OUR TEAM:Faculty and StaffExpert Panelists

The HCR Program is led by a Director and two Site Directors, who are faculty members at Yale or UConn Schools of Nursing. Our staff include an administrative assistant and three doctoral research assistants.

Expert Panelists are comprised of individuals with expertise in nursing, medicine, law, ethics, and the social sciences, as well as consumer members to give us a patient perspective on health care relationships and adherence. The expert panelists met regularly with the HCR Program faculty and staff to offer guidance and feedback regarding the ongoing work of the Program. Initially, the Expert Panelists were divided into two sites: Yale and UConn, each co-chaired by physician and a consumer. Most recently, we combined panelists from both sites to best meet the Program's objectives.

Sally Cohen, RN, PhD, FAAN
Sally Cohen (Program Director) is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Health Policy and Ethics at Yale School of Nursing. Her scholarship encompasses several areas, especially the relationships between nurse practitioners and managed care organizations and the politics of children's social policies. She has received numerous awards for her writing and research and has practiced as a pediatric nurse practitioner. Her book, Championing Child Care (2001), chronicles 30 years of the politics of national child care policy formation. Cohen has a doctorate in public health and political science from Columbia University and a masters in pediatric nursing from Yale. She was elected to the American Academy of Nursing in 1988.

Email: sally.cohen@yale.edu

Judith B. Krauss, RN, MSN, FAAN
Judith Krauss (Site Director, Yale) is Professor of Nursing and Master of Silliman College at Yale University where she has been a member of the faculty since 1971 and served as Dean of the School of Nursing from January 1985 through June 1998. Since 1985 she has served as Editor of Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, a well-known practice, research and policy journal. Her fields of interest include health and mental health policy with particular emphasis on public policies that affect vulnerable populations. She practiced as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Clinical Specialist and is a noted expert on care of persons with serious and persistent mental disorders. Professor Krauss has received numerous awards for her writing and policy work. Most recently (1998/99), the American Academy of Nursing and the American Nurses Foundation appointed her Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Institute of Medicine where she helped conduct the background research for the IOM report: America’s Health Care Safety Net: Intact But Endangered. Professor Krauss completed her undergraduate work in nursing at Boston College and her graduate work in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing at Yale University.

Email: judith.krauss@yale.edu

Regina Cusson, RNC, NNP, PhD
Regina Cusson (Site Director, UCONN) is a Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Nursing. She is a certified neonatal nurse practitioner and coordinates the UCONN NNP Specialty track. She received her BS in Nursing from St. Joseph College, Emmitsburg, MD, her MS in Maternal-Child Nursing, with a minor in Education, from the University of Maryland School of Nursing, and her PhD in Human Development, specializing in infant development, from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has been at UCONN for two years, where she also served as Interim Health Restoration Unit Chairperson. Prior to coming to CT, she was on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Nursing for almost 20 years. During that period, she was Chairperson of the Maternal-Child Nursing Dept and initiated the NNP Specialty track. Her research focuses on maternal-preterm infant relationships and nursing-community partnerships that enhance health.

Email: regina.cusson@uconn.edu

Jeanetsey Velazquez
Jeanetsey Velazquez (Program Secretary) comes to the Program from the Data Quality Control Unit at Yale University's Human Resource Department, where she participated on the Yale Directory Project for two years. A graduate from The Sawyer School, she's pleased to be a part of this exciting new project.

Email: jeanetsey.velazquez@yale.edu

Nancy Angoff, MD (Co-Chair) is the Associate Dean for Student Affairs at Yale University School of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine. As an attending at Yale New Haven Hospital and the Nathan Smith Clinic at Yale, she specializes in the care of the terminally ill and persons with HIV/AIDS. Dr. Angoff has been deeply involved with curriculum reform at Yale developing unique educational experiences for students in areas such as multicultural awareness and power dynamics in healthcare relationships. She directs an elective course that pairs first year students with an HIV provider and patient with HIV who the student follows for three and a half years taking on increasingly more of the care of the patient. She is also active in integrating care of dying patients into the clinical curriculum. She co-chaired the End of Life Group, which established a library resource center and introduced educational initiatives in end of life care into the required clinical curriculum. Dr. Angoff brings to her role as Associate Dean a rich background in education, as former teacher and guidance counselor. In addition, she served on the Human Investigation Committee at Yale and currently chairs the Progress Committees of the medical school.

