Graduates

	Hamza Awad 2011 Graduate Dr. Awad is a medical school graduate of Cairo University's Medical College. He also graduated from Georgia State University with an MS in Biology & Biotechnology. His experience includes working as an investigator of the spread of wild poliovirus in Upper Egypt in 2004 and as senior investigator for the Clinical Trial Department in the National Organization for Vaccination and Biological Products in Cairo, Egypt. While completing his degree at Georgia State University, Dr. Awad worked as both a graduate research assistant and writing consultant.
Qualifying Paper	Trends in Incidence and Case-fatality of Acute Myocardial Infarction in the United States: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	Use of Multinational Registries to Assess and Compare Outcomes of Patients with Acute Coronary Syndromes

	Mary Jane Bentley 2010 Graduate Dr. Bentley received a B.S. degree in Biology from Boston College and then entered the MPH program at UMass. She also worked for eleven years in the biomedical research field before entering the PhD program and gained extensive experience in clinical research and quantitative methods. Her primary research interests center on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases including diabetes, obesity, arthritis, cardiovascular disease and cancer. She is currently using statistical methods and strategies in her dissertation, "Evaluation of Composite Disease Activity Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis," to examine and develop new tools to diagnose and accurately measure disease activity levels in arthritic patients with the goal of facilitating optimal treatment efficacy.
Qualifying Paper	Simplified Composite Disease Activity Indices for Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Review of the Literature
Dissertation	Development and Evaluation of Disease Activity Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis Using Multi-Level Mixed Modeling and Other Statistical Methodology
Publications	View in eScholarship
Poster Presentations	"Rheumatologists' Prescribing Patterns for Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients with Active Disease". Leslie Harrold, Jeffrey D. Greenberg, Jeffrey R. Curtis, Mary jane Bentley, George Reed and J. Timothy Harrington. American College of Rheumatology Scientific Meeting 2009, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 17-21, 2009. "Development and Validation of a Modified Disease Activity Score (mDAS28) in Rheumatoid Arthritis for Use in Standard Care" Mary J. Bentley, George W. Reed. Annual European Congress of Rheumatology, EULAR 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 10-13, 2009. "Simplified Composite Disease Activity Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis." Bentley MJ, Reed GW. Poster presented at the Clinical and Translational Research Retreat, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, 2007.
Post Graduation	Dr. Bentley has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, CT. She will be involved in a number of research projects as part of a NIMH Sponsored Research Training Program in Childhood Neuropsychiatric Disorders, under the direction of Dr. Elena Grigorenko, Dr. James Leckman and Dr. Joseph Chang. The two year program focuses on identifying disease-relevant genes, key environmental factors, disease biomarkers (using genomics, proteomics, neuroimmunology, and neuroimaging techniques), and developing novel treatments and preventive interventions relevant to childhood-onset neurobiological disorders.

	Virginia Briggs 2009 Graduate Dr. Briggs entered the CPHR program having transitioned from environmental engineering (MA in Environmental Science from Boston University) to epidemiology (MS in Epidemiology from UMass Amherst). At Amherst, she worked on a study examining colon cancer screening while completing her master's thesis, "The C677T Polymorphism of the MTHFR Gene and Spina Bifida Risk: A Meta-Analysis". Before entering this program, she spent three years working on several injury studies at Liberty Mutual in Hopkinton, MA. The majority of this time was spent on a study involving injury reporting in Hanoi, Vietnam. Her career goals include researching health issues related to living with a common birth defect, spina bifida.
Qualifying Paper	Outcomes of Injection Therapy Treatment on Lumbar Spinal Stenosis in Older Adults: A Systematic Review of the Literature
Dissertation	Injection Treatment for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis in Older Adults
Post Graduation	Dr. Briggs received the New Investigator Award for $20,000 from the Spina Bifida Association of America to study Tethered Cord Syndrome (TCS) in patients with spina bifida, a common birth defect. The goal of the grant is to quantify post-operative complications following surgery for TCS, examine TCS severity prior to surgery and to explore patient characteristics (including co-morbidities) that may help predict a more positive outcome in this population. The study will take place over the next year and will use a national hospital discharge database (Nationwide Inpatient Sample) over a ten year period (1996-2006). Dr. Briggs will complete the work as a part-time post-doctoral fellow in the Orthopedics Department under the direction of Patricia Franklin, MD.

