Mary Ann Baily

BA (Mathematics), Harvard University. MA (Economics), Northwestern University. PhD (Economics), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1999 to June, 2009, Research Scholar in ethics and health policy at The Hastings Center, Garrison, NY. Before that, a member of the economics faculties of Yale University (1973-79) and George Washington University (1983-1999); staff economist for the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1980-1983). Research interests include genetic screening; health care access, rationing, and quality improvement; organ transplantation; end-of-life care. Publications include: editor with T. H. Murray of Ethics and Newborn Genetic Screening: New Technologies, New Challenges (2009); author, “Perspective: Harming Through Protection?” New England Journal of Medicine (2008); author with M. Bottrell, J. Lynn, B.J. Jennings, "The Ethics of Using QI Methods to Improve Health Care Quality & Safety," Hastings Center Report (2006). SLC, 2008-

Bruce Berg

Associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Fordham University. Author of New York City Politics: Governing Gotham (2007) and published articles and book chapters on the delivery of health care to the elderly, interest group politics, bureaucratic politics, program evaluation, and New York City politics; teaches courses on health policy, intergovernmental relations, interest groups and group theory, social policy, and New York City politics and government; involved with several committees at Fordham University dealing with structuring health benefit packages and programs for full-time and retired faculty; has served as president of Fordham’s Faculty Senate. SLC, 1999-

Jennifer Buckley

BA (Political Science), Boston College. MA (Health Advocacy), Sarah Lawrence College. Advocated for eleven years as a hospital patient representative at several large teaching hospitals, including Westchester Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Her role was to personalize and humanize the hospital experience by serving as a liaison among patients, their families, and staff; and to craft resolutions to problems and recommend corrective actions to make hospital services more responsive to patients’ needs. She was a member of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Patient Education and Ethics Committees. She is a founding board member and continues to serves on board of the Pink Foundation, a Westchester-based organization dedicated to providing social programming and emotional support for young women with Breast Cancer. SLC, 2009

Sayantani DasGupta

AB, Brown University. MD/MPH, Johns Hopkins University. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Core Faculty in the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. Faculty member of the summer writing seminar "Writing the Medical Experience" and editorial board member, Literature and Medicine. Co-author of The Demon Slayers and Other Stories: Bengali Folktales (1995), author of a memoir about her education at Johns Hopkins, Her Own Medicine: A Woman's Journey from Student to Doctor (1999), and co-editor of an award-winning book of women's illness narratives, Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write their Bodies (2007). Her writing has been included in many anthologies, and has appeared in JAMA, the Lancet, the Hastings Center Report, Teaching and Learning in Medicine, the Journal of Medical Humanities and Literature and Medicine. SLC, 2001-

Rachel N. Grob

BA, Wesleyan University. MA (Health Advocacy), Sarah Lawrence College. PhD (Sociology), City University of New York Graduate Center. Research focus on interface of genetics and advocacy and the social impact of technological innovation. Currently associate dean of graduate studies, Sarah Lawrence College. Investigator in health policy research, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2006-08. Formerly director of policy analysis and planning, Andrus Children’s Center (responsibilities included development of services for children and families and spearheading an Early Childhood Initiative in Yonkers, NY) and assistant to the Deputy Commissioner of Health, Westchester County Health Department. Author of "Parenting in the Genomic Age: The Cursed Blessing of Newborn Screening," New Genetics and Society, 2006; "Celebrating and Mobilizing: How We Started a Family Day in Yonkers," America’s Family Support Magazine, spring 2000, v. 19, No. 1; co-author of "Parenting and Inequality," published in The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities, 2005. SLC, "Educating for Advocacy in Settings of Higher Learning," in Patient Advocacy for Health Care Quality: Strategies for Achieving Patient-Centered Care, Jones and Bartlett, 2008, and Testing Baby: The Transformation of Newborn Screening, Parenting and Policymaking, forthcoming, and other related articles. SLC, 1998-

Catherine Handy

PhD, New York University. Oncology clinical nurse specialist, St. Vincent’s Cancer Center, New York City. Nationally certified as an Advanced Oncology Certified Nurse; 30 years’ experience in nursing in such areas as bone marrow transplantation, home care, AIDS care and education; special interests include pain management and ethical issues; frequent speaker on oncology and AIDS nursing issues; recipient of New York State Liberty Award, 2002. SLC, 2000-

Alice Herb

BA, Syracuse University. JD, LLM, New York University School of Law. Assistant Clinical Professor of Family Practice and Humanities in Medicine, SUNY Downstate Medical Center.; ethics consultant to New York Methodist Hospital. Formerly ethics consultant to the Brooklyn Hospital Center (1994-2003); formerly TV news and cultural affairs producer, director, and writer; special interest in clinical ethics, particularly in channels/barriers between health care professionals and patients/families, cultural diversity and its effect on physician/patient interaction, the role of palliative care in a high-tech environment, and the continuing dilemma in human subject research; currently involved in an initiative to change the guardianship law in New York State. Author: Autonomy, the Encyclopedia of Care of the Elderly, Springer Publishing Company, 2007; co-author with Burke and Swidler, "Three Stubborn Misconceptions About the Authority of Health Care Agents," NYSBA's Health Law. SLC, 1996-

