Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health (2025)
Chapter: Appendix A: Committee Member Biosketches
Appendix A
Committee Member Biosketches
Bruce N. Calonge, M.D., M.P.H. (Chair), is the associate dean for public health practice and professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and is the chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. He is a professor of family medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Nationally, Dr. Calonge chairs the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders of Newborns and Children and the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Health and Medicine Division, for whom he has served and chaired several study committees on topics including health equity, genetic testing in clinical care, the quality and safety of abortion services, evidence-based public health emergency preparedness and response, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances environmental exposure, and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Presumption Decision Process. He is a past chair of the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Health and Medicine Division, for which he has served on and chaired several study committees on topics including health equity, genetic testing in clinical care, the quality and safety of abortion services, evidence-based public health emergency preparedness and response, PFAS environmental exposure, and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Presumption Decision Process. He is also past chair of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Services Task Force and the Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Dr. Calonge has an M.D. from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and an M.P.H.
in epidemiology from the University of Washington School of Public and Community Medicine. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2011.
Andrew W. Brown, Ph.D., is associate professor in the department of biostatistics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and director of biostatistics for Arkansas Children’s Research Institute. He is currently a scientific advisor for the Soy Nutrition Institute Global, associate editor of the International Journal of Obesity, Statistical Review Board member for the four American Society for Nutrition journals, and an unpaid public assembly member for the International Food Information Council. He has conducted research using simulation, in vitro, ex vivo, animal, and human observational and interventional models. He conducts “research on research” through qualitative and quantitative research summaries, characterizing reporting practices that perpetuate scientific misinformation, and evaluating methodological and statistical choices that may lead to misinterpreted research. He has received local, regional, and national recognition, including the Mead Johnson Award from the American Society for Nutrition for work accomplished within 10 years of postgraduate training, and he has served in leadership roles with the American Society for Nutrition, The Obesity Society, and the American Public Health Association, Dr. Brown received his B.S. and M.S. in biochemistry from Iowa State University with a graduate minor in statistics, his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in the Interdepartmental Nutrition Program with a minor in statistics, and his postdoctoral training with the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Nutrition Obesity Research Center.
Carlos A. Camargo, Jr., M.D., Dr.PH., is a professor of emergency medicine, medicine, and epidemiology at Harvard University, and the Conn Chair in Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He founded and currently leads the Emergency Medicine Network (EMNet), an international research collaboration with about 250 hospitals. EMNet focuses on respiratory/allergy emergencies, health services research in emergency care, and social determinants of health. Dr. Camargo also works on the role of nutrition in respiratory/allergy disorders, both in large cohort studies (e.g., the Nurses’ Health Studies) and in large randomized controlled trials. For over 25 years, he actively worked on the health effects of moderate alcohol consumption; he chaired the Alcohol Committee for the 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Dr. Camargo received his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, and his Dr.P.H. from Harvard School of Public Health.
Patricia A. Cassano, Ph.D., M.P.H., is the Alan D. Mathios Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. Dr. Cassano
directs the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Nutrition and Health Research at Cornell and the Cochrane US Network Associate Center on Nutrition at Cornell. Dr. Cassano leads the annual World Health Organization/Cochrane/Cornell Summer Institute on Systematic Reviews in Nutrition for Global Policymaking. She co-directs the Cornell University Center for Precision Nutrition and Health and is a co-investigator for the Research Coordinating Center of the National Institutes of Health Common Fund’s Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program. Her research focuses on nutritional genomics of chronic disease to elucidate disease causation, with the overall goal to improve population health. Dr. Cassano has expertise in clinical trials, longitudinal study design and analysis, biological markers, genetic epidemiology including gene expression, Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS), epigenome Wide Association Study (eWAS), and pathway and network studies. Dr. Cassano received her M.P.H. in epidemiology from Columbia University School of Public Health and Ph.D. from the University of Washington School of Public Health, and was a T32 Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School.
Patrick M. Catalano, M.D., is professor in residence, reproductive endocrinology unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, visiting professor at Aarhus Denmark, and a consultant for the Pennington Biomedical Research Institute at Louisiana State University on the Greaux Healthy project. Dr. Catalano is chair emeritus, Department of Reproductive Biology at Case Western Reserve University/MetroHealth Medical Center. His research interests include obesity, diabetes and metabolism in pregnancy. His research includes the longitudinal evaluation of women before, during, and after pregnancy to determine the short- and long-term effects of maternal obesity and diabetes on both the mother and her offspring. He is a member of several professional organizations including the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Society for Reproductive Investigation, American Diabetes Association, and the Perinatal Research Society, among others. He was the previous chair of the American Diabetes Association Council on Pregnancy and Women’s Health. Dr. Catalano has served as a co-chair of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Scientific Vision Group on Pregnancy. He was on the Institute of Medicine committee to review the weight gain in pregnancy guidelines. Awards include the Norbert Freinkel award from the American Diabetes Association, the Jorgen Pedersen award from the Diabetes in Pregnancy Study Group of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, the Agnes Higgins award for contributions to Maternal-Fetal nutrition from the March of Dimes, and the Charles Best lecture form the University of Toronto. He has over 250 peer reviewed publications and continuous National
Institutes of Health funding since 1987. Dr. Catalano received his M.D. from the University of Vermont College Medical College, and he is certified in general obstetrics and gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine.