Barbara Barlok, MDiv is Executive Director of Interfaith Volunteer Care Givers of Greater New Haven. For the past nineteen years she has worked in a variety of settings with older people, as Regional Program Coordinator with the Alzheimer's Association, Connecticut Chapter, Executive Director of Sage Services of Connecticut, Inc. in New Haven, Silver Service, Inc. in Hartford, and the statewide Connecticut Coalition on Aging. She graduated from Cedar Crest College with a B.S. in Medical Technology and from Yale University's Divinity School with an M.Div degree. She is an ordained minister with standing in the New Haven Association of the United Church of Christ and serves on several religious and elderly community organizations.

Lisa Murray (Co-Chair) brings a wide range of experiences to the project. She is a Contract Analyst in the Law and Patents Department at Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corporation and holds a B.S. in Public Health from Southern Connecticut State University. In conjunction with her education program, Lisa completed an internship at the Bayer Institute for healthcare Communication.

Henrietta Bernal, RN, PhD is a professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Connecticut with joint appointments in the departments of Anthropology and Community Medicine. At the School of Nursing, she coordinates the graduate Community Health Masters Track and is co-coordinator of the joint MS-MPH program with Dr. Holger Hansen in the Department of Community Medicine. Her clinical, teaching and research focus has been in community health and the influence of culture on health and illness behavior. Her published work includes studies on diabetes among the Hispanic population, the development of the Cultural Self-Efficacy Scale, models of practice in community health as well as her international work in Armenia, Brazil, Hungary, and Spain. She is the recipient of a number of awards and grants and serves a number of local and national organizations including the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, the Brainard Fund Advisory Committee of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. She was involved in the development of the Hispanic Health Council of Hartford and served on the board for fifteen years in various capacities.

Katrina Clark, MPH is a graduate of the Yale School of Epidemiology and Public Health. She is the Executive Director of the Fair Haven Community Health Center, which she has helped to develop from a free clinic in the mid '70s to a comprehensive, federally funded community health center with a budget of over 7.2 million dollars. Ms. Clark is active on various state boards, including the Boards of Directors of the Connecticut Primary Care Association, and Community Health Network, a Medicaid HMO that is owned and operated by community health centers in the State. She is a Commissioner for the City of New Haven's Department of Health. Ms. Clark has an appointment to the Yale Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, and is an Associate Fellow at Saybrook College, Yale University. She has an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters from Albertus Magnus College.

Diane Drachman, PhD is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut graduate School of Social Work, where she teaches practice courses in the casework sequence. She also teaches immigration policy, practice with immigrant and refugee populations, human behavior and the social environment and foundation practice courses and serves as advisor to students in their internship at health and mental health organizations, family and children's service agencies and community programs. As a previous member of the faculty at Columbia University School of Social Work, Dr. Drachman taught courses on practice with individuals, families and groups and organizational change and developed curriculum on services for immigrant and refugee populations. Her scholarly interest is in the field of immigration and her publications examine the influence of immigration policy on the lives of immigrants and on their service access and use. She has written on varied immigrant groups who have arrived from different nations and different global regions and her grants have focused on training service providers to work with immigrant and refugee populations and to develop curriculum on immigration for graduate schools of social work. As a practitioner, she has been a director of a family service organization, worked as a counselor providing services for individuals, families and groups, participated in the development of a women's center and worked in the public welfare system.

Bruce Gould, MD is a General Internist and serves as Medical Director of the Burgdorf Health Center, a multidisciplinary community Health Center model clinic serving an underserved African-American, Latino and West Indian population in the North end of Hartford, Connecticut. The Center includes Internal Medicine, Pediatric, OB/GYN, Dentistry, Podiatry, HIV, General Surgery and full array of medical subspecialty services. Dr. Gould also serves as the Associate Dean for Primary Care and in that capacity has some oversight of and input into both content and implementation of curricular aspects relevant to Generalist education. He assists in teaching clinical internal medicine, urban health care, epidemiology, nutrition, quality improvement and acts as advisor to medical student efforts on homelessness, migrant farm worker health status, and to the UConn Habitat for Humanity Chapter. He is also the Director of the Connecticut Area Health Education Center Program, a federally and state funded program targeted at assuring access to and quality of healthcare especially for underserved populations. He recently was appointed chair of the National Advisory Council on Migrant Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Department of Health and Human Services.