	Yong Chen 2011 Graduate Dr. Chen graduated with a degree in clinical medicine in 2004 from Shanghai 2nd Medical University which is now known as the School of Medicine of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Prior to his graduate study in the Department of Health Policy and Management of Bloomberg School of Public Health, he worked for the Health Department in Shanghai where he successfully transferred his career from medicine to public health. He was TA for Medical Chinese and Healthcare IT during his graduate study. In addition, interested in performance measures and quality improvement, he was dedicated to research on hospital pay for reporting programs and pay for performance initiative when he was an intern with Maryland Hospital Association. His master paper focusing on hospital Value Based Purchasing has been presented at the Academy Health Annual Research Meeting. His goal is to be a leader who has the ability to design and advocate quality improvement and patient safety programs based on sound research results.
Award	Dean’s Award for outstanding achievement in the core curriculum
Qualifying Paper	Use of Instrumental Variable in Prescription Drug Research with Observational Data: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	Comparative Effectiveness of Alendronate and Risedronate on the Risk of Non-Vertebral Fractures in Older Women: An Instrumental Variables Approach
Publications	View in eScholarship
Post Graduation	Dr. Chen is a Senior Associate at HealthCore, A WellPoint Company.

	Yendelela Cuffee 2012 Graduate Dr. Cuffee earned her BS in Biology from Hampton University and her MPH from New York Medical College. She has worked as a Clinical Research Intern for Accorda Therapeutics in Hawthorne, NY, as Associate Research Scientist for Bayer Diagnostics in Tarrytown, NY and most recently, as Lead Clinical Research Associate for Stryker Orthopedics in Mahawah, NY. She is interested in working with either the Department of Health and Human Services or the Center for Disease Control conducting international public health research.
Qualifying Paper	Exploring the Association between Discrimination and Hypertension among African Americans and the Role of Medication Adherence and Coping: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	"Exploring the Psychosocial and Behavioral Determinants of Medication Adherence among African Americans with Hypertension"
Poster Presentation	Medication Adherence Predicted by Physical and Mental Health Status among African Americans with Hypertension in an Inner-city Setting. Cuffee Y., Allison J., Hullett S. New England Science Symposium, Boston, MA, February 2010.
Award	2011-2012 Hope Scholarship Award, Biomedical Science Careers Program
Post Graduation	Post Doctoral Fellow, New York University Medical School, Center for Health Behavioral Change, Division of General Internal Medicine

	Hongliu Ding 2008 Graduate A graduate of Anhui Medical University of China, Dr. Ding was impressed with the powerful effects that prescribed drugs could have on his patients. His strong interest in pharmacology led him to graduate studies at Shanghai Medical University where he trained to be a medical researcher. As a post-doc at the UMass Worcester campus, he published several studies on his research while completing his MPH. He looks forward to developing further his skills as clinical researcher and applying this knowledge to the field of clinical drug trials.
Qualifying Paper	Bone Health in Postmenopausal Women with Early Breast Cancer: How Protective Is Tamoxifen?
Dissertation	Bone Health and Coronary Heart Disease in Postmenopausal Women with Breast Cancer Treated with Tamoxifen
Publications	View in eScholarship
Post Graduation	Dr. Ding is a Commissioner's Fellow at the FDA, studying product safety and its related policy issues. He conducts quantitative risk analyses and building assessment models for risk predication and reduction to provide industry with a science‐based approach for the selection of optimal risk management programs. These models will be used to prioritize risk intervention strategies that can be applied at different stages of production.

	Shira Fischer 2011 Completion Shira graduated from Harvard College with a concentration in Biochemical Sciences and then spent a fellowship year abroad in Israel. She subsequently spent 3 years at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies as a research associate, where she contributed to strategic planning efforts as well as to studies about new contraception methods, a national program for cord blood banking, and reducing birth defects in developing countries. Shira is interested in electronic health records and health policy.
Qualifying Paper	The Impact of Health Information Technology Interventions to Improve Medication Laboratory Monitoring for Ambulatory Patients: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	Laboratory Monitoring Tests for High-Risk Medications in the Ambulatory Setting: Factors Associated with Ordering and Completion
Publications	View in eScholarship
Post CPHR	Shira is a student of the MD/PhD Program. She has completed the research (CPHR) portion of her degree and will enter her fourth year of medical school in the Fall of 2011.

