Dr. Arden Handler, BIRCWH Chair of Evaluation
Professor, School of Public Health
Co-Director, Maternal and Child Health Program
Dr. Handler’s research has traditionally focused on factors associated with adverse pregnancy and perinatal outcomes, with a particular emphasis on access to, satisfaction with, and utilization of prenatal care. She has a solid background in the use of epidemiologic methods for the evaluation of public health programs and has been a leader in developing a conceptual framework for the study of the public health care delivery system. Currently, she is involved in evaluation research with a number of projects focused on improving the health of women and infants on the West and South Sides of Chicago. These projects include "Closing the Gap" (study of the quality of prenatal care in four Chicago communities), "Healthy Births for Healthy Communities" (an infant mortality reduction project with outreach and interconceptional care foci in two Chicago communities), and "Centering Pregnancy" (a group model of prenatal care). In addition, she recently received word that Chicago will be a site for one of the new 22 centers for the National Children’s Study, a longitudinal cohort study of the effects of environmental influences on 100,000 children nationwide; their mothers will be recruited prior to pregnancy and they will be followed from birth through early adulthood. UIC is partnering with Northwestern University (Lead PI) and the University of Chicago in this study; Dr. Handler is the UIC PI.

Dr. Judy Bolton
Professor, College of Pharmacy
Dr. Bolton’s research interests involve the study of the oxidative metabolism of catechols and phenols to genotoxic and/or cytotoxic metabolites and the mechanisms by which phenols and catechols exert their biological effects. The major focus of her work is to explore carcinogenic metabolites formed from antiestrogens and the bioactivation of estrogens to carcinogenic quinoids. Dr. Bolton’s work also examines in vitro and in vivo evaluation of the active components for the major dietary supplements by investigating the mechanism of action of these dietary supplements; specifically, botanicals with health benefits for menopausal women.

Dr. Suzann Campbell
Professor, College of Applied Health Sciences
Associate Director, Research Education, Training, and Career Development, Center for Clinical and Translational Science
Dr. Campbell is the senior editor of a comprehensive reference for the practice of pediatric physical therapy, Physical Therapy for Children, currently in preparation for its 4th edition, is a Catherine Worthingham Fellow of the American Physical Therapy Association, and the recipient of the Association’s highest award, the Mary McMillan Lecture Award. She has served on the Advisory Board of the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Campbell’s research deals with assessment and intervention for infants with movement disorders caused by perinatal brain injury or chronic lung disease. Her reseach resulted in the validation and standardization of the first functional motor scale for newborns which was normed on 990 infants in 13 medical centers across the U.S. The test is in use to diagnose delayed motor development across the world. She has been involved in several clinical trials of intervention for high risk newborns and is currently performing pilot work for a study to investigate whether earlier versus later exercise interventions for infants with white matter brain injury can improve functional motor outcomes, alter the ultimate diagnosis of CNS dysfunction, and promote white matter development and brain connectivity as measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Dr. Campbell holds the BS and MS in Physical Therapy and a PhD in Neurophysiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Karen Colley
Professor, College of Medicine
Associate Dean for Graduate Research and Education, College of Medicine
Dr. Karen Colley is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and serves as the Associate Dean for Graduate Research and Education in the College of Medicine. Her research involves elucidating the signals and mechanisms of protein subcellular localization and modification. She has published extensively on protein Golgi localization and is currently working to understand the process of protein polysialylation. Polysialic acid is an anti-adhesive sugar polymer that is required for brain development, learning and memory, and promotes the growth and invasiveness of cancer cells. Dr. Colley is currently funded by the NIH to evaluate the sequence requirements for substrate recognition by the polysialyltransferases with the ultimate goal of developing approaches to block polysialylation of proteins expressed by cancer cells.

Dr. Barbara Dancy
Professor, College of Nursing
Dr. Dancy has published extensively about reducing the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic among African American adolescent girls from single-mother homes, reducing health disparities in African American women, and aspects of African American family functioning. One of her currently funded NIH projects is to examine, over a two-year period, the effectiveness of a mother-daughter HIV risk-reduction intervention in increasing the daughter’s self-reported HIV risk-reduction behavior. She is also currently the PI of a T32 training grant for reducing health disparities in the College of Nursing.

Dr. Faith Davis
Senior Associate Dean, School of Public Health
Professor, School of Public Health
Dr. Faith Davis, Senior Associate Dean at the UIC School of Public Health, received her Ph.D. in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from Yale University in 1984. She is a Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Davis has 25 years of experience in conducting epidemiology research, has published over 80 peer reviewed manuscripts, served on local, regional and national review and advisory committees and developed a surveillance structure to improve the quality of brain tumor statistics which is now being adopted nationally and internationally. Dr. Davis was instrumental in the development of the data core for the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States (CBTRUS). Dr. Davis is currently Principal Investigator on a Department of Energy funded study evaluating the carcinogenic risks of environmental exposures experienced by Techa River residents in the Southern Urals of Russia and directs a gene-environmental case-control study of neurocarcinogen exposures and brain tumor as part of and NCI funded Brain Tumor Spore program at Duke University Medical Center. She also serves on the radiation advisory board of the scientific advisory committee for the Environmental Protection Agency and is a member of the board of directors of the American College of Epidemiology.

Dr. Asgerally Fazleabas
Professor, College of Medicine
Dr. Fazleabas is PI of the NIH supported Specialized Cooperative Centers Program in Reproduction and Infertility Research (SCCPRIR). His laboratory's focus is on studying the expression and regulation of uterine endometrial proteins during the period of uterine receptivity and implantation and on the consequences of endometriosis on infertility.