David Gregorio, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Community Medicine and Health Care at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine is Director of the UCONN Graduate Program in Public Health and Head of its Division of Epidemiology. He teaches courses in Human Development and Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Public Health Research Methods. He is a reviewer for several journals including American Journal of Epidemiology, American Journal of Public Health, and Journal of Public Health Management and Practice and currently is the Co-Principal Investigator on studies focusing on the geographic distribution of both breast and prostate cancers.

Julius Landwirth, MD, JD is Associate Director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics Project and Donaghue Initiative in Biomedical and Behavioral Research Ethics. He is the former Director of Health Care Programs of the Albert Schweitzer Institute in Wallingford, a nonprofit humanitarian organization dedicated to perpetuating Albert Schweitzer's philosophy of "Reverence For Life" through programs of ethical education and direct action. He is currently working with international foundations to organize education and training programs in various aspects of health care in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He previously served as the Director of Pediatrics at both Hartford and Bridgeport Hospitals, the Medical Director of the Newington Children's Hospital, and the Associate Chairman of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.

Robert Levine, MD is Professor of Medicine and Lecturer in Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine, Co-Director of the Law, Policy and Ethics Core of Yale University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS and Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of Yale University's Interdisciplinary Bioethics Project. Dr. Levine is the founding and current editor of IRB: A Review of Human Subjects Research and has served as consultant to several federal and international agencies involved in the development of policy for the protection of human subjects. He is the author of numerous publications and is currently preparing the third edition of his book, Ethics and Regulation of Clinical Research. In the last 25 years, most of Dr. Levine's research, teaching and publications have been in the field of medical ethics with particular concentration on the ethics of research involving human subjects. He is a fellow of The Hastings Center, the American College of Physicians and the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Past-President of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics and past-Chairman of the Connecticut Humanities Council.

Mark Litt, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Connecticut Health Center. He also holds appointments in Psychiatry and in Obstetrics & Gynecology in the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. His research primarily concerns the influence of cognitive constructs on health and illness. These interests have led to explorations of stress, coping processes and health behavior change in a number of areas. His work in pain and coping has focused on cognitive appraisals in a number of pain domains, including laboratory pain, GI endoscopy, infertility treatment, orofacial pain, migraine headache and interstitial cystitis. As part of his work on cognitive mediators of coping behavior he has applied his findings to changing health behaviors and increasing rates of adherence to medical recommendations. The course of this research has led to the development of interventions for changing mothers' attitudes and behaviors toward their children's dental care, increasing older women's adherence to prescribed exercise programs, and developing new treatments for smokers and for alcohol- and marijuana-dependent persons to maximize abstinence and reduce relapse.

Ruth McCorkle, PhD is an international leader in cancer nursing, education, and cancer control research and has done landmark research on the psychosocial ramifications of cancer. An extremely well funded researcher, Dr. McCorkle is the principle investigator of "Nursing's Impact on Quality of Life Outcomes in Women with Ovarian Cancer," a grant funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). Dr. McCorkle has been a member of the study sections of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), NINR, the American Cancer Society, and the Oncology Nursing Foundation. As the first non-medical recipient of an NCI Institutional Research Training Grant in 1983, she opened the door for non-medical fields to become competitive in securing funding. Along with Dr. Margaret Grey, Dr. McCorkle recently received an institutional research training grant from NINR to prepare pre and post doctoral trainees in self and family management in chronic illness. She recently completed a NCI SEER project to study the late effects of women surviving cervical cancer. Dr. McCorkle joined the faculty of the Yale School of Nursing in 1998 to assume leadership of the institution's doctoral program. She is also the founding director of the school's Center for Excellence in Chronic Illness Care, where she collaborates with faculty throughout the University who specialize in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and HIV/AIDS. These collaborations include Yale School of Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health, Cardiology, Gynecological Oncology, and the Pepper Center.

Regina McNamara, RN, MSN, MPH is the president of Kelsco Consulting Group. LLC, specializing in assisting healthcare organizations in transition. She has led extensive reorganization of work systems, including redefining roles and re-training all levels of staff to achieve higher levels of productivity and profitability, while maintaining patient satisfaction. She has completed several turnarounds and work redesign programs and has successfully maneuvered healthcare organizations through strategic planning processes during times of rapid changes in their industries. Regina's career has included positions as a staff nurse in a community health agency, Nurse Practitioner, Director of Nursing in a Rehabilitation Hospital and Vice President of a mid sized hospital. She also served as Chief Operating Officer, then president of Connecticut's largest statewide home care company. She is the author of four books, including Welcome to the World of Everyday Heroes…Advice for Thriving in the First Years of Nursing Practice.

