2023 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference in Occupational and Environmental Medicine (MARCOEM)

Abraham Alfaro, Ph.D., D.O. is board certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation; did a residency at Temple University Hospital and Moss Rehab; is an osteopathic physician (University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine); is a Ph.D. in exercise physiology with research in exercise induced changes in blood coagulation, fibrinolysis and lactate; and was an NIH post-doctorate and U.S. Public Health Service Fellow.  His specialty is Spasticity and Dystonia treatments with phenol nerve blocks and botulinum toxin muscle injections. Since COVID-19, he has been treating patients who have neurological and musculoskeletal problems in a Federally Qualified Health Center in Atlantic City, NJ.

Dr. Behrman is a Professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has served as Occupational Medicine Director for more than 25 years. Her practice and academic interests focus on healthcare personnel, occupational infections, nosocomial infection prevention, vaccine preventable diseases, and adult immunization programs. She is responsible for clinical care, surveillance and immunization programs for healthcare personnel, research staff, and veterinary staff at a large academic medical center. Dr Behrman was elected to Penn’s Academy of Master Clinicians in 2018. A fellow of both the American College of Physicians and the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, she is a past chair of the national Medical Center Occupational Health Section of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Associate Medical Director, WorkCare, Inc.
Anaheim, CA 

George S. Everly, Jr., PhD, ABPP, FACLP, is an award-winning author and researcher. He holds faculty appointments in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and in Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In addition, he has served on the adjunct faculty of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the FBI’s National Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Dr. Everly holds Honorary Professorships at the Universidad de Flores, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Universidad de Weiner, Lima, Peru. He was a member of the CDC Mental Health Collaboration Committee  (having chaired the mental health competency development sub-committee), the Infrastructure Expert Team within the US Department of Homeland Security, and the NVOAD Early Psychological Intervention sub-committee. He was an advisor to the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong and served as Senior Advisor on research in human resilience to the Office of His Highness the Amir of Kuwait.  Dr. Everly is co-founder of, and served as a non-governmental representative to the United Nations for, the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, a non-profit United Nations-affiliated public health and safety organization. Prior to these appointments, Dr. Everly was a visiting Fellow at Harvard University, a Harvard Scholar, visiting in psychology, Harvard University; and a Visiting Lecturer in Medicine, Harvard Medical School. He was formerly Chief Psychologist and Director of Behavioral Medicine for the Johns Hopkins' Homewood Hospital Center.

He is the author, co-author, or editor of 20 textbooks and over 100 professional papers.  Among his texts are THE JOHNS HOPKINS GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGICAL FIRST AID (Johns Hopkins Press, 2017), THE RESILIENT CHILD (DiaMedica, 2009, Foreword Magazine Gold Medal Winner),  PERSONALITY GUIDED THERAPY OF POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (APA, 2004), and A CLINICAL GUIDE TO THE TREATMENT OF THE HUMAN STRESS RESPONSE, 3rd EDITION (Springer, 2013).  He has given invited lectures in 26 countries on 6 continents.  His works have been translated into Russian, Arabic, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, German, Korean, and Spanish. His biography appears in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World and Wikipedia.

Dr. Foster-Chang holds a BA in Human Biology (Stanford University), a BSN (University of California, San Francisco), an MSN (University of Pennsylvania), and a DNP (Thomas Jefferson University).  She has over 30 years of experience in Adult Medicine and Occupational Health (OH) in the federal and private sectors. She has worked locally and nationally with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), has set up four OH programs, was a contributing editor of the VHA National Clinical OH Guidebook and served as the program management consultant for the National VHA Occupational and Environmental Consult Group. In addition to short-term clinical assignments as an OH nurse practitioner, she is currently employed as Assistant Editor for Continuing Education with Workplace Health and Safety, and as a nurse planner, speaker, and trainer for the AAOHN Core Curriculum and the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine Foundations Course for Advanced Practice Providers.

CDR Reed Grimes began his career with the United States Navy, attending the George Washington University School of Medicine on a Health Professions Scholarship. CDR Grimes completed his residency in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the National Capitol Consortium, and served as the Department Head for Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene at Naval Branch Health Clinics – Indian Head & Dahlgren. Following his Navy tour, CDR Grimes transferred to the United States Public Health Service, where he completed an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDR Grimes continued with the CDC after his fellowship, working as a Medical Epidemiologist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)’s Health Hazard Evaluation Program. In 2021, CDR Grimes accepted a position as the Director for the Division of Injury Compensation Programs (DICP) in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), where he directs the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).

