COEH Builds Bridges: Impacts of New Policies on Occupational Health
 
Faculty Bios
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David Caretto MD, MPH
Occupational Medicine Physician
Mercy Medical Group Sacramento, Dignity Health

Dr. Caretto is an occupational medicine physician affiliated with Mercy Medical Group in Sacramento California. He received his medical degree from UCSF School of Medicine. He completed his Master of Public Health at University of North Carolina and his occupational medicine fellowship training at Duke University. In his current position, he provides care for workers’ compensation injuries, performs a wide spectrum of employer health services, and contributes to his medical group as a member of the Quality Evaluation and Improvement Committee. As a clinician, he has been acknowledged as a Top Performer by Coventry Workers’ Compensation Insurance for achieving quality patient outcomes, lower overall claims costs, and improved return-to-work outcomes. He was recently selected by his peers for inclusion in Sacramento Magazine’s “Top Doctors” December 2018 edition. Outside of work, Dr. Caretto enjoys being a husband and father to his wife and two daughters. His hobbies include hiking, camping, skiing, coaching youth soccer, and exploring places near and far with his family.

 
Kanwaljit Gill MD
Orthopaedic Surgeon
The Permanente Medical Group

Dr. Kanwaljit Gill is an Orthopaedic surgeon and has been working closely with the occupational medicine group at Kaiser Richmond and Kaiser Oakland for about 20 years. He developed a program with the Orthopaedic surgeon working within the Occupational Medicine clinic. This allows immediate access to Orthopaedic consults and ongoing education for management of musculoskeletal injuries, and seamless care of the injured worker. Dr. Gill went to Nottingham University in England for medical School. He came to California to teach at Stanford Medical School and University Of California Medical School, and did his orthopaedic residency at University of California San Francisco. He has have been with Kaiser for over 25 years, and still enjoys teaching residents and his peers.

 
Nicholas Gleiter CIH
Area Manager
State of California, Division of Occupational Safety and Health

Nicholas Gleiter, CIH, started in the asbestos and lead abatement industry doing surveys and peering through a microscope becoming a Certified Asbestos Consultant. He moved on to USC to get his masters degree while inspecting laboratories for chemical and biological hazards. After getting his masters degree in occupational safety and health, he worked as an industrial hygienist for Cal/OSHA in the heart of industrial East Los Angeles. During this time he became a Certified Safety Professional and Certified Industrial Hygienist. After moving to the Bay Area, Mr. Gleiter became a District Manager for the Enforcement Unit, then Area Manager for the Consultation Unit where he often give speeches and trainings on occupational safety and health topics.

 
Purva Grover
Senior Occupational Health Specialist
UNITE HERE International Union’s Worker Safety and Health Program
Purva Grover, Senior Occupational Health Specialist, joined UNITE HERE International Union’s Worker Safety and Health Program in October 2018. Purva heads up the union’s training program for hotel housekeepers and union representatives on the new CalOSHA 3345 standard on preventing musculoskeletal injuries in hotel housekeeping. Purva brings many years of experience in worker education programs in a union setting, including providing occupational health and safety training to homecare, long-term care and hospital workers.
 
Robert Harrison MD, MPH
Clinical Professor of Medicine; Public Health Medical Officer
UCSF; CDPH

Dr. Robert Harrison is a clinical professor of medicine at UCSF. He founded and has directed UCSF Occupational Health Services for more than 15 years, and now is a senior attending physician. He has diagnosed and treated over 10,000 patients with work- and environmental-induced diseases and injuries. He also directs the worker tracking investigation program for the California Department of Public Health. He has served on the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA) Standards Board, and authored numerous publications in the area of occupational medicine.

 
Irva Hertz-Picciotto MPH, PhD
Professor
UC Davis

Dr. Hertz-Picciotto is Director of the NIH-funded Environmental Health Sciences Center and Professor of Epidemiology at the UC Davis MIND Institute in the School of Medicine, where she directs the Program in Environmental Epidemiology of Autism. She started as a high school math teacher and then turned to public health, where she has over 300 scientific publications addressing environmental exposures; their interactions with nutrition, genes or social factors; and their effects on pregnancy and child development. She designed and directs the CHARGE Study, the first large, population-based study to identify factors affecting autism that are amenable to intervention, and the MARBLES Study to search for biomarkers of autism starting in pregnancy. Dr. Hertz-Picciotto has served as Advisor to numerous federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Toxicology Program, California Air Resources Board and Proposition 65 Committee. Currently, she is Co-Director of Project TENDR, a consortium of academic researchers, health professionals and advocacy organizations, to move the science on chemicals and neurodevelopment into action that protects vulnerable brains in early life. She has chaired four Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences expert committees, taught epidemiologic methods on four continents and mentored over 60 doctoral students and another dozen post-doctoral and international scholars. In 2011, she received the Goldsmith Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.