	Lauren Gellar 2011 Graduate Dr. Gellar is a graduate of Johnson and Wales University AS program in Culinary Arts and Long Island University’s BS program in Clinical Nutrition. She holds an MS in Nutrition and Public Health and an MEd in Community Nutrition, both from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. Additionally Lauren is a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES). She has worked as a clinical coordinator and data manager/implementer while working as a post-bach research fellow at the NIH Department of Statistics, Epidemiology and Prevention Research as well as an assistant evaluation coordinator at Columbia University. She has held internships at Schneider Children’s Hospital, Adolescent Eating Disorder Clinic and St. Charles Hospital Diabetes Outpatient Clinic. Dr. Gellar has a broad interest in behavioral and physiological factors associated with child and adolescent metabolic health.
Qualifying Paper	Impact of a Diet Based on Glycemic Index or Glycemic Load on Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Youth: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	The Effect of Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load on Glucose Control, Lipid Profiles and Anthropometrics among Low-Income Latinos with Type 2 Diabetes
Publications	View in eScholarship
Blog Feature	Gellar, L. News Briefs, Better blood glucose for kids with type 2. Retrieved July 1, 2010, from http://ginews.blogspot.com/
Poster Presentations	Recruitment and Retention of Overweight and Obese Adolescents in a Randomized Control Trial Testing the Effect of a School Nurse-Delivered Intervention. Gellar L., Druker S., Osganian V., Gapinski MA., LaPelle N, Pbert L. The Obesity Society Annual Scientific Meeting San Diego, CA October 2010 The Effect of a School Nurse-Delivered Intervention to Treat Adolescent Overweight and Obesity on Nutrition and Physical Activity Behaviors. Pbert L., Druker S., La Pelle N., Gellar L. Osganian S. The Obesity Society Annual Scientific Meeting San Diego, CA October 2010 The Effect of Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load on Diabetes Control, Lipid Profiles and Anthropometrics among Predominantly Obese Latinos with Type 2 Diabetes. Gellar L., Nathanson B., Pbert L., Rosal M. The Obesity Society Annual Scientific Meeting San Diego, CA October 2010 Qualitative research to design a school nurse-delivered intervention to treat adolescent overweight and obesity. Gellar L., Pbert L., Druker S., La Pelle N., Osganian S. Obesity Society Annual Scientific Meeting Washington, D.C. November 2009 The Impact of Dietary Glycemic Index on Metabolic Risk in Youth: A Systematic Review. Gellar L., Nansel TR., Pbert L. Obesity Society Annual Scientific Meeting Washington, D.C. November 2009 Feasibility of Implementing the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) Adapted for Obese Adolescent Girls. Gellar L, Bodenlos J, Pbert L, Soyka L. Obesity Society Annual Scientific Meeting Washington, D.C. November 2009
Oral Presentation	"IRB Panel Members Perceptions of Their Role in the Review of Scientific Methodology: A Qualitative Study." Lauren Gellar, MS,CHES, Philip Candilis, MD,DFAPA, Suzanne Garverich, BA , Christopher Jackson, MA, Chuck Lidz,PhD, Teresa Roach, MA. 136th APHA Annual Meeting & Exposition (October 25-29, 2008) in San Diego, CA.
Post Graduation	Dr. Gellar has accepted a tenure track assistant professor position in Public Health Nutrition at the University of Tennessee. She will continue to conduct research which focuses on the behavioral and physiological factors associated with nutritional health status and how these factors relate to obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease risk in youth.

	Yat "Gary" Leung 2010 Graduate Dr. Leung earned undergraduate degrees from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in both Biology and Clinical Laboratory Science. He then went on the complete a graduate certificate at UNC in Core Public Health. His experience includes working in transfusion medicine at UNC Hospital. He hopes to further his training in population health research so as to "empower the public... [to] make appropriate choices for their lives and health."
Qualifying Paper	Quality of Diabetic Care for People with Severe Mental Illnesses: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	Behavioral Health Disorders and the Quality of Diabetes Care
Publications	View in eScholarship
Post Graduation	Dr. Leung is a statistician at the State Center for Health Statistics, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