Dr. Guest is the Medical Director of Employee Health at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where she leads a team providing occupational health services for approximately 23, 000 employees.  Her faculty position is that of Associate Clinical Attending in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering and Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

Dr. Guest has expertise in occupational medicine, employee wellbeing, population health, and emergency preparedness.  She began her career as an Emergency Physician, working at Albert Einstein, the busiest Level 1 Regional Resource Trauma Center in Philadelphia as well as community hospitals in the area. 

Since joining Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2008, she has dedicated research, clinical, and programmatic efforts to support the health, wellbeing, and resilience of healthcare workers and other medical center staff.  

Melanie Hayes is a certified nurse practitioner with extensive experience in rural health, family practice, urgent care and occupational medicine. She currently serves as a Nurse Practitioner in the OSHA Office of Occupational Medicine and Nursing (OOMN). In addition to enforcement medical consultations on a variety of topics, including heat-related illness, struck-by hazards, ergonomics, OSHA recordkeeping, respiratory protection and nursing scope of practice issues, she serves as the Co-Director of the OOMN Graduate Nurse Intern Program and as an advisor on medical surveillance and regulatory matters. Prior to working with OSHA, Dr. Hayes worked nine years in a military occupational health clinic as the program director, executive advisor for occupational health. In that role, she also served as the occupational medicine clinician providing direct care for nearly 10,000 military and civilian defense industry personnel including, among others, active-duty U. S. Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard members, merchant mariners, construction workers, healthcare workers, firefighters, and police officers. Dr. Hayes completed the Doctor of Nursing Practice degree as a NIOSH trainee at the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a quality improvement project on implementing hearing protector fit testing into an occupational health clinic. She is a national advocate for improving worker health and workplace safety.

John Meyer, MD, MPH, is Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and serves as Director of the Division of Occupational Medicine. Dr. Meyer is Director of the NIOSH-funded New York-New Jersey Education and Research Center as well the Occupational Medicine Residency Program. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and a Director of the American Board of Preventive Medicine.
An NIH BIRCWH Scholar from 2003-5, Dr. Meyer continues a research and clinical focus on work-related reproductive hazards and occupational risks in pregnancy.  He practices at the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health at Icahn Mount Sinai, with clinical interest in work hazards to pregnancy, hand-arm disorders, heavy metal exposures, and asbestos disease.  His research interests also encompass the psychosocial hazards of work, and health disparities in minority populations that may be mediated by work. Dr. Meyer’s methodological interests are in techniques of social epidemiology, longitudinal data analysis and multilevel modeling in the evaluation of work-related ill health. Other areas of research in which he has been involved include studies in indoor air and building environmental quality, and in the epidemiology of upper extremity disorders.

Previous Experience
Previously, Dr. Meyer was Lecturer in Occupational Medicine at the University of Manchester (UK), Chief of the Section of Occupation and Environmental Health at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, consulting medical director to the Connecticut Department of Transportation, and Chair of the Connecticut Medical Examining Board for Disability Retirement. At UConn he established a consultation service in occupational and environmental reproductive hazards for working pregnant women and those concerned with exposures prior to conception, developing guidance documents for pregnant women and their medical caregivers on reproductive hazards at work, including the nail salon and beauty industry.

Dr. Meyer received his MD from the Cornell University Medical College in NYC, and his MPH in environmental health from the Boston University School of Public Health, and completed residency training in occupational medicine at the Boston University Medical Center in Massachusetts.

Department of Environmental & Occupational Health
Assistant Professor, Rutgers School of Public Health
-and-
Residency Director, Division of Clinical Research Occupational Medicine
Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences Institute

Education

• MPH, UMDNJ School of Public Health, New Jersey
• MD, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana

Current Professional Activities

• Residency Director, Rutgers Occupational & Environmental Medicine Residency
• Clinical Physician in the Employee, Occupational Health, and World Trade Center Clinics

Memberships

• American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
• American College of Preventive Medicine
• Past Member of American College of Emergency Physicians

Honors

• Bernard D. Goldstein, MD Award for Academic Excellence
• Delta Omega, Alpha Eta Chapter, Public Health Honorary Society

Research Interests

Dr. Pratt is interested in the recognition, management, and prevention of illness and injury from conditions and exposures in the home, community, and workplace environment. He works to advance occupational and environmental resident physician education. He is a principle investigator (PI) on the NIOSH training grant and the PI for an annual national survey of Occupational and Environmental Medicine program directors. His most recent interests include occupationally-acquired methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Program Director, Occupational & Environmental Medicine Residency
Faculty Associate, Environmental Health and Engineering
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
arivera28@jhu.edu