Kathryn E. Coakley, Ph.D., RDN, is assistant professor in the College of Population Health at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and consultant for Constellation Consulting LLC. She has over 12 years of experience designing and conducting research studies and systematic reviews related to rare genetic disorders, food and nutrition security, and behavioral health. Dr. Coakley also has extensive clinical experience working with adults in recovery from alcohol use disorder and other substance use disorders as a consultant for Global Nutrition Services in Albuquerque, NM. She is a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Society for Nutrition and, in 2022, was named Outstanding Dietetics Educator for Didactic Programs in Dietetics for the state of New Mexico and the West Central Region of the United States. In 2022, she was also appointed to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ Nutrition Security Strategic Advancement Group. Dr. Coakley received an M.S. in Public health nutrition and completed her dietetic internship at Case Western Reserve University, then completed a Ph.D. in nutrition and health sciences from Emory University.
Luc Djousse, M.D., D.Sc., is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, associate professor of nutrition at T. H. Chan School of Public Health, director of research in the Division of Aging, Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and chief epidemiologist, Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Collaborative. He is a cardiovascular epidemiologist with a research focus on the role of dietary factors including moderate alcohol consumption on cardiovascular disease and its risk factors. Dr. Djousse has many years of research experience on modifiable factors and risk of heart failure, myocardial infarction, mortality, stroke and type 2 diabetes. He is the recipient of numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) and non-NIH grants and received a Walter Bleifeld memorial award for his distinguished contribution to clinical research in preventive cardiology. He is also a member of the American Heart Association and the American Society of Nutrition, and uncompensated member of the International Scientific Forum on Alcohol Research. He has published his research in academic journals on topics including the role of moderate alcohol consumption on the risk of stroke, coronary artery disease, and mortality and made presentations on alcohol consumption and health. Dr. Djousse received his M.D. from the University of Saarland (Germany) and D.Sc. in epidemiology from Boston University.
Jo L. Freudenheim, Ph.D., M.S., RD, is a SUNY distinguished professor in the department of epidemiology and environmental health and associate dean for faculty affairs in the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo. Her research has primarily focused on breast cancer epidemiology, seeking to use epidemiologic methods to understand carcinogenesis at the population level as well as at the individual, tissue, and molecular levels to inform improved prevention and control strategies. Her extensive research has included a focus on the effects of diet and alcohol on cancer; she was among the first to examine the interaction of folate with alcohol in relation to cancer risk. Her most recent research has focused on factors related to all-cause and breast cancer–specific mortality following a breast cancer diagnosis. This path of research has included molecular differences in breast tissues as indicators of the carcinogenic process. She is a fellow of the American Society for Nutrition and the American College of Epidemiology and received the Abraham Lilienfeld Award from the American Public Health Association Epidemiology Section. Dr. Freudenheim received her Ph.D., in nutritional sciences and her M.S. in preventive medicine (epidemiology) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Rebecca A. Hubbard, Ph.D., is the Carl Kawaja and Wendy Holcombe Professor of Public Health, Professor of Biostatistics and Data Science, Brown University School of Public Health. Her research focuses on statistical methods for the analysis of observational studies of human health making secondary use of real-world data sources including electronic health records and medical claims data. This work develops and evaluates alternative methodological approaches to addressing challenges that arise due to the inconsistent and heterogeneous nature of these data sources including missing data, measurement error, and selection bias. She is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. Dr. Hubbard has received training in both biostatistics (University of Washington, Ph.D. in biostatistics; Oxford University, M.S. in applied statistics) and epidemiology (Edinburgh University, M.S. in epidemiology).
Michelle K. McGuire, Ph.D., is professor of nutrition and director of the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Idaho. She is also director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Nutrition and Women’s Health at the University of Idaho. Her expertise relates maternal and infant nutrition with a focus on human milk and lactation. She and her group have studied a wide variety of substances in human milk including nutrients, hormones,
minerals, pesticides, and microbes (including SARS-CoV-2). Dr. McGuire was the recipient of the American Society for Nutrition’s Excellence in Nutrition Education Award in 2018 and received the University of Idaho’s Excellence in Research and Creative Activity Award in 2023. She previously served on the executive board for the Academic Nutrition Departments and Programs, is on the editorial board of the Journal of Nutrition, and is a member of the Danone Early Life Nutrition and Maternal Health Advisory Board. She served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Scanning for New Evidence on the Nutrient Content of Human Milk from 2019–2020. Dr. McGuire received her B.S. in biology and M.S. in nutritional sciences from the University of Illinois and her Ph.D. in human nutrition from Cornell University. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2022.
