Class Notes

1980s

Erica Frank, MD, 84MPH, was recognized by Congressman John Lewis as a Local Legend from Georgia. This honor is bestowed on women physicians who have demonstrated commitment, originality, innovation, or creativity in their field of medicine. Frank is director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at Emory. She also is the education coordinator for the WHO Health InterNetwork.

Alawode Oladele, MD, 93MPH, was one of only 30 fellows selected nationwide for the 2004 Kellogg Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Public Health. Oladele is medical director for refugee health, the tuberculosis clinic, and the Richardson laboratory, all at DeKalb County Board of Health in Georgia. Born in Nigeria, he also works in international public health, as a consultant with Premiere Inter-national Health, Inc.

Wendy Nickel, 94MPH, has co-authored a book, A Framework for Pharmaceutical Risk Management. It applies knowledge learned from disease management and patient safety to management of high-risk drugs within the pharmaceutical industry. Nickel is the director of Patient Satisfaction and Physician Services at Albert Einstein Healthcare Network in Philadelphia.

Frank Rasler, MD, 94MPH, believes the acute fear of chest pain or difficulty breathing is the ultimate “teachable moment” for smoking cessation. Working with the American Cancer Society, he has produced 3,000 ER-specific educational and motivational posters that are now hanging in Georgia’s 150 emergency rooms.

Emily Siegel, 97MPH, is a doctoral candidate in international health at Johns Hopkins. During her training, she spent two years in Nepal, where she managed an infant development sub-study that was part of a large clinical trial. “I collected data on the motor, language, and cognitive development of 4- to 17-month-old infants who were supplemented daily with iron-folate and zinc.” She is using the data for her dissertation. “Being in Nepal proved to be quite an experience, especially since I was in the country during the massacre of the royal family and some intense moments of the Maoist insurgency,” she writes.

Brian Midkiff, MD, 99MPH, received his medical degree on June 6, 2003 from Chicago Medical School. Midkiff is a radiology resident at Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital in Providence––his first choice in the national match.

Kimberly Dionne Posey, MD, 99MPH, graduated from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Mich. in June 2003.

2000s

Born To: Joya Delgado Harris, 00MPH, and her husband, Karl, a son, Lawrence Karl, on October 30, 2002. The family lives in Atlanta where Joya Harris works in health education at the American Red Cross.

Married: Anastasia Nadia Derzko-Tazkovski, 00MPH, and Vasil (Bill) Taskovski, on May 24, 2003 in Toronto, Canada. Derzko-Tazkovski thanks Paula Frew, 01MPH, who was a bridesmaid and who arranged for the bride-to-be’s Emory friends to attend the bridal shower in Atlanta. Derszo-Tazkovski is a biostatistician for Spectral Diagnostics, Inc. in Toronto, working in cardiac diagnostics and infectious diseases.

Diana S. Hadzibegovic, MD, 01MPH, is an intern with CDC’s Emergency Leaders Program, a new program developed by Health and Human Services. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Mirza, and their daughter Hana, age 11.

Ashley Puleo, 02MPH, completed her CDC fellowship in health and safety in emergency response and became certified in Hazmat response at Georgia Tech. Puleo is now a dental student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also Miss North Carolina USA and placed as second runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant in April in Los Angeles.

Tamara Stewart, 03MPH, is a research assistant at McKing Consulting Corporation in Atlanta. She lives in Stone Mountain, Ga.

Caroline Ball Cook, 96MPH, Anne Walker, former assistant director of development, and Jennifer Taussig, 96MPH, at Walker’s wedding on October 11, 2003.

Clyde Edward Turner, Jr., 82MPH, of Decatur, Ga., died October 17, 2003 at age 59, as a result of an automobile accident. Employed by the State of Georgia Health Department, he worked with tuberculosis patients and was a community epidemiologist at the Fulton County Health Department. Known as Ed, he was an active member of the Religious Society of Friends in Decatur. He was preceded in death by his parents, Clyde E. Turner, Sr. and Mildred Webb Turner, of Decatur. Surviving are three uncles, an aunt, and numerous cousins, mostly living in Georgia.

Alexandra (Sandy) Williams Winzeler, 75N, 90MPH, at age 54, on September 24, 2003, of ovarian cancer. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Winzeler was a perceptive occupational nurse and an expert at diagnosing obscure orthopedic ailments. “We dealt with a lot of repetitive-motion problems at CIBA Vision, and she was able to identify a Waardenburg syndrome that had been missed previously,” said Frances Childre, Winzeler’s boss for many years — first at CIBA and then later at Emory Healthcare. A co-worker said, “Sandy did ergonomics before it was a well-known term. She wanted to prevent injuries before they happened.” Survivors include her husband, Billy, daughter Lindsay, mother Rosalie Williams, and sister, Bobbie Dickerson.