Originally from Puerto Rico, Dr. Rivera is bilingual and board certified in occupational and general preventive medicine. As Program Director, she is responsible for organizing training and educational experiences, evaluating and mentoring residents and maintaining the residency's ACGME accreditation through a number of reporting and administrative tasks. She serves as a Medical Advisor to the International Association of Fire Fighters through a longstanding relationship between the union and the residency program and is the course director for the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering's Clinical Occupational and Environmental Toxicology Course. As of February 2019, she oversees the growing premed focus area for the Master of Health Sciences offered by the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. Outside of JHSPH, she maintains various professional relationships including working as a per diem physician with Concentra where she was most recently providing medical director and providing oversight for an onsite clinic, is a credentialed Clinical Peer Reviewer for several private companies, and has been assisting the NYC MTA with reviewing their practices in response to COVID-19 pandemic. ​

Her professional interests include: mentoring students and residents, medical education, firefighter health and safety, healthcare worker health, exploring the link between workplace culture and worker well-being, systems thinking, women in the workplace, vulnerable populations, work as a social determinant of health, workplace policies that promote healthy families, and international occupational health. She is a member of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and serves on the Presidential Taskforce to Increase OEM Visibility. Her hobbies and interests include dedicating time to faith, family, and friends; eating good food; hearing good comedy; listening to podcasts and Audible books and music; traveling; home décor; and keeping up with current events/news.

Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Board of Directors, Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania

Dr. Saito is currently the President and Chief Medical and Science Officer of MedLaw LLC where he provides services for companies in varying industries like manufacturing, transportation, finance, paper mills, retail, medical centers, health systems and government agencies. He also serves as the Medical Director for the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine.

Dr Saito continues to be on medical staff at a local community based hospital where he was the former Vice President of Medical Staff, Chair of Medical Specialties and Medical Director in Occupational Health, Wellness, EAP, Fitness Centers, Teaching Kitchen, as well as Regulatory Liaison for the Medical Center in Central Maine.

Dr Saito is also on the Board of Directors for the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) and on the Board and Executive Committee of the New England College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (NECOEM) where I am President. I am also Founder and past Chair of the Health Informatics section at ACOEM and I also chair the Education Committee at NECOEM and host webinars through the Harvard School of Public Health. I also serve as ACOEM delegate to the American Medical Association where I’m also on the executive committee of the Mobility Caucus and the YPS delegate from Maine.

Dr. Michael Sauri is a specialist in Occupational Medicine and Infectious Diseases in private practice in Rockville, Maryland since 1987. He is the Medical Director of Occupational Health Consultants (www.ohcmd.com) that services over 130 biomedical research laboratories, including Plum Island’s Animal Diseases Center. He serves as a Tropical Medicine consultant to international corporations and travelers visiting the Travel Advisory and Immunization Clinic (www.travelclinicmd.com).  

He received his Medical Degree from Loyola University, Stritch School of Medicine (Chicago) and Masters of Public Health & Tropical Medicine from Tulane University (New Orleans).  During his twelve years in the Military, Dr. Sauri received Residency training in General Preventive Medicine in the US Air Force (USAF School of Aerospace Medicine) and General Internal Medicine in the US Army (Brooke Army Medical Center) and Infectious Diseases Fellowship training in the US Navy (Bethesda Navy Hospital).  In addition, he received medical certification in Occupational Medicine in 1994 and in Tropical Medicine in 1997.

Dr. Sauri is the recipient of numerous awards and decorations from the Department of Defense, Civil Air Patrol, State Department, as well as State and Local governments.  Dr. Sauri separated from the military at the rank of Lt. Col. and had the distinction of being the first physician to have been awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal and the Defense Superior Service Medal. He has authored numerous articles in the area of Chemical/Biological Warfare, Medical Care of Refugee/Displaced Populations, Tropical Diseases, and AIDS.

Dr. Sauri is a Clinical Professor at both the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS).  Dr. Sauri was selected Occupational Medicine Physician of the Year by the Maryland College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in 2009.  Since 1992, Dr. Sauri has been consecutively selected eleven times by his peers as one of the Top Physicians in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases and/or Internal Medicine in the Washington, DC area.  Dr. Sauri was honored to be selected the USUHS Clinical Preceptor of the Year in Occupational Environmental Medicine in 2016 and 2017.

