• Gretchen E. Alkema, PhD, LCSW
  (John Heinz/Health and Aging Policy Fellow)
  
• Brian K. Hensel, PhD, MSPH
• Gregory Hinrichsen, PhD
  
• Kathryn G. Kietzman, PhD, MSW
• Toni P. Miles, MD, PhD

• Elizabeth (Libbie) Bragg, PhD, RN
• Dorry Segev, MD
• Judy Zerzan, MD, MPH

Gretchen E. Alkema, PhD, LCSW

(John Heinz/Health and Aging Policy Fellow)

The SCAN Foundation, Vice President, Policy and Communications

Hartford Doctoral Fellow in Geriatric Social Work,
Research Associate
Fall Prevention Center of Excellence at the University of Southern California, and
Postdoctoral Fellow
VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System’s Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence

Gretchen E. Alkema, PhD, LCSW, served in the office of Senator Blanche L. Lincoln (D-AR), who is a member of the Senate Finance Committee and Senate Special Committee on Aging.  Dr. Alkema collaborated with legislative staff to advise Senator Lincoln on aging, health, mental health and long-term care policy.  In this role, Dr. Alkema worked with other Congressional offices, committees and Executive branch agencies, and engaged various interest groups, stakeholders, and constituents to advance legislation and the policy process.

Dr. Alkema holds a PhD from the University of Southern California’s Davis School of
Gerontology and was awarded the John A. Hartford Doctoral Fellow in Geriatric Social Work and AARP Scholars Program Award.  She completed post-doctoral training at the VA Greater Los Angeles Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence and was a research associate for the California Fall Prevention Center of Excellence. Her academic research focused primarily on evaluating innovative models of chronic care management and translating effective models into practice.  She is the author of multiple peer reviewed publications and taught courses in social policy and aging, care management and program evaluation strategies.

Fellowship Placement: Office of Senator Blanche Lincoln

Brian K. Hensel, PhD, MSPH

Assistant Professor

Department of Health Services Administration

Beacom School of Business

University of South Dakota

Brian K. Hensel, PhD, MSPH, has 15 years of experience as a health care executive, with responsibility for a range of services for older adults including long-term care, home health, and hospice, within vertically-integrated health systems.  He began his career in health administration after achieving a master's in public health from the University of Missouri (1987).  In 2001, he returned to the university to complete a PhD focused in health communication from the Missouri School of Journalism (2005), followed by a National Library of Medicine Postdoctoral Fellowship in Health Informatics (2005 - 2008).  His research interests include long-term care, including chronic disease management, and end-of-life care.  Dr. Hensel has served his fellowship in the office of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, where he helped develop health information technology legislation within the Recovery Act and palliative care and advance planning legislation within the Finance Committee's health reform bill.  Dr. Hensel has accepted a faculty position at the University of South Dakota, in the Health Services Administration program of the Beacom School of Business.  Starting there in January 2010, he will teach health administration, including in long-term care, and pursue his research interests.

Fellowship Placement: Office of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV

Gregory Hinrichsen, PhD

Mental Health and Aging Policy Liaison

Office of Mental Health Services

Gregory A. Hinrichsen, Ph.D., is a graduate of Harvard College and holds a doctorate in psychology with a focus on gerontology from New York University. In his 25 year career at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, he served in research, clinical, and administrative positions that included director of psychology training and associate director of psychology. He is associate clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Professional interests include the social context of late life depression, empirically-supported treatments for depression in older adults and clinical geropsychology training, topics on which he has published extensively. He has held various leadership positions in the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Gerontological Society of America. During 2007-2008 he was an American Psychological Association/American Association for the Advancement of Science Congressional Fellow working in the office of Senator Ron Wyden on health and aging legislative issues. Dr. Hinrichsen is spending this year at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of Mental Health Services as a mental health and aging policy liaison.

Fellowship Placement: Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Mental Health Services

Kathryn G. Kietzman, PhD, MSW

Hartford Doctoral Fellow in Geriatric Social Work
Department of Social Welfare
University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Affairs

Kathryn G. Kietzman, PhD, MSW received her doctorate in Social Welfare from UCLA's School of Public Affairs in 2008. Her research interests in gerontological social work center on home and community-based services, consumer-directed personal assistance programs, and the intersection of informal and formal care. A 2006-2008 Hartford Doctoral Fellow in Geriatric Social Work, Dr. Kietzmans dissertation research was supported by the John A. Hartford Foundation and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Her dissertation builds on a larger Atlantic Philanthropies and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded study concerned with expansion of the long-term care workforce. Kathryn completed both her BA in Social Welfare and MSW at UC Berkeley. At Berkeley she worked at the Center for the Advanced Study of Aging Services, evaluating the implementation of the National Family Caregiver Support Program in the State of California, while also gaining valuable practice experience at the Alameda County Area Agency on Aging and at the Family Caregiver Alliance in San Francisco. Dr. Kietzman is conducting her fellowship in the office of Senator Debbie Stabenow where she is working on a variety of legislative issues, including mental health, aging, chronic care coordination, prevention and wellness, and the integration of health care delivery systems.

