September 2013 VSTH Meeting Speakers

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Speakers' Biographies

Barbara A. Bowman, PhD

Director, Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC

Dr. Barbara Bowman was appointed director of the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention in the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at CDC in February 2013. Since joining CDC in 1992, she has held several senior leadership positions including associate director for science, acting director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, associate director for policy studies in the Division of Diabetes Translation, chief of the Chronic Disease Nutrition Branch in the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity, and acting chief of the Nutritional Biochemistry Branch, National Center for Environmental Health. She served as the official CDC liaison to the National Institutes of Health from 2003 to 2009.

Dr. Bowman holds a PhD in human nutrition and nutritional biology from the University of Chicago and conducted postdoctoral research in nutritional biochemistry at Emory University. She is a diplomate of the American Board of Nutrition and has published extensively in the areas of nutritional epidemiology, assessment, physiology, and the primary prevention of diabetes. She serves as an associate editor for the Annual Review of Nutrition and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and is on the editorial board for Preventing Chronic Disease. Dr. Bowman was also co-editor of the eighth and ninth editions of the monograph “Present Knowledge in Nutrition.”

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Linda Schieb, MSPH

Epidemiologist, Division of Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC

Linda Schieb is an epidemiologist working in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention in the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at CDC. Since 2006, she has been a member of the Small Area Analysis Team, where she has explored social and environmental risk factors for cardiovascular disease, documented geographic disparities, and led the development of the Interactive Atlas of Heart Disease and Stroke.

Ms. Schieb received a master of science in public health degree in epidemiology from Emory University.

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Laura Nasuti, MPH
Deputy Director, Office of Statistics & Evaluation, Bureau of Community Health and Prevention, Massachusetts Department of Public Health

Laura Nasuti, MPH, is the deputy director of the Office of Statistics & Evaluation in the Bureau of Community Health and Prevention at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. She has been focused on evaluating quality improvement initiatives with electronic health record data, and on supporting community-clinical linkages within the Bureau. Her current work focuses on implementing and evaluating the Massachusetts State Innovations Model (MA SIM) Award e-Referral program. This portion of the MA SIM grant funds the development of an open-source, bi-directional electronic referral system.

Ms. Nasuti completed her undergraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her masters of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and plans to complete her doctorate in epidemiology at UCLA in fall 2013.

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Brandon Skidmore
Deputy Director, Bureau of Health Promotion, Kansas Department of Health & Environment

Brandon Skidmore is the deputy director for the Bureau of Health Promotion at the Kansas Department of Health & Environment (KDHE). He has served in multiple positions over 10 years, focusing on obesity prevention, grants management, school health, and cancer prevention and control. As deputy director, Mr. Skidmore is responsible for the coordination and integration of chronic diseases, injury prevention and disability programming and evaluation, management of the Healthy Kansans 2020 state planning and integration process, and oversight for the Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grant.

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