 
David Hornung MPH, CIH
Heat and Agriculture Program Coordinator
Cal/OSHA
David started work for Cal/OSHA in 2009 as a compliance officer in the Oakland. He spent his first summers with Cal/OSHA performing heat inspections in the early days of the heat illness prevention standard. He is currently the Heat and Agriculture Program Coordinator. David received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2002 and a Master in Public Health in 2007 from UC Berkeley. Go Bears! David is a Certified Industrial Hygienist.
 
Anne Katten
Pesticide and Work Safety Project Director
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
Anne Katten is an industrial hygienist. She has worked with California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation for over 25 years. Her work includes analysis of pesticide illness episode investigations, pesticide risk assessments and regulatory proposals and advocating for improved enforcement and policy changes to reduce farmworkers exposure to pesticides and other work hazards. Earlier in her career she worked as a research assistant at a seed company.
 
Garrett Keating PhD
Toxicologist, Chair Health Effects Advisory Comittee
Cal/OSHA, Department of Industrial Relations
Dr. Keating was previously a Research Scientist at Livermore National Laboratory conducting research on low-dose toxicology and risk assessment. He was also Director of Research at a small drug delivery company. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Keating worked in the Occupational Health Division, New Jersey Department of Health, on implementation of the Worker Right to Know Act.
 
Chris Kirkham MPH, CIH, CSP
Principal Safety Engineer
Cal/OSHA

After graduating in 1998 from UC Berkeley with a Master in Public Health degree, with a specialization in industrial hygiene, Chris worked for Cal/OSHA as a compliance officer. There Chris investigated workplace complaints and accidents, issued citations, and defended his work in appeal hearings. Chris served as the Senior Safety Engineer for Health in the Bay Area region for six years as a technical resource and trainer for other OSHA personnel. In that position, he also conducted some of the more complex health inspections. During Chris’s time at Cal/OSHA he conducted approximately 400 health and safety inspections in a wide variety of workplaces. Currently Chris manages the Research and Standards Health Unit as the Principal Safety Engineer. The Health Unit, in coordination with other Cal/OSHA units, proposes new or amended Cal/OSHA health regulations to the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. The Health Unit also serves as a technical resource for other OSHA personnel.

 
Roman Kownacki MD, MPH
Chief, Occupational Health, Kaiser Permanente Richmond
The Permanente Medical Group

Dr. Roman Kownacki is currently the Chief of the Kaiser Permanente, Richmond Occupational Medicine Department. Roman received his medical degree from Drexel University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed his residency in Occupational Medicine at the University of Southern California, and a Masters in Public Health from UCLA. He is a past President of the Western Occupational and Environmental Association. He currently serves on the California Medical Association Workers’ Compensation Technical Advisory Committee and on the Workers Compensation Research Institute California Technical Advisory Committee.

 
Niklas Krause MD, MPH, PhD
Director; Professor
Southern California Education and Research Center; UCLA

Dr. Krause is Professor of Epidemiology and Environmental Health Sciences. He directs the NIOSH-sponsored Southern California Education and Research Center that trains professionals in occupational medicine, occupational and environmental health nursing, industrial hygiene, occupational epidemiology, and allied sciences. He received his medical degree and a doctoral degree in orthopedic medicine from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and his Master of Public Health and PhD degree in epidemiology from the University of California Berkeley. His research covers a wide range of occupational health issues including ergonomic and psychosocial risk factors, work injury and disability prevention, and the epidemiology of chronic musculoskeletal and cardiovascular diseases.

Dr. Krause has investigated hotel employees’ health and working conditions in widely published community-based participatory research projects in San Francisco and Las Vegas that helped to reduce excessive physical workloads and contributed to the scientific evidence base supporting the development of the 2018 Hotel Housekeeping Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention Program (MIPP) standard that became California law on July 1, 2018. 

 
Yi (Krystal) Lin MD, MSPH
Medical Director
Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies

Krystal Lin, MD, MSPH, is a board-certified occupational medicine physician who serves as the medical director of Berkshire Hathway Homestate Companies. She previously practiced clinical occupational medicine at Kaiser on the Job in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Lin is a graduate of the University of Rochester medical school, and completed a residency in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She completed a competitive research fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She has a strong interest in understanding technology’s role in reimagining the future of healthcare. She believes that a healthcare transformation is under way and that in the coming decade, there will be a shift from a "sick care" to a "well care" delivery model, a deeper integration of transparency in healthcare, and a universal adoption of value-based care. She has been an active member of the Western component of ACOEM. She served as the co-chair of the Western Occupational and Environmental Medical Association (WOEMA)'s education committee from 2016-2017. She has also been actively involved with WOEMA's legislative committee and has contributed to the discussion around the California Workers Compensation Drug Formulary. She has also been a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine since 2018.