	Tanya Lord 2011 Graduate Dr. Lord earned her undergraduate degree in Special Education from Boston University. Following the death of her son from a medical error, she became interested in Patient Safety Intervention Research. She earned an MPH from the University of New Hampshire with a focus on the impact of medical errors on the US population. She has interned at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services and at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center’s Office of Quality Management. Dr. Lord has extensive domestic and international community leadership experience. She plans to continue developing and evaluating patient safety improvement interventions.
Qualifying Paper	The Comparability and Applicability of Rapid Response System Research: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	Early Detection and Treatment of Acute Clinical Decline in Hospitalized Patients: An Observational Study of ICU Transfers and an Assessment of the Effectiveness of a Rapid Response Program
Dissertation Award	Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) "An Evaluation of the Effectiveness and Process of a Rapid Response System" Dissertation award of $30,000 from 06/01/2010 - 08/08/2011
Poster Presentations	A Rapid Response System in an Academic Medical Center: Unique Challenges and Innovative Solutions. Lord T, Trottier J, Luckmann, Cody S. National Patient Safety Foundation Annual Congress May, 2009. A Rapid Response System in an Academic Medical Center: Unique Challenges and Innovative Solutions. Lord T, Trottier J, Luckmann, Cody S. 21st Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care Dec, 2009.
Post Graduation	Dr. Lord is a Postdoctoral Researcher the the UMass Memorial Health Care Quality Assurance Office.

	Patrick McCabe 2011 Graduate Dr. McCabe earned a BA in Physics from Boston College, his MPH from UMass, Amherst (Worcester Campus). He has experience working as a research associate developing reverse osmosis membranes and is currently examining the relationship between adolescent cannabis use, tobacco use and early onset major depression. Dr. McCabe would like to specialize in examining large data sets and epidemiological surveys to look at rare outcomes, particularly in psychiatric epidemiology. His spare time, especially in warm weather, is mostly spent using or repairing one of his three electric garden tractors.
Qualifying Paper	Cannabis Use and Bipolar Disorder
Dissertation	Cannabis Use and Bipolar Disorder: Bipolar Disorder Case Identification and Cannabis Use Risk Assessment
Post Graduation	Analyst, University of Oregon Medical School and Health System, Corvalis, OR

	Hoa Nguyen 2010 Graduate Dr. Nguyen is a medical school graduate of from Hanoi Medical School, Vietnam. She graduated from Harvard University's School of Public Health with an MS in Epidemiology. Her experience includes working as a clinical epidemiologist for the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE), as a consultant for CDC-Vietnam and several international non-profit organizations (NGOs) in Vietnam. She most recently worked as a senior clinical research coordinator for Massachusetts General Hospital's Infectious Diseases and Nephrology Divisions. Her research interests include research method, cardiovascular disease epidemiology, clinical trials and international
Qualifying Paper	Age and Sex Differences in Duration of Pre-hospital Delay in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	Age and Sex Differences in Duration of Pre-Hospital Delay, Hospital Treatment Practices, and Short-Term Outcomes in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndrome/Acute Myocardial Infarction
Publications	View in eScholarship
Poster Presentations	"Age and Sex Differences in Hospital Mortality and Clinical Complications in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction: a population-based perspective." Nguyen HL, Park JH, Lessard D, Yarzebski J, Gore JM, Goldberg RJ. Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke 2010 Scientific Sessions. Washington DC, May 2010. "Failure to Close the Age and Sex Gap in the Use of Evidence-Based Therapies in Acute Coronary Syndromes: Perspectives from a Multinational Registry." Hoa L. Nguyen, MD, MS , Robert J. Goldberg, PhD , Joel M. Gore, MD , Frederick A. Spencer, MD , Ann Quill, MA , and Frederick A. Anderson Jr, PhD. Annual APHA meeting, 2009, Philadelphia, PA. "A Scoring Index for Acute Bacterial Meningitis: Implications for the Population-Based Assessment of Hib, Meningococcal and Pneumococcal Vaccine Impact." Hoa L. Nguyen, MD, MS, Paul E. Kilgore, MPH, MD, Nyambat Batmunkh, MD, MPH and Anh D. Dang, PhD. Accepted Annual APHA Meeting, 2008, San Diego, CA.
Post Graduation	Dr. Nguyen has accepted a position as an Associate Research Scientist in the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. As part of the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) research team, she will participate actively in several research projects, serving as an analyst and co-investigator. Her principal responsibilities will be on NIH-funded study of young women with an acute myocardial infarction.