Christobal J. Jacques

LMSW

MSW, Hunter College. IV Prevention Specialist, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Bureau of HIV AIDS Prevention and Control. Christobal Jacques joined the staff of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in 1986 where he has held a variety of supervisory, management and leadership positions, including the development and coordination of outreach and prevention education to injection drug users, oversight of the HIV Anonymous Counseling and Testing Program, Director of Community Relations for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS, Governmental Co-Chair of the NYC Prevention Planning Group, and just prior to accepting his present position Special Assistant to the Assistant Commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS. In that capacity he had broad responsibilities for special initiatives and community relations. Mr. Jacques received his Masters in Social Work from the Hunter College School of Social Work where he majored in community organization and minored in group work; in addition, he is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, School of Public Health and Kenan Flagler Business School Emerging Leaders in Public Health Fellowship. SLC, 2009-

Rebecca O. Johnson

BA, Southern New Hampshire University. MS (Community Economic Development), Southern New Hampshire University. MFA (Nonfiction), Sarah Lawrence College. Founder and Executive Director of Cooperative Economics for Women, Boston, MA. Expertise in community organizing, participatory action research, oral history, and other forms of community history research; published works include, including most recently, Lonesome Refugees, (Callaloo, 2007); We Want To Be At The Table: Helping Environmental Groups Rebuild After Katrina (Environmental Support Center, 2006); The History of Charity (Grassroots Fundraising Journal Conference 2006); New Moon Over Roxbury, Ecofeminism and the Sacred, Carol Adams, ed. (Continuum, 1993). SLC, 2007-

Margaret Keller

AB, Trinity College. JD, Columbia University School of Law. MS (administrative medicine), Columbia School of Public Health. Retired partner, DeForest & Duer; special interest in the interfaces of law, medicine and health care administration; author, co-author and co-editor of numerous articles on law and health care administration, especially developments in federal law and New York State law. SLC, 1981-

Laura I. Long

BA, Kenyon College. MS (human genetics), Sarah Lawrence College. Specializes in behavioral science and counseling skills required to help people change health-related behaviors; involved in training and research on programs to help reduce risk of HIV/STDs in all at-risk populations in the New York City geographic area; has been involved in both primary and secondary prevention efforts and has provided training to social service and health care organizations on program development in these areas; teaches Issues in Genetic Counseling IV in the Human Genetics program. SLC, 1999-

Terry Mizrahi

BA, New York University. MSW, Columbia University. PhD (sociology), University of Virginia. Professor, Hunter College School of Social Work; director, Education Center for Community Organizing at HCSSW; expertise in medical sociology, organizational and community development, health care policy and patients’ rights; areas of research and training in professional socialization and physician behavior, social work in health care, interdisciplinary collaboration, inter-organizational coalition-building and community organizing; author of several books, monographs, guides and articles, including Getting Rid of Patients: Contradictions in the Socialization of Physicians (Rutgers, 1986), Community Organization and Social Administration: Trends and Issues (Haworth, 1993) and Creating Strategic Partnerships: The Theory and Practice of Coalitions and Collaboration. Co-Editor of Encyclopedia of Social Work 20th Edition, Oxford and NASW Press, 2008. Past president of the National Association of Social Workers and one of the founders of the Association for Community Organization and Social Administration, which awarded her a lifetime career achievement award in 2004.Hunter College President’s Award for Excellence in Applied Scholarship, 2008. SLC, 1981-

Constance Peterson

BS (Sociology/Anthropology), Southwest Missouri State University. MA (Health Advocacy), Sarah Lawrence College. Currently Administrative Manager and Patient Services Specialist in the Emergency Department of New York-Presbyterian Hospital Cornell Weill Medical Center. Faculty appointments: Weill Medical College Cornell University Department of Public Health and Department of Medical Ethics and Sarah Lawrence College/Health Advocacy Program. SLC, 2001-

Laura Weil

BA, State University of New York. MA (Health Advocacy), Sarah Lawrence College. Director of Sarah Lawrence College's Masters' Program in Health Advocacy. During a career in hospital-based patient advocacy, including NYU Medical Center and Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers, Ms. Weil served as Director of the Patient Representative Department of Beth Israel Medical Center. Her focus was to improve patients' hospital experiences, safety, and she served as a resource for staff, patients, and family members in issues involving patients' rights and surrogate medical decision-making. She serves on Beth Israel's Institutional Review Board and as a grant reviewer for the National Institute of Mental Health, assuring that the rights of participants in clinical trials are adequately protected and explained. Weil is a past president of New York State Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy, and a former board member of the national Society for Healthcare Consumer Advocacy of the American Hospital Association. She is also a member of the Metropolitan New York Ethics Network, and has taught Clinical Ethics in the Physician Assistant program of Touro College of Health Sciences. Co-author of "Educating for Advocacy in Settings of Higher Learning," in Patient Advocacy for Health Care Quality: Strategies for Achieving Patient-Centered Care, Jones and Bartlett (2008). SLC, 1999-