a board-certified general surgeon and specializes in abdominal organ transplantation. She is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Associate Director of Kidney/Pancreas Transplantation at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. She is also the Director of pediatric kidney transplantation at Children’s National Medical Center. Her interests include HIV and transplantation and innovations in minimally invasive liver surgery. She received a Masters of Public Health degree at Tufts University School of Medicine in conjunction with her medical degree. She also recently completed a Masters in Business Administration at Auburn University in 2005.
Lydia Vaias, MD, MPH
Lydia Vaias is a board-certified general surgeon on staff at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Bellflower, California. She completed her Masters in Public Health at UCLA with an emphasis in Health Policy.
Jean Silver-Isenstadt, MD, PhD
Executive Director
Jean Silver-Isenstadt holds a doctorate in the history and sociology of medicine from the University of Pennsylvania, a medical degree from the University of Maryland, and a master’s degree in nonfiction and science writing from the Johns Hopkins University. Her doctoral work focused on 19th-century American health reform. She is the author of Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), a biography of the infamous and influential health advocate and social reformer best known for her leadership of the water-cure movement and for her scandalous public lectures to women on anatomy and physiology.