Fellowship Placement: Office of Senator Debbie Stabenow

Toni P. Miles, MD, PhD

Wise-Nelson Chair, Clinical Geriatrics Research and
Professor, Family and Geriatric Medicine
University of Louisville

Toni P. Miles, MD, PhD, is Professor, Family and Geriatric Medicine and Wise-Nelson Endowed Chair, Clinical Geriatrics Research at the University of Louisville.  An alumna of Howard University College of Medicine, Dr. Miles has published frequently cited writings on topics ranging from basic neuroscience to health care workforce issues.  Her training includes a PhD in Neuro-anatomy, an Internal Medicine internship at the Washington Hospital Center and a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Aging, Epidemiology Branch in Bethesda, Maryland.  During the Health and Aging Policy Fellowship, Dr. Miles served as a staffer on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee (Max Baucus, Chair).  She has more than 120 scientific papers in social gerontology, geriatrics and health disparities.  As a direct result of the fellowship experience, her latest publication proposes a new framework for assessing health reform and its impact on indices of disparities in mortality and access to preventative services.  This chapter appears in Life Course Perspectives on Late Life Inequalities which is slated to appear late fall 2009.

Fellowship Placement: U.S. Senate Committee on Finance

Elizabeth (Libbie) Bragg, PhD, RN

Associate Professor, College of Nursing and
Research Associate Professor
Department of Public Health Sciences, College of Medicine
University of Cincinnati

Elizabeth (Libbie) Bragg, PhD, RN, (2008-2010 Health and Aging Policy Fellows) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences in the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati. She received her MSN from Ohio State University in 1987 and her PhD in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati in 1999. Her dissertation topic was “How Do Issues Get on the Agenda of State Legislatures?” Dr. Bragg has over 37 years experience in teaching, research, administration, practice, and volunteer activities. In 1980, with a colleague, she started her own business, RN Consultants, Inc. From 1986 to 1987, she was State Director of Public Health Nursing and Acting Director, Division of Local Health, West Virginia State Health Department.  She has worked on several election campaigns, and in 1986 was the campaign manager for the successful re-election of a candidate for the West Virginia House of Delegates. She was a member of the American Geriatrics Society Task Force on Caring for Older Americans: the Future of Geriatric Medicine, and was an expert reviewer for Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) 2005 National Agenda for Geriatric Education: White Papers. She was named one of Cincinnati’s Leading Women in the area of Health Care in 2002.  Dr. Bragg is currently co-investigator for the Geriatrics Workforce Policy Studies Center, and has co-authored 17 peer-reviewed manuscripts related to geriatrics training and practice. She currently teaches health policy courses at the University of Cincinnati.  As part of her fellowship, Dr. Bragg will be developing a 1-2 page sheet on each state regarding facts and issues affecting that state’s older adults including geriatrics workforce issues, Medicare, and health status.

Dorry Segev, MD, PhD

Director, Clinical Research, Transplant Surgery,
Director, OPUS (Older Patients Undergoing Surgery) Training Program, and
Associate Professor of Surgery
Johns Hopkins University

Dorry Segev, MD, PhD, is a practicing transplant surgeon, a clinical epidemiologist, and an Associate Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University. After receiving a degree in Computer Science at Rice University, Dr. Segev completed medical school, surgery residency, a multivisceral transplant surgery fellowship, an MHS in biostatistices, and a PhD in clinical investigation at Johns Hopkins. As a young faculty member, he has already made important contributions to the field of transplant surgery through his seminal work in Kidney Paired Donation, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, featured in TIME Magazine's yearly Innovators feature, awarded the American Society for Transplant Surgeon's Vanguard Prize, and is currently being implemented on a national scale by the United Network for Organ Sharing. Dr. Segev has authored over 70 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has been the recipient of an NIH Clinical Research Scholars Award, an American Society for Transplantation Clinical Science Award, an American Geriatric Society Dennis Jahnigen Scholar Award, and a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Scientist Development Award.

He is currently exploring age disparities in access to kidney transplantation, and developing tools for improved clinical decision-making in older patients with kidney failure.  For his fellowship, Dr. Segev is examining both clinical and policy approaches to improving access to transplantation for those older patients who stand to benefit from it.   As a fellow, Dr. Segev has been working with the United Network for Organ Sharing (HRSA/HHS) to help design an organ allocation policy that balances justice and utility but avoids age discrimination. Dr. Segev also recently demonstrated that the gender gap in access to kidney transplants was limited to older women (NY Times, 1/9/09), setting the stage for evaluation and possible policy oversight of provider referral patterns for older adults who are candidates for organ transplants.

Judy Zerzan, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor
Division of General Internal Medicine
University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine