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About the Center > Staff Biographies

Staff Biographies

• University of California San Francisco
• Topeka Independent Living Resource Center
• InfoUse
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• University of Michigan
• PHI (formerly the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute)
• Institute for the Future of Aging Services
• West Virginia University and Job Accommodation Network

University of California San Francisco

PAS Center Directors

Charlene Harrington, Ph.D., RN, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF. Dr. Harrington is the PI for the PAS Center, overseeing all project and budgetary activities and more specifically, conduct research on PAS in the home and community. As PI for the PAS Center for the past 5 years (2003-2008), she is one of the leading experts on PAS and HCBS. Dr. Harrington has been PI of numerous research studies on state long term care (LTC) policies and program characteristics since 1980, and conducted a large study of PAS and HCBS waivers in the states for CMS in 1998-2000. Since 1994, she has been funded to track Medicaid PAS participants, services, and expenditures. She is the director of a consumer information project and manages a website for the California HealthCare Foundation which includes nursing homes, home health, hospice and other LTC programs. Dr. Harrington is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, a member of the Institute of Medicine, and is widely published on LTC and PAS, with over 200 published articles and books.

H. Stephen Kaye, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Institute for Health and Aging, UCSF. Dr. Kaye is a Co-PI of the PAS Center and Director of the Improved Access to PAS project studying the trends, needs, and unmet needs of PAS consumers. He will also participate in research on caregiving support, employment issues, economic issues, and assistive technologies. Dr. Kaye has been a Co-PI for the PAS Center since 2003, where he has taken the lead on studies of need for PAS, unmet need, economic analysis of state PAS programs, and trends in the PAS workforce. Dr. Kaye is also the Co-Director of the UCSF Disability Statistics Center and has been its Research Director since 2000. His accomplishments include a groundbreaking study on the effect of the digital divide on the disability population and the Disability Watch series of reports on the status of Americans with disabilities. Dr. Kaye was lead author on “The Personal Assistance Workforce: Trends in supply and demand,” which was published in Health Affairs in 2006.

Mitchell P. LaPlante, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Institute for Health and Aging, UCSF. Dr. LaPlante is a Co-PI of the PAS Center and Director of the projects studying the economics of PAS, employment, and assistive technologies. Dr. LaPlante is recognized as one of the foremost disability researchers in the country and became PI of the Disability Statistics Program at UCSF in 1987. He then served as Director and PI of the NIDRR-funded Disability Statistics Center from 1993-2003 and continues as the Director of the UCSF Disability Statistics Center. He has served as a Co-PI for the UCSF PAS Center since 2003 and has been active in all aspects of the program. He is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and has served on committees of the Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council, and the United Nations. He has numerous publications on disability-related subjects, with a recent (2007) publication on a more fiscally feasible estimated cost of MiCASSA, “Estimating the expense of a mandatory home- and community-based PAS benefit under Medicaid,” published in the Journal of Aging & Social Policy.

Robert J. Newcomer, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF. Dr. Newcomer is a Co-PI and Director of Workforce Research Projects for the PAS Center. His initial work was in the design and planning of health and LTC programs. He’s been principal or co-PI of over 30 grants and contracts related to LTC and was Co-PI and Director of Training for the NIDRR-funded UCSF Disability Statistics Training Center (1998-2003), studying housing and congregate living for people with disabilities. He’s been a Co-PI for the PAS Center since 2003, studying caregiver workforce issues, state infrastructure for financial management, and occupational injury for independent providers. He is currently collaborating with the State of California in the evaluation of their PAS family provider waiver program. Dr. Newcomer has authored over 120 articles and book chapters on housing, assisted living, LTC, and PAS. A recent publication was “Living Quarters and Unmet Personal Care Assistance Among Adults with Disabilities,” published in Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

PAS Center Staff

Susan Chapman, Ph.D., RN, Director of the Allied Health Care Workforce Program, UCSF Center for the Health Professions and Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF. Dr. Chapman conducts research for the PAS workforce project and has published over 35 articles, book chapters, and reports in nursing and allied health workforce, workforce research and policy, program development, mental health, and health system administration. Dr. Chapman’s projects include a multi-year effort to develop innovative allied health workforce programs in California, an evaluation of California workforce initiatives focused on nursing and long-term caregivers, and national studies of certified nurse assistants, licensed practical nurses, and home care workers.

Arpita Chattopadhyay, Ph.D., is a Senior Statistician, School of Medicine, UCSF. Her research interests are in population health and aging, socioeconomic disparities in disability, long-term care and public policy. Currently, Dr. Chattopadhyay is working on a research project to forecast the demand for Medicaid financed long-term care in California and she is also conducting a study to examine the role of Medicaid in mitigating racial and ethnic disparities in long-term care use. Other research includes examining the differential effect of age on cardio-vascular disease among racial and ethnic minority groups, health and cost effects of neighborhood amenities for physical exercise, and access to health care.

Rani Eversley, Ph.D. Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF. Dr. Eversley works on issues pertaining to minority PAS workers and related issues. She has focused her research on HIV/AIDS with an emphasis on women, minorities, and youth including issues of risk, access to care, mental services, health disparities, and program evaluation. More recently, Dr. Eversley has studied racial and ethnic disparities in breast cancer surgery and access to diagnosis and treatment. She has taught and consulted on projects regarding cultural competency and access to care.

Amy Houtrow, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Medical Director of Pediatric Rehabilitation, UCSF. Dr. Houtrow conducts research on PAS for children. Dr. Houtrow is double-boarded in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Pediatrics and prior to her appointment at UCSF, she was a Resident Physician for Pediatrics and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. In addition to her current clinical duties that include oversight of the Comprehensive Pediatric Rehabilitation and Spina Bifida Programs, Dr. Houtrow conducts health services research on the health care utilization and expenditures of children with disabilities and other special health care needs and is currently examining the impact of childhood disability on families.

Taewoon Kang, Ph.D. Specialist and Statistician, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Institute for Health and Aging, UCSF. Dr. Kang serves as a statistician for the PAS Center projects and has significant experience in survey sampling and analysis. He has performed extensive statistical analyses of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) core, the NHIS Disability Supplement, and NHIS Disability Follow-back Survey, and of formal and informal PAS. He has more recently been studying service utilization and expenditures for individuals with developmental disabilities and examining California’s Medicaid personal care option and waiver.

Joseph T. Mullan, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF. Dr. Mullan studies the needs of caregivers and care receivers in the longitudinal study. Dr. Mullan has methodological expertise in the organization and conduct of complex multi-wave studies; the study of change in individuals under stress; and the development and testing of multivariate models using longitudinal data. He has been involved in studies of the experiences of consumers using PAS; experiences of family and friends caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or AIDS/HIV; and the measurement of nursing home quality. Previously, as PI or Co PI of two large longitudinal studies of caregivers, he helped to develop a conceptual model of the stress process among caregivers.

Anna M. Nápoles-Springer, PhD, MPH, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Division of Internal Medicine, UCSF. Dr. Nápoles-Springer studies the needs of and supports for aging minority caregivers. She currently teaches courses on clinical research in diverse communities. Her research experience includes culturally appropriate community interventions to promote health, and research on aging assessing the adequacy of health-related measures for use with individuals of low socioeconomic status and those from ethnically diverse populations. Other research interests include health disparities research, recruitment methods for ethnically diverse participants, and the interpersonal processes of care in diverse populations.

Mel Neri. Research Associate, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF. Ms. Neri oversees the administration of academic trainings and technical assistance provided by the PAS Center. Ms. Neri has been working in the disability and health services research field for over ten years and most recently was the Coordinator of a CDC-funded grant to promote the health and well-being of Oregonians with disabilities. Previously she was the Coordinator for the NIDRR-funded Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Spinal Cord Injury and Secondary Conditions where she published articles on access to care for people with physical disabilities.

Terence Ng, M.A.. Research Analyst, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF. Mr. Ng will continue to collect data and conducts analysis of home and community based services. Most recently he has worked on studies of state Medicaid programs where he is tracking personal assistance services, home and community based waivers and home health activities across all states along with state PAS activities and policies. He has co-authored a number of articles on personal care and home and community base waivers.

Alice Wong, MS. Research Associate, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF. Ms. Wong participates in PAS workforce projects for the PAS Center. She previously worked on mental health services and access to health care for people with disabilities. Her current work has been with the Medi-Cal Access Project where she conducted key informant interviews on the subject of Medi-Cal choices for seniors and people with disabilities. Ms. Wong is a member of the San Francisco IHSS Public Authority Governing Body and serves on the UCSF Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Disability Issues, providing the dual perspectives of both a UCSF staff person and an individual with a disability.

Topeka Independent Living Resource Center

Mike Oxford, B.A. is the Executive Director of the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center and an organizer with American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT). This center provides personal assistant management services, independent living counseling, legal services, advocacy, housing, skills training, information and referral, and training. Mike is President and Board member of the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL). Mike has retired after three years from the steering committee for Project ACTION and is a co-founder of Kansas ADAPT. Mike is an officer with the Kansas Association of Centers for Independent Living (KACIL) and is also on the Board of Directors of the Statewide Independent Living Counsel (SILCK). Mike has been involved with the independent living movement for 17 years and is a PAS user. Mike will serve as the Consumer Research Director for the project. In this role, he will lead the effort in linking our research efforts with PAS users across the country.

InfoUse

InfoUse is a woman-owned small business founded in 1984 by Susan Stoddard, Ph.D. in Berkeley, California. InfoUse has specialized in the use of information technology in the development of better programs and knowledge in disability and rehabilitation research. InfoUse contributions include the development of statistical chartbooks on disability, the conduct of program evaluations and policy studies, and the development of multimedia materials and software promoting better employment outcomes for adults and youth with disabilities, including MathPad^TM. In the PAS Center, InfoUse has been responsible for Dissemination and Training, and for the Center research on the use of Personal Assistance Services in the workplace.

Susan Stoddard, Ph.D., FAICP, Founder and President of InfoUse, has extensive experience in program planning and evaluation and policy research studies of vocational rehabilitation, employment of people with disabilities, and independent living. For the PASCenter, she has served as the Principal Investigator of Workplace PAS research, which has included surveys of employers, workplace PAS users, and employment system providers. Stoddard is the Principal Investigator of the Post Vocational Rehabilitation Study (PVRES), working with Westat on this second longitudinal survey for the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), studying the extent to which community services and workplace accommodations are used by Vocational Rehab exiters. Other related work includes two major statewide needs assessment studies for the California State Independent Living Council (SILC) and a study of Independent Living/Vocational Rehabilitation Collaboration at the RRTC on Independent Living Management.

Lita Jans, Ph.D., Senior Analyst, InfoUse , has led the qualitative analysis of employment service providers and PAS in the workplace for the Center for Personal Assistance Services, as well as monitoring the progress of the Medicaid Infrastructure Grants. She is currently designing the research and conducting the interviews and analysis of promising practices in Personal Assistance Services Cooperatives for the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability- Adult, and an examination of the employers who are reticent to make accommodations for the Pacific Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center (DBTAC). She has been the Project Director of InfoUse's project to identify role models for employment for youth with disabilities. She will participate in the research on PAS in the workplace.

Lewis E. Kraus, M.P.H., M.C.P., Vice President of InfoUse, is currently leading the research effort on personal assistance services in the workplace for the Center. He is also overseeing the efforts to examine promising practices of Personal Assistance Services Cooperatives for the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability- Adult, and the examination of the employers who are reticent to make accommodations for the Pacific Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center (DBTAC). Previously, he was the project director on a study that researched best training practices for PAS for providers as well as consumers. He has extensive experience in all aspect of training and dissemination and media development at InfoUse regarding PAS and disability He is the director for training and dissemination for the Center for PAS.

David Linnard, Ph.D., Programmer, InfoUse, is responsible for the PASCenter.org website and its maintenance. He has also conducted interviews with people with disabilities who use PAS as work.  Previously, he programmed bug fixes for MathPad, InfoUse’s software aimed at assisting students in being able to write and solve math problems.

Joan M. Ripple, B.A., Program Analyst, InfoUse, is conducting the interviews of employers and persons with disabilities using PAS at work that lead to the promising practices in workplace PAS for the Center for Personal Assistance Services. She co-authored the report “Independent Living Needs Assessment” covering the needs of Californian’s with disabilities for the California State Independent Living Council (SILC). She has evaluated the Easy Does It Emergency PAS program in Berkeley. Ms. Ripple previously served as the disability rights policy staff for the California Senate.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Nancy Miller, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy and and Coordinator of the Program’s Health Policy Track and a core faculty member for the new Intercampus Ph.D. in Gerontology. She received both her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, where she specialized in health policy. Dr. Miller has conducted interdisciplinary health policy research, focusing on disability and aging issues, for the past 16 years, first through her work at the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS), and most recently as a faculty member in the Department of Public Policy.  Her research interests are focused on chronic disease, disability, and long term care, with particular concerns toward access to care.  She has published a number of studies related to states’ provision of community based care to individuals with disabilities.  Dr. Miller also recently completed an evaluation of the Health Outcomes Survey for CMS.  Presently she is working with colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco to conduct additional interviews with working age individuals recently admitted to nursing homes, focusing on issues related to their participation in the decision, as well as the information and choices offered to these individuals.  Her work has been supported by the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and CMS.

University of Michigan

Brant Fries, Ph.D. is an internationally known Professor of Health Management and Policy and Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan, and Chief of Health Systems Research for the Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center at the Ann Arbor VA Medical Center. Dr. Fries is a principal author of the Resource Utilization Groups (RUGs) systems for classifying nursing home residents and the Resident Assessment Instrument/Minimum Data set, both used in all US nursing homes. He is an author of interRAI assessment systems for community-based elders (RAI-HC), acute and long-term mental institutions (RAI-MH), and palliative care (RAI-PC). Dr. Fries currently is the analytic task leader for the national project to refine the RUG-III system as well as the Principal Investigator of several projects to assist state governments to use RAI an RAI-HC to rationalize long term care. He is the author of four books and many articles on LTC and quantitative modeling of health care systems. He is also conducting studies examining how home care systems respond to funding cutbacks and to compare the users in the various programs that provide PAS.

Mary James, M.A., joined the University of Michigan Institute of Gerontology n February 2002. For nearly 25 years she held a variety of positions in Michigan state government where she was instrumental in the development, administration, and evaluation of HCBS for people who are elderly or disabled. While in state government, Ms. James had policy responsibility for the Home Help PAS program, a consumer-directed Medicaid personal care program that served nearly 50,000 aged and disabled adults and she established the statewide 1915c Medicaid waiver program known as MI Choice and the companion state-funded Care Management program. She has been involved in studies of the users of PAS programs.

PHI (formerly the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute)

PHI is a national New York-based non-profit organization committed to improving quality care through creating quality jobs for direct-care workers. Through technical assistance at the employer level, PHI helps providers across the long-term care spectrum to adapt field-tested practices to improve the quality of the care that they provide. A recognized leader in long-term care workforce policy, PHI works with federal agencies, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the U.S. Department of Labor, to ensure a more stable direct-care workforce. Our state-based policy and practice experts work with providers, consumers, and worker/labor organizations in a variety of states to ensure quality care. PHI’s on-line National Clearinghouse, www.directcareclearinghouse.org, serves as the primary source of news and analysis for the direct-care workforce field.

Dorie Seavey, Ph.D., PHI’s Director of Policy Research, supports PHI’s state policy directors and is responsible for research, analysis, and writing on economic, financial, and policy issues affecting the direct-care workforce and the long-term care industry. Her recent work has addressed topics such as the cost of frontline turnover, strategies for improving wages and benefits for direct-care workers, the intersection of family and paid caregiving, strategies for linking public workforce investment systems with the workforce needs of the long-term care industry, and reforming Medicaid payment policies for home- and community-based services. Trained as a labor economist, Seavey received her Doctorate in Economics from Yale University in 1987. Over her career, she has specialized in workforce development and labor market difficulties for low-income individuals, including issues for frontline health care, social service, and childcare workers. Seavey has served as a senior member of several national evaluation and research teams investigating sectoral employment initiatives and employment brokering programs for low-income and disadvantaged job seekers. She is a former Senior Research Scientist at the Heller School at Brandeis University.

Institute for the Future of Aging Services

The Institute for the Future of Aging Services has been funded by CMS and ASPE to provide a National Resource Center on Home and Community-Based Services Clearinghouse.

Robyn I. Stone, Dr.P.H., is a noted researcher and internationally recognized authority on health care and aging policy. In June 1999, she became the Executive Director of the Institute for the Future of Aging Services , of the American Association of Homes and Services for he Aging. Dr. Stone served as the U.S. Dept. Health and Human Services, as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Disability, Aging and Long-term Care Policy from 1993-1996 and as Assistant Secretary for Aging in 1997. In the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a senior researcher at the National Center for Health Services Research and at Project HOPE’s Center for Health Affairs. Dr. Stone was staff to the 1989 Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care (the Pepper Commission) and the 1993 Clinton Administration Task Force on Health Care Reform. Dr. Stone has published widely in long-term care policy and quality, chronic care for the disabled, workforce development and family caregiving. Her doctorate in public health is from the University of California, Berkeley. She will provide consultation to the workforce PAS research project in the Center.

West Virginia University and Job Accommodation Network

The Job Accommodation Network (JAN) is a service of the U. S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy operated through the West Virginia University Research Corporation. Since 1983, JAN's consultants have provided workplace accommodation information to over 300,000 employers, rehabilitation professionals, and individuals with disabilities. JAN has a toll-free telephone and Web-based service that provides information on making workplace accommodations for people with disabilities. JAN's consultants handle over 32,000 workplace accommodation requests each year via the project's toll-free hotlines and e-mail. JAN's electronic services include a web site that serves as a gateway to information on accommodations, disability laws, publications and other resources to assist employment of people with disabilities, a Searchable Online Accommodation Resource (SOAR), and a Small Business and Self-Employment Service (SBSES).

D.J. Hendricks, Ed.D., is the Associate Director of the International Center for Disability Information (ICDI) and the Project Manager for the Job Accommodation Network (JAN). Dr. Hendricks was one of the authors of the original grant application for JAN and has continued to work with JAN since its inception in 1983. She has worked at the ICDI since 1979. She has a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Statistics, a Master’s of Science in Statistics (MSS) and a Doctorate of Education (Ed.D.) in Educational Psychology from from West Virginia University (WVU). Her Master’s thesis was an evaluation of the effectiveness of separate blind agencies versus combined service agencies in the State/Federal Vocational Rehabilitation System. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the use of propositional structures, subgoals, formulas, and text instruction in teaching statistics.

Dr. Sita Misra, Ph.D. is a Research Associate Professor at the International Center for Disability Information (ICDI). Dr. Misra has served as the Project Director for several research projects in the areas of disability and rehabilitation and possesses an extensive background in assessing systems change impact. Dr. Misra has conducted several needs assessment studies for Public VR Programs in Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. She has prepared Labor Market Digests for Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In 2001, she conducted a statewide study on "An assessment of the Need to Establish, Develop, or Improve Community Rehabilitation Programs (CRPs) in West Virginia". Dr. Misra is the recipient of the 1998 WVU Distinguished Service Award and 2003 Laddie R. Bell Distinguished Service Award. Dr. Misra is serving the lead researcher for the International Center for Disability Information’s subcontract with the University of California at San Francisco.

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Mr. Louis Orslene, M.P.I.A., M.S.W., serves as the Manager of Strategic Partnerships for the ICDI’s Job Accommodation Network (JAN). Mr. Orslene has served as the Assistant Manager of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Ticket-to-Work demonstration project, a JAN Cognitive and Mental Health Team consultant and as Executive Director of Life Management Consultants. Mr. Orslene graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with Master’s degrees in Public and International Affairs and Social Work. He has also earned certificates non-profit organization management and economic development administration. For the PAS Center, Mr. Orslene facilitates focus groups with employers, rehabilitation professionals, and people with disabilities. Mr. Orslene is conducts stakeholder surveys and the development of the "Personal Assistance Service (PAS) in the Workplace" technical assistance document for employers.

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Dr. Tatiana Solovieva, Ed.D. joined the International Center for Disability Information (ICDI) of the West Virginia University (WVU) College of Human Resources & Education in 2008. In collaboration with the PAS Center, she leads research in Workplace PAS. Dr. Solovieva has been involved in research and training programs for people with disabilities at the WVU Rehabilitation Research and Training Center, the International Center for Disability Information, and the Center on Aging. She received the Excellence in Research on Aging and Rural Health Award (Honorable Mention) from the American Public Health Association, Gerontological Health Section. Dr. Solovieva has taught at the college level and collaborated with public schools, and published research in several fields.

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