	Hilary Placzek 2012 Graduate Dr. Placzek earned a BA in French and Pre-Med from Colgate University and her MPH (International Health) from Boston University's School of Public Health. There, she spent a semester in the Philippines conducting a qualitative study on healthcare worker outmigration and its effects on medical facilities and workers there (currently in press). She has experience working on research teams for the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention at Harvard Medical School as well as the Department of International Health at Boston University's School of Public Health. Additionally, she held a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship at the Academie de Nice in France and was a Colgate University Manzi Fellow at the Franciscan Children's Hospital in Boston. Professionally, Dr. Placzek wants to be part of the fight to improve healthcare and apply her public health background to advanced research settings, and ultimately impact society from individuals to a large-scale population.
Qualifying Paper	A Systematic Review Assessing Accuracy of Immunization Surveillance Systems in Vaccine Effectiveness Studies
Dissertation	A Population-Based Epidemiological Description of Socio-Demographic Characteristics and Predictors of Severity Among Hospitalized H1N1 Cases in Massachusetts
Publications	View publications in eScholarship
Post Graduation	Senior Analyst in health outcomes for WellPoint, Blue Cross Blue Shield Division of Clinical Research

	James Potts 2010 Graduate Dr. Potts earned his undergraduate degree in microbiology from the University of Oklahoma and his MPH/Biostatistics graduate degree from the University of Oklahoma's Health Science Center. He has done health policy research looking at exceptions to the underage drinking laws among different states and has valuable experience in infectious disease epidemiology from working as a part-time epidemiologist at the Oklahoma State Department of Health's Communicable Disease Division while doing his graduate work. He has provided statistical analysis on numerous projects for the UMass Medical School Dept. of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine. His research interests are in tropical infectious disease and he is currently working under Dr. Alan Rothman on the individual and combined clinical and laboratory findings of children with dengue illness.
Qualifying Paper	Clinical and Laboratory Features that Distinguish Dengue Illness from Other Febrile Illnesses: A Systematic Review.
Dissertation	Description, Classification, and Prediction of Dengue Illnesses in a Thai Pediatric Cohort
Dissertation Award	Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases "Analysis of Clinical Laboratory Variables for Early Dengue Illness Classification" Dissertation Award of $37,800 for 1 year
Acheivement Awards	2009 Dean's Award for Outstanding Mid-Thesis Research Achievement. Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School. Runner-up, Young Investigator Award. Annual Meeting of The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2008, New Orleans, LA.
Publications	View in eScholarship
Poster Presentation	"Analysis of Agreement Between Individual and Combined Clinical and Laboratory Findings and an Expert Physician's Diagnosis of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever" James A. Potts, Siripen Kalayanarooj, Suchitra Nimmannitya, Anon Srikiatkhachorn, Ananda Nisalak, David W. Vaughn, Wenjun Li, Sharone Green, Alan L. Rothman. Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2007, Philadelphia, PA.
Post Graduation	Dr. Potts is a Biostatistician at Biogen Idec in Wellesley, MA. His position has a research focus on conducting additional analysis on clinical trial data from drugs that went on to receive approval from the FDA.

	Elena Salmoirago-Blotcher Dr. Salmoirago-Blotcher received her MD degree in 1985 from the University of Milan, Italy. She is board certified in cardiology in Italy and she has been working as a cardiologist in the ICCU and in the Emergency Room for more than 10 years. In 1995 she moved to Israel, where she lived until 2002. She was trained as an Interventional Cardiology fellow in Jerusalem, and worked in the Cath Lab and ICCU there for three years. In 2005 Elena married an American citizen and moved to the US where she decided to devote herself to research. She most recently worked as a research manager for the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine at UMMS on two projects evaluating the effect of mindfulness-based interventions on hot flashes in menopausal women and on immune function in bone marrow transplant patients. She has co-authored and/or published many papers. Her research interests include behavioral and preventive interventions in cardiology and non-traditional approaches to treatment of hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias and coronary heart disease. Psychosocial Interventions in Patients Receiving an Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator (ICD): A Systematic Review
Qualifying Paper	Psychosocial Interventions in Patients Receiving an Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator (ICD): A Systematic Review
Dissertation	A Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Treatment of Anxiety in Patients with Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators: Feasibility and Baseline Findings
Fellowship	Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Fellowship grant (F-32), "A mindfulness based intervention for treatment of anxiety in ICD patients" Duration: 3 years.
Publications	View in eScholarship
Presentations	Salmoirago-Blotcher E, Crawford S, Jackson E, Ockene J, Ockene I. Constipation and risk of cardiovascular events in menopausal women. Presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, Orlando, FL, November 2009. Schnall E, Wassertheil-Smoller S, Kalkstein S, Fitchett G, Salmoirago-Blotcher E, Ockene J, Tindle H, Hunt J, Thomas A. Psychological and social characteristics associated with religiosity: The Women’s Health Initiative. Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, October 2010. Salmoirago-Blotcher E, Carmody J, Crawford S, Rosenthal L, Ockene I. Feasibility of a mindfulness-based intervention for treatment of anxiety in patients with Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICD). Accepted as a poster presentation at the 32nd Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, April 27-30, 2011, Washington, DC. Salmoirago-Blotcher E , Fitchett G, Ockene J, Schnall E, Crawford S, Granek I, Manson JA, Ockene I, O’Sullivan MJ, Powell L, and Rapp S. Religion and healthy lifestyle behaviors among post menopausal women. Accepted as a poster presentation at the 32nd Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, April 27-30, 2011, Washington, DC. Salmoirago-Blotcher E, Carmody J, Crawford S, Rosenthal L, Ockene I. Dispositional Mindfulness in Patients with Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICD). Accepted as a Rapid Communication poster presentation at the 32nd Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, April 27-30, 2011, Washington, DC.
Post Graduation	Dr. Salmoirago-Blotcher has accepted a position as Instructor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, with a joint appointment in Preventive and Behavioral Medicine, Department of Medicine, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She will continue her research on the efficacy of complementary/alternative medicine approaches in patients with cardiovascular disease and on the psychosocial determinants of cardiovascular disease.