Dr. Linda Kaste
Associate Professor, College of Dentistry
Affiliate Associate Professor, School of Public Health
Linda M. Kaste, DDS, MS, PhD attended dental school at the University of Maryland, and holds graduate degrees in Epidemiology from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She completed a dental public health residency at Harvard University and is an American Board of Dental Public Health Diplomat. Dr. Kaste was previously a Senior Staff Fellow at the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research where her research activities included participation in the publication of the dental data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and has held academic appointments at Harvard University and the University of South Carolina. She has produced over 25 peer reviewed publications and 80 meeting abstracts and presentations on topics including early childhood caries, dental workforce issues and health disparities. Her current research activities include state-level dental workforce assessment; the roles of the dental workforce in access to care, delay in detection for oral cancer, and oral health for populations with limited access to dental care; and women’s health related to dentistry particularly concerning the composition and education of the dental workforce. Dr. Kaste has provided dental clinical care in community health centers in Boston and in volunteer projects in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. She is on the IFLOSS (Coalition of Communities Working Together to Improve Oral Health in Illinois) Board of Directors and the NIH Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health.

Dr. Pauline M. Maki
Associate Professor, College of Medicine
Dr. Maki's research over the last decade has focused primarily on the effects of sex hormones on cognition and brain function. Her research program comprises a series of observational studies and clinical intervention trials focusing on both neuropsychological and neuroimaging outcomes. Her brain imaging research led to novel insights into the neural targets of hormone therapy in postmenopausal women. Dr. Maki received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1994. She received post-graduate training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the dementias of aging and at the National Institute on Aging in neuroimaging. In 1999, she joined the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Aging, where she became a co-developer and Co-Principal Investigator in the Women's Health Initiative Study of Cognitive Aging(WHISCA) and Cognition in the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (Co-STAR). In 2002, she joined the UIC faculty in the Department of Psychiatry, where she carries out randomized clinical trials comparing hormone therapy to alternative botanical therapies in collaboration with the UIC/NIH Center for Botanical Research in Women's Health. Dr. Maki is also the Director of the Neurocognitive Working Group of the Women's Interagency HIV Study. She has numerous publications on hormones and cognitive function, has won a number of NIH awards for her research and service, serves on executive committees for several women's health advisory boards, and is a frequent international and national speaker on women's cognitive health.

Dr. Mariann Piano
Associate Professor, College of Nursing
Dr. Piano's research program is directed at understanding the mechanisms that underlie the adverse effects of long-term heavy and binge/bender alcohol consumption on the myocardium. In both men and women, long-term heavy ethanol use is a prevalent toxic cause of a dilated cardiomyopathy, also referred to as alcoholic cardiomyopathy (ACM). A major aim of Dr. Piano's research program has been to examine pathophysiologic mechanisms that are involved in the initiation and progression of ACM. Her current program of research funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIH), is designed to examine the cardiovascular effects of binge drinking and cigarette smoke exposure. Pathophysiologic mechanisms investigated by her laboratory include activation mitogen-activated protein kinases, mitochondrial injury and oxidative stress. Similar to other types of cardiovascular diseases, sex disparities exist in the occurrence, manifestations, and outcomes of alcohol-related diseases. In terms of alcohol-induced cardiomyopathy, some research suggests women are more vulnerable to the toxic effects of alcohol. Therefore another major aim of Dr. Piano's research has been to examine how the presence of ovarian hormones or female sex might modulate the effects of alcohol.

Dr. Alan Schwartz
Associate Professor and Director of Research, College of Medicine
Alan Schwartz, PhD is an Associate Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Medical Education. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of Pediatrics. His education includes a BA in Cognitive Science and Women's Studies, an MS in organizational behavior, and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Dr. Schwartz's research focuses on medical decision making by patients and physicians; he teaches decision making, leadership, and quantitative data analysis to health professions faculty. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Medical Decision Making,and has served on the executive boards of the Society for Medical Decision Making and the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.

Dr. JoEllen Wilbur
Professor & Independence Foundation Chair in Nursing, Rush University
Dr. Wilbur’s work has focused on midlife women’s symptoms, cardiovascular health, and physical activity. Her research examines physical measures originally developed for men and extended to women’s activity and exercise as a natural alternative to hormone replacement therapy in managing menopausal symptoms. She has a program of research that has been funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Active Living Research to examine determinants of physical activity and test interventions to increase adherence to physical activity in African American women.

Dr. Jack Zwanziger, BIRCWH Chair of Curriculum
Professor and Director, Division of Healthy Policy and Administration, School of Public Health
Director, Center for Health Services Research, Institute for Health Research and Policy
Dr. Zwanziger’s educational background includes training in Physics and Policy Analysis. He has extensive experience in conducting health services and outcomes research. He has been co-PI on several Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ) and foundation-funded policy and evaluation studies on the effects of the SCHIP program. He has also headed the Quality of Life/Cost Effectiveness component of a major clinical trial (MADIT II) and was co-PI on a study of the effectiveness of different treatment options for Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (DCIS). He is currently PI on a Pfizer-funded study to develop a strategy for combining preventive and pharmaceutical interventions to reduce elevated cholesterol in low SES minority populations. He was the PI of the T32 Training Grant for Health Services Research and Policy funded by the AHRQ at the University of Rochester. During this period, he served at various times as the Director of both the doctoral and post-doctoral training programs. Dr. Zwanziger has mentored several students who have been successful in obtaining federal research funding for both dissertation and post-doctoral research, including two trainees, one pre- and one post-doctoral, who were funded as investigators on a large National Cancer Institute-funded study of DCIS. Dr. Zwanziper was the PI for the K30 Clinical Research Training Program, which was funded in 2005 and co-PI on the CTSA Planning Grant.