 
Sarah Mansell MD
Occupational Medicine Physician
Kaiser
Dr. Mansell is an Australian trained doctor with 20 years of experience. She initially worked in the outback of Australia doing Emergency Medicine, Primary care, and delivering babies. She then relocated to the US and has worked in Family Medicine for 14 years, and now in Occupational Medicine. Dr. Mansell is Board certified in Family Medicine, Obesity Medicine, Integrative Medicine, and is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of General Practitioners. She has a Diploma from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and currently works at the Kaiser Richmond Occupational Medicine and Employee Health Department.
 
Barbara Materna PhD, CIH
Chief, Occupational Health Branch
California Department of Public Health
Barbara Materna, Ph.D., CIH is the Chief of the Occupational Health Branch, in the California Department of Public Health, a position she has held for the last 16 years. Dr. Materna is a Certified Industrial Hygienist whose career in occupational health has primarily been in state and local government public health programs. Some of the worker health topics she has studied include perchloroethylene in dry cleaning, exposures to wildland firefighters, occupational lead poisoning, lung disease in flavor manufacturing workers, aerosol transmissible diseases, and Valley fever. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley.
 
Jisung Park PhD
Assistant Professor
UCLA
Jisung Park is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs and the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Fielding School of Public Health. He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University, where he was an NSF fellow and specialized in environmental economics, labor economics, and public finance. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from Columbia University (2009), and master’s degrees in Environmental Change and Management (2010) and Development Economics (2011) from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar from 2009 to 2011.
 
Marc Schenker MD, MPH
Distinguished Professor Emeritus
University of California at Davis

Marc Schenker MD, MPH is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Health Sciences and Medicine at the UC Davis School of Medicine. He has over 30 years of experience in medicine and public health research, teaching and public service. Dr. Schenker is the founding director of the Davis Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety and the Migration and Health Research Center. His specialty is occupational and environmental disease, with a focus on numerous health outcomes including respiratory and reproductive health, heat stress, and diabetes. He also conducts epidemiologic research on the health of migrant populations with a particular focus on occupational disease. Dr. Schenker has published over 200 scientific manuscripts and 6 textbooks. Dr. Schenker has received numerous awards and honors for his work.

 
Suzanne Teran MPH
Associate Director
Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP), UC Berkeley
Suzanne has worked at LOHP for 22 years, where she has managed a variety of projects to address immigrant workers’ health and safety and develop effective strategies to improve working conditions. Key areas of work include developing training programs, outreach and education strategies, partnerships and capacity building with worker organizations, participatory research, social marketing and communications campaigns, and policy initiatives. Between 2009-2012, she managed the development, roll out and evaluation of the Cal/OSHA's heat illness prevention campaign.
 
0Jane Thomason
Industrial Hygienist
California Nurses Association/National Nurses United
Jane Thomason is an Industrial Hygienist with the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. She has worked on the nurses campaign for a workplace violence prevention standard in California, was involved in the Cal/OSHA rulemaking process, and is supporting California Nurses Association/National Nurses United members in their comprehensive, facility-based enforcement campaign. She has also worked on nurses’ campaigns for workplace violence prevention standards federally and in other states.
 
Vernon Williams MD
Director, Center for Sports Neurology and Pain Medicine
Cedars-Sinai/Kerlan-Jobe Institute

Dr. Williams was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He is a graduate of Cass Technical High School and The University of Michigan’s prestigious Inteflex Accelerated Pre-Medical/Medical Program. He completed neurology residency at The University of Maryland in Baltimore, MD and is board certified by the American Association of Psychiatry and Neurology. After residency he completed a multidisciplinary, interventional pain fellowship in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care (Division of Pain Medicine) at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Williams joined the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in Los Angeles in 1997. At Kerlan-Jobe, he is a consulting Team Physician to the Los Angeles Rams, Lakers, Clippers, Dodgers, Kings, Sparks, Anaheim Ducks, and several southern California collegiate, high school, and elite club athletic programs. He is the Founding Director of The Center for Sports Neurology and Pain Medicine at the Kerlan-Jobe. He is also the Founding Director of the Sports Neurology Fellowship at Kerlan-Jobe. In 2015, Governor Brown appointed him to the California State Athletic Commission. From 2014-2018 he served two consecutive terms as Chair of the American Academy of Neurology Sports Neurology Section. Dr. Williams is an active educator on issues related to Sports Neurology and Concussion. He often serves as a medical-legal expert and as an expert consultant on Pain and Sports Neurology Disorders to major television networks, radio, satellite, and print media. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi and Sigma Pi Phi (Boule’) Fraternities.