Educator Penelope Smith has found her place in public health––in the field Penelope Smith, 99MPH, CHES, is happiest when she’s working in the field—literally. For Smith, that field might reach anywhere from Turkmenistan to Angola. Since graduating from the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH), she has worked as a health educator, teaching in rural communities around the globe on topics from hygiene and family planning to malaria and HIV/STIs.

One of her first assignments out of school was a job with the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan, where she helped doctors integrate the lessons of prevention into their interactions with patients. The Ministry of Health’s goal was to reduce reliance on curative medicine and place it on prevention, says Smith. The hope behind the program was that these prevention messages could pass from doctor to patient, then from patient to patient, spreading by word-of-mouth. She assembled quick games, songs, and simple lessons for the doctors to use to teach about heart disease, HIV, smoking cessation, spousal abuse, and vaccinations, to name a few.

At the end of that project, she moved to Kunhinga to open a community health-based program where none had existed previously. “In a time of peace, this was a fantastic opportunity to experiment, take the time to do a proper needs assessment, and look at mobilizing children towards disease prevention,” Smith says. “We started small, in three ‘aldeias’, with a total population of about 4,000. Within three months, 10 ‘activistas’ were recruited by their communities, who co-developed their own training programs, which continued to spread, much to the amazement of the local staff.”

Smith next moved on to Ekunha to advise a struggling health project. The four-year-old program of 58 activistas was stagnating and the curative program was unwilling to transition out of an emergency phase. “Changes had to be made, with diplomacy taking a backseat to practicality,” Smith says. “Reducing handouts to the Ministry of Health, and forcing them to be accountable, knowing that patient care would be sacrificed for the good of long-term sustainability was the biggest challenge.” After a rapid needs assessment, Smith worked with the local activistas to develop, implement, train, and evaluate a basic community health program. Although social issues were closely linked to health, they had been long ignored in the community. The newly trained activistas remedied that through the formation of support groups and classes on child rearing and family planning, men’s sexual health, latrine construction, and sewing. “Trainings became far less about process, and far more about content,” she says.

Smith used to think she wanted a career in medicine, but after her experiences as a health educator, she’s changed her mind. “I’ve realized that what I love is the opportunity to spend time with patients, to get to know them well, not just their symptoms,” she says. “I realized that as a doctor, I would never really have that kind of intimate opportunity, but that health education would give me that chance. And it has.”

Editor’s note: This article was based on an essay Smith wrote in February 2004 when she was searching for the next healing fields that needed her services.

Accolades for Alumni Last fall, the Rollins School of Public Health recognized alumni contributions to public health and presented awards to two outstanding individuals. E. Anne Peterson, MD, 94MPH, (top left) received the Distinguished Achievement Award. and Lyrna Siklossy, 97MPH, (bottom left) received the Matthew Lee Girvin Award. With an extensive background in both US and international public health and medical practice, Peterson is a physician and assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health. Her office provides technical and program support to field interventions as part of USAID’s foreign aid in HIV/AIDS, infectious disease control, reproductive health, child and maternal health, environmental health, and nutrition. For three years, Peterson served as commissioner of health for the State of Virginia, including the time during the anthrax bioterrorism investigations.

Siklossy has made a significant impact in organizing specialized medical attention for adolescents in Cuenca, Ecuador, where she developed primary care and health education programs that are models used by CARE Ecuador throughout the country. Additionally in Atlanta, Siklossy has worked with the Latino community and other groups for which English is not a first language on sexual violence prevention. At the DeKalb Rape Crisis Center, she created the Multicultural Outreach Program and works directly with community members through churches, schools, beauty salons, and local radio stations.

For her thesis at the Rollins School of Public Health, Amy Estlund, 01MPH, (left in photo) evaluated Moving in the Spirit, a nonprofit dance and youth development organization, to see how effectively it prevented violent behaviors among its adolescent participants. The program enrolls inner-city children in weekly classes that emphasize leadership skills alongside dance technique. Some of the kids go on to audition for the Junior Company that presents a repertoire of pieces with social justice themes at churches, corporate events, and conferences. The Apprentice Corporation even takes its show on the road with a national tour each summer.

With its focus on training community leaders, Moving in the Spirit is effective in promoting healthy and positive students and preventing violence, Estlund found. One Moving in the Spirit alum summed it up like this: “Moving in the Spirit has definitely given me an edge in life. Without it, I would probably be in jail or dead.”Estlund’s positive evaluation, however, did reveal one missing element. Unlike similar successful organizations around the nation, Moving in the Spirit lacked a mentoring component. The organization remedied that gap in 2002 by adding a mentoring program to its services and hiring Estlund to direct it. She since has recruited 30 mentors, many of them RSPH alums or current students. These mentors support the dancers academically and provide positive role models and advice. For example, they might help with homework or accompany their mentee to performances. They meet with families and provide personal health education counseling. Last year, groups of mentors and their students participated in service projects to prepare meals for those who are HIV positive, and they took in shows at the Fox Theatre.