	Mayra Tisminetzky 2009 Graduate A medical school graduate in her native Buenos Aires , Dr. Tisminetzky completed her MPH at UMass Amherst in 2004. Mayra worked as a child psychiatrist for several years before moving to America where she then worked with the New York State Psychiatric Institute assisting in designing protocols for clinical trials, conducting patient evaluations and basic data analyses. Her research interests center around psychiatric epidemiology, depression associated with cardiovascular disease and research methodology
Qualifying Paper	Assessing Depression in Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients: Literature Review
Dissertation	Modeling Co-Occurring Depression and Anxiety in Patients with an Acute Coronary Syndrome
Publications	View in eScholarship
Oral Presentation	Examining the Effects of Treatment and Patient Characteristics on Patient Profiles of Depression, Anxiety and Functionality after an Acute Coronary Syndrome. Mayra Tisminetzky, MD, MPH; Bethany C. Bray, PhD; Ruben Miozzo, MD, MPH; Steve Locke MD and Thomas McLaughlin, ScD. Society of Epidemiological Research Annual Meeting, 2009, Anaheim, CA.
Poster Presentations	"Depression and Anxiety after an Acute Coronary Syndrome in a Primary Care Setting" Mayra Tisminetzky, MD, MPH, Ruben Miozzo and Thomas J. McLaughlin, ScD . APHA Annual Meeting, 2008, San Diego, CA. "Assessing Depression in Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients" Mayra Tisminetzky, MD, MPH, Ruben Miozzo and Thomas J. McLaughlin, ScD . APHA Annual Meeting, 2008, San Diego, CA. Adolescent Major Depression and Suicidal ideation in a Community Setting Tisminetzky Mayra M.D., M.P.H; Leader Joseph, MD; Aupont Onesky M.D., Ph.D.; Christopher Stille M.D.; McLaughlin Thomas ScD. APHA Annual meeting, 2007, Washington, DC.
Post Graduation	Dr. Tisminetzky is a Research Instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at UMass Medical School. Currently she is writing a K-award on Neuropsychological and psychiatric outcomes following percutaneous coronary intervention and also collaborating in several research projects and publications with her mentor, Tom McLaughlin.

	Huifang Zhao 2011 Graduate A graduate of Fudan University Medical Center (formerly Shanghai Medical University) in China, Dr. Zhao worked for the Shanghai CDC as a researcher before coming to the US. She was a member of a team which focused on SARS in the spring and early summer of 2003. She also gained experience with the National Nutrition and Health Status Survey of China, where she conducted stratified-cluster samplings, trained interviewers, and monitored survey quality. Her current thesis work at UMMS is on the issue of predicting sepsis in critical care patients.
Qualifying Paper	Identifying Adult Patients with Sepsis: A Systematic Review
Dissertation	"Improved Methods of Sepsis Case Identification and the Effects of Treatment with Low Dose Steroiods"
Post Graduation	Dr Zhao is a PostDoctoral Researcher in the Department of Orthopedics at University of Massachusetts Memorial Hospital.