Douglas Olsen, RN, CS, PhD is Associate Professor at the Yale School of Nursing, teaching psychiatric-mental health nursing and health care ethics. He is the Associate Director of the Center for Health Policy and Ethics and serves as chair of the school's Human Subjects Committee. He is also an assistant editor of Nursing Ethics: An International Journal for Health Care Professionals. Dr. Olsen is particularly concerned with ethical issues in mental health and with the ethics of clinical relationships.

Eugene Orientale, MD graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1983 and earned his MD degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1987. He completed residency training at UCLA Medical Center in 1990 and subsequently began work in a faculty teaching role at the University of Tennessee in Memphis. There he served as a Predoctoral Director, Family Medicine Clerkship Director and in the advisory role of medical students as an Assistant Dean. He received five prestigious teaching awards in seven years and became the youngest tenured faculty member in Family Medicine. In 1994, he obtained the certificate of added qualification in Geriatrics. He has a special interest and expertise in procedures in Family Medicine. In 1997, Dr. Orientale was selected by students and faculty of the University of Tennessee to be the sole faculty member elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. Dr. Orientale precepts junior and senior residents at Asylum Hill Family Medicine Residency and also supervises residents during "Procedures" mornings. He has been named Outstanding Teacher in Family Medicine for three of the past five years. Dr. Orientale is the director of the "Principles of Clinical Medicine" course at the University of Connecticut Medical School. His wife, Jean, is a teacher of the hearing impaired, and he and his wife reside with their twin daughters in Glastonbury. Outside interests include astronomy, woodworking, computers and golf.

Marie Roberto, RN, DrPh after more than twenty years with the Connecticut Department of Public Health, Marie Roberto, Dr.PH and assistant clinical professor at Yale University School of Public Health, is currently Project Director for the Connecticut Partnership for Public Health Workforce Development (CPPHWD). CPPHWD is one of six partnerships in New England-established in 1999-as a part of a HRSA public health training center grant. As project director, Dr. Roberto promotes and facilitates collaborative education and training programs among academic institutions, state and local public health agencies and professional organizations to enhance the quality of public health services in Connecticut. Last year, under Dr. Roberto's direction, CPPHWD created the state's emergency preparedness education and training plan for public health professionals and coordinated their plan with a training plan for the clinical workforce to establish a single comprehensive training plan for all of Connecticut's health professionals. Dr. Roberto also oversaw the planning and delivery of twelve continuing education courses last year. Currently, she continues to supervise the development and delivery of continuing education courses and numerous projects including an incentives study, systems evaluation model development, and curricula development for the public health workforce with an emphasis on public health nursing.

Michael Rowe, PhD is Associate Clinical Professor of Sociology in the Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine and Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), and co-Director of the Yale Program on Recovery and Community Health. He is the author of two books-- Crossing the Border: Encounters Between Homeless People and Outreach Workers (University of California Press, 1999) and The Book of Jesse: A Story of Youth, Illness, and Medicine (The Francis Press, 2002) and many articles on homelessness and mental illness and the clinician-patient relationship in community mental health care and primary and high-intensity medical care.

Barbara Safriet, JD, LLM is Associate Dean and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School since 1988. Prior to 1988, she was a Professor of Law for 12 years at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. Where she taught administrative law, constitutional law, and health law. She currently teaches a seminar on "The Regulation of Health Care Providers" at Yale Law School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Goucher College, and she went on to earn her Juris Doctor degree at the University of Maryland School of Law and her Master of Laws degree from Yale. Ms. Safriet's law journal articles include "Health Care Dollars and Regulatory Sense: The Role of Advanced Practice Nursing" 9 Yale J. On Reg. 417 (1992), and "Impediments to Progress in Health Care Workforce Policy: License and Practice Law", 31 Inquiry 310 (1994). Ms. Safriet has lectured extensively on the issues of health care professionals' licensure and regulation and health care workforce problems. She is currently serving as a member of The Pew Health Professions Commission.

Willie Mae Shuff (Co-Chair) is a Monitor with Connections, Inc. in Middletown where her varied tasks include client care and supervision of residents who are under court supervision, homeless, in rehabilitation, or other stressed situations that enhance health.

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