Ian J. Saldanha, Ph.D., M.B.B.S., M.P.H., is an associate professor of epidemiology (primary) and of health policy and management (joint) at the Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence Synthesis at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He also holds an adjunct appointment as associate professor of health services, policy, and practice at the Brown University School of Public Health. He is associate director of the Johns Hopkins Evidence-based Practice Center, which is one of nine such centers funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). When at Brown (2018–2022), he was assistant director of the Brown University Evidence-Based Practice Center. Dr. Saldanha has expertise conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses, developing and advancing methods to improve them, and teaching methods for their conduct. He has also researched the use of outcomes in clinical research. Dr. Saldanha has served on three previous. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committees on Scanning New Evidence on Nutrient Content of Human Milk, Scanning for New Evidence on Riboflavin to Support a Dietary Reference Intake Review, and the Role of Seafood Consumption on Child Growth and Development. Dr. Saldanha was the co-principal investigator (co-PI) of a National Academies contract to conduct a systematic review of public health emergency preparedness activities. He has been the PI of six AHRQ-funded systematic reviews. Additionally, he has been the PI of multiple AHRQ contracts to develop, advance, maintain, and support the Systematic Review Data Repository Plus (SRDR+). Dr. Saldanha is an elected member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology and currently serves as its treasurer. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the journal Epidemiologic Reviews. He served as the associate editor for various journals (e.g., Trials, Systematic Reviews, Journal of Glaucoma) and for the AHRQ Effective Healthcare Program. Dr. Saldanha has taught multiple courses and workshops related to systematic reviews, meta-analysis, clinical
trials, and epidemiology at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels at various universities and other venues, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He received his M.B.B.S. (M.D. equivalent) from Grant Medical College in Mumbai, India, and his M.P.H. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Susan M. Smith, Ph.D., is the Harris-Teeter Dickson Foundation Distinguished Professor in Nutrition at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill and former Deputy Director for Science at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute; she is also professor emerita of nutritional sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Smith has over 100 publications at the intersection of nutrition, alcohol, metabolism, cardiovascular function, obesity, and pregnancy. Her research studies the mechanisms by which alcohol exposure perturbs maternal-fetal development (including the brain, heart, liver, placenta, mammary gland, and metabolic syndrome) with an emphasis on nutrient-alcohol interactions and, more recently, how genetic polymorphisms modify these interactions. Her work combines untargeted omics and drill-down mechanistic approaches using a range of preclinical models, placing them back into the whole animal in the context of clinical translation. She has been the principal investigator on numerous research awards from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the National March of Dimes. Dr. Smith served on the External Advisory Board (Council) for NIAAA, chaired the Neurotoxicology & Alcohol study section, and received a 10-year MERIT award from NIAAA. She received the James Wilson Award from the Teratology Society and Future Leader in Nutrition Award from International Life Sciences Institute. Dr. Smith received her B.S. in biochemistry from Purdue University and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she was a postdoctoral fellow in cellular physiology at Harvard Medical School.
Linda G. Snetselaar, Ph.D., RDN, is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Endowed Chair of Preventive Nutrition Education, and director of the Nutrition Center at the University of Iowa, College of Public Health, and she is secondary faculty in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology/Metabolism, the Carver College of Medicine. Dr. Snetselaar has over 300 publications focusing on dietary eating patterns and their effect on chronic disease with past funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on six major dietary intervention trials focused on chronic disease prevention and treatment. She has served on numerous NIH study sections along with serving as a chair on a cancer immune therapy and diet study section. From 2019 to 2020 Dr. Snetselaar served on the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which involved policy changes
related to diet for Americans and was chair of the Dietary Fats and Seafood Subcommittee and a member of the Dietary Patterns Subcommittee. She is editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Dr. Snetselaar received a B.S. in nutrition and dietetics at Iowa State University, an M.S. degree in nutrition at the University of Iowa Department of Internal Medicine, and a Ph.D. in health sciences education from the University of Iowa.
Edith V. Sullivan, Ph.D., is a tenured professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is a neuropsychologist with expertise in magnetic resonance imaging. Together these disciplines have enabled her to identify patterns of cognitive, motor, and sensory impairment and sparing and to detect brain structural and functional substrates of performance patterns in normal aging men and women and in people with alcohol use disorder across the age span from adolescence to senescence. Dr. Sullivan has received several awards for her research, including the Research Society on Alcohol (RSA) Begleiter Award for Excellence in Research; RSA Distinguished Researcher Award; Distinguished Career Award from the International Neuropsychological Society; Mark Keller Honorary Lectureship Award from National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; and Doctorate Honoris Causa, EPHE, Sorbonne, France. She is also a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the American Psychological Association. Dr. Sullivan earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Connecticut and conducted postdoctoral work in the Teuber and Corkin brain science laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