Medical Director of Occupational Medicine, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center
Associate Program Director, Occupational Medicine Residency
Associate Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine

Board Certification

• Preventive Medicine - Occupational Medicine, 2013

Education and Training

MEDICAL SCHOOL

Khyber Medical College

RESIDENCY

Lady Reading Hospital

Good Samaritan Hospital and Health Center

Latrobe Hospital, Excela Health

Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

Emily J. Senay, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine and PublicHealth (EMPH) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is a clinician at the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health treating workplace illnesses or injuries. In addition, she is a clinician at the World Trade Center Health Program Clinical Center of Excellence at Mount Sinai caring for responders and volunteers with illnesses or injuries sustained as a result of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. She is the founder of the World Trade Center Smoking Cessation Program and participated in the development of the Prevention Clinic, now fully integrated into the Primary Care Clinic, at the James J. Peters Veterans Affair Medical Center providing treatment for tobacco use. She precepts General Preventive Medicine and Occupational Medicine Residents in the Selikoff Centers for Occupational Health.

ACOEM, Board of Directors

Artificial Intelligence is a new and evolving topic.  In this session, Dr. Silverman will help facilitate engagement with the topic without advocating for, or promoting, practices that are not, or not yet adequately based on current science, evidence, and clinical reasoning.

Director of Health and Medical Systems
Office of the Chief Health and Medical Office (OCHMO)
NASA Headquarters,Washington, DC

Dr. Jade Spurgeon, MD, MPH, is the Director of Health and Medical Systems within the Office of the Chief Health and Medical Office (OCHMO) located at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Her primary responsibilities are to provide oversight of all occupational health operations for NASA employees in all environments, including space flight and ground activities, to optimize employee performance and wellbeing.  This includes directing and managing NASA Health and Medical Systems programs and functions, such as Occupational Medicine, Industrial Hygiene, Environmental Health, Health Promotion, Food Safety, Fitness, Employee Assistance Program, and Federal Workers' Compensation. Additionally, she authors and implements medical policies to support and maintain NASA health standards for its workforce.

Dr. Spurgeon received her medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, MD. She completed her residency in Preventive Medicine at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD, and holds a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Dr. Spurgeon is board-certified in Preventive Medicine and Occupational Medicine. She has extensive experience in the clinical practice of aerospace medicine, occupational medicine, and preventive medicine, as well as administrative medical management.

Dr. Spurgeon is the former Agency Surgeon for the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). Prior to her work at DLA, Dr. Spurgeon served in the United States Air Force (USAF) for 16 years. She served in a wide variety of settings as a clinical practitioner and medical leader. Dr. Spurgeon attained a USAF flight rating of Senior Flight Surgeon logging hours in a variety of different military aircraft including: F-15, F-16, C-130, HH-60, UH-60, C-5, and KC-135. Her military decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal, and Humanitarian Service Medal.

Melanie Swift, MD, MPH, FACOEM is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Public Health, Infectious Diseases and Occupational Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. At Mayo Clinic her roles include Medical Director of the Physician Health Center and Associate Medical Director of Occupational Health, and she maintains an active practice in Occupational Medicine. Dr. Swift has served as Chair of ACOEM’s Medical Center Occupational Health Section among other MCOH roles, and currently serves on ACOEM’s Board of Directors. She a coauthor of ACOEM’s MCOH Guidelines, and directs ACOEM’s biennial CME course on Medical Center Occupational Health.

Dr. Tanisha Taylor completed medical school at New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Yale University followed by a fellowship at the Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Fellowship program. She has had over 10 years of experience practicing in the field of Clinical Occupational Medicine. She is currently Senior Medical Director of RWJBarnabas Health Corporate Care in the RWJBarnabas Healthcare System. She is currently VP of ACOEM and is President-elect for 2023-2024.

Dr. Roxana Zulauf Witter, MD, MSPH, MS, is the Site Occupational Medical Director at the Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.  NREL is the only DOE facility dedicated to entirely to research and implementation of renewable energy technologies, storage technologies, grid integration and grid resilience.  Dr. Witter has been medical director at NREL since 2015.  Dr. Witter has also worked for the National Supplemental Screening Program, one of the DOE Former Worker programs.  Prior to working at NREL, Dr. Witter was an Assistant Professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, where she was the Residency Director of the Occupational Medicine Residency and developed public health policy limiting health impacts of oil and gas development in Colorado. Dr. Witter has also spent many years as a staff physician in Workers Compensation clinics.

​Dr Joshua Wong is a Head and Consultant in the Occupational Medicine Service in Sengkang General Hospital (SKH). He completed his specialist training in Occupational Medicine in 2015 and helmed a division in the Ministry of Home Affairs looking after medical policies and service provision for law enforcement officers before joining SKH in 2022 as an Occupational Medicine consultant. His day to day work revolves around ensuring employees are fit for work, managing injured employees who require temporary job modifications as part of their recovery process and championing workplace health promotion initiatives. He also dedicates his time to educate the next generation of doctors and was recently appointed a Core Faculty Member of the National Preventive Medicine Residency Programme in 2023.