Ozone and Your Patients' Health: Course Developers

Course Developers:

• William F. McDonnell, MD, PhD, is an environmental health consultant whose current research interests include development and evaluation of ozone exposure-response models for use in risk assessment.  He previously served as a United States Public Health Service officer detailed to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He received his MD from Washington University in St. Louis and his PhD in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, and he is trained in General Preventive Medicine. Dr. McDonnell developed and implemented the EPA's ozone epidemiology research strategy and studied the respiratory health effects of experimental ozone exposure in humans for 25 years at EPA's Human Studies Facility in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Dr. McDonnell has published widely on the health effects of ozone and has received numerous scientific and honor awards from EPA.

• James A. Raub, MS, was a Health Scientist and Project Manager in EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Mr. Raub's public health career involved the assessment of cardiopulmonary changes caused by the exposure of humans and laboratory animals to environmental pollutants found in the ambient air. Early in his career, Mr. Raub developed research methods for measuring cardiopulmonary function in laboratory animals exposed to pharmaceutical compounds and environmental pollutants. After that, his work focused on the health assessment of ozone and carbon monoxide, for which he received EPA's Gold and Bronze Medals for Exceptional Service to the Public. In addition to publishing journal articles and book chapters on the use of animal models for pollutant risk assessment, he organized and contributed to the most recent EPA Air Quality Criteria Documents on ozone and carbon monoxide that provide the scientific basis for ambient air quality standards in the United States. He also served as a temporary advisor to the World Health Organization on environmental health criteria for international air quality guidelines. Mr. Raub has a BS in zoology from Pennsylvania State University and an MS in physiology from the University of California, Davis, and did PhD graduate work in toxicology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

• Donald C. Spencer, MD, MBA, is board certified in family medicine and has been with the Department of Family Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) since 1996, where he is a Professor of Family Medicine and the Associate Director of Medical Informatics. Dr. Spencer graduated in 1973 from Stanford University with a degree in biology, received his MD in 1977 from the UCLA School of Medicine, and completed his residency in family medicine in 1980 at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Dr. Spencer also received a Masters of Business Administration in 1993 from the University of Missouri- Columbia. Between 1980 and 1986 he worked in private practice in rural Anson County, North Carolina, and then between 1986 and 1996 he taught and practiced at the University of Missouri-Columbia Department of Family and Community Medicine, where he established office information systems in three rural practice sites and was responsible for informatics curriculum development in the family medicine residency.

  Dr. Spencer's interests are in the areas of medical practice management and information sciences. His informatics activities include membership on the UNC Health Care Information Technology Advisory Board, chair of the UNC Health Care Medical Information Management Committee, and member of the UNC Health Care HIPAA Policy Committee. Dr. Spencer is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).

• Susan Lyon Stone, MS, is a Senior Environmental Health Scientist with EPA’s Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards in the group that reviews the national ambient air quality standards. Ms. Stone is the team leader for the review of the ozone standard and has worked on the reviews of the standards for particulate matter and sulfur dioxide. She is the Air Quality Index (AQI) team leader, has coauthored many of EPA’s public information documents about the AQI, the health effects of criteria pollutants, and she has given presentations across the U.S. and internationally on these subjects, including a course at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. She is the co-lead for the National-Scale Activity Survey (N-SAS) which will evaluate the effectiveness of AQI advisories in changing public behavior. Ms. Stone has an M.S. from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

• James Brown, MSPH, PhD, is a Senior Health Scientist for the U.S. EPA, National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA), Environmental Media Assessment Group. He received a masters (1991) and doctorate (2000) from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Prior to joining NCEA in December 2003, he was a Research Associate for the Center for Environmental Medicine, Asthma, and Lung Biology at UNC-CH. His primary research interest is the transport, deposition, and clearance of particles and gases in the healthy and diseased human respiratory tract. In 2006, he served as a Monograph Working Group member evaluating the carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure to carbon black, titanium dioxide, and non-asbestiform talc for the International Agency for Research on Cancer. He has received numerous awards for his research and particulate matter and ozone assessments including three U.S. EPA Gold Medals and a Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine in 2003. 

• Ellen Wildermann, MSPH, has worked as an Environmental Engineer with EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards (OAQPS) since 1989. Currently, one of her responsibilities is to develop training and outreach materials for a variety of audiences, including health care providers. The outreach topics include promoting understanding and use of the Air Quality Index to reduce exposure to unhealthy air. She has a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) degree from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.