Appendix E

Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Theodore G. Ganiats, M.D. (Chair), is professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Ganiats is a member of many professional associations, including the Society for Medical Decision Making, Academy Health, the American Public Health Association, and the International Society for Quality of Life Research. He was the founder and first executive director of the UCSD Health Services Research Program. He has served as a member or chair of more than 50 national guideline, quality, and performance panels spanning multiple disciplines. He served as the first director of the National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. In 2017–2018, he participated in a project with the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery related to the development of measures of quality of care for age-related hearing loss. Dr. Ganiats has an M.D. from UCSD. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Kendall M. Campbell, M.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. He is the Sealy Hutchings and Lucille Wright Hutchings Chair in Family Medicine. Dr. Campbell is nationally recognized for his research affecting underrepresented groups in medicine. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, several book chapters, and has contributed to National Academy of Medicine publications. He has received honors and

awards for his service including the Martin Luther King, Jr., Distinguished Service Award, the Exemplary Teacher Award, and the 2021 Society of Teachers in Family Medicine President’s Award. Dr. Campbell is a founding director of the Society of Teachers in Family Medicine Leadership through Scholarship Fellowship through which he mentors and provides faculty and leadership development to early career family medicine faculty all over the country. He has received funding through the Health Resources and Services Administration to expand this work to faculty beyond family medicine. Dr. Campbell was elected to the National Academy of Medicine as part of the class of 2021. He completed his medical training at the University of Florida College of Medicine and residency at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare.

Tamala David, Ph.D., M.P.A., M.S., FNP, is a native resident of Rochester, New York; an area with a large deaf population. She grew up in a household with a deaf grandmother (a sign language user) and is passionate about issues related to the health and well-being of deaf and older adults who are hard of hearing. Dr. David received her bachelor’s degree in nursing and master’s degree in public administration (with an emphasis in health care and a certificate in nonprofit management) from the State University of New York College at Brockport. She received her master’s degree in nursing, with a specialty as a family nurse practitioner, and a Ph.D. in health practice research from the University of Rochester. In general, her projects have addressed population health issues at local, national, and international levels. She has more than a decade of experience providing education related to community health nursing and deaf health to nurses and physicians at all levels locally, nationally, and internationally. At the State University of New York College at Brockport, Dr. David teaches courses related to community health nursing, locally and internationally. She has received compensation as a member of the Rochester Prevention Research Center: National Center for Deaf Health Research at the University of Rochester since 2004 and has been a member of other research/health project teams at the University of Rochester since 2015. She has served in uncompensated roles on advisory committees and the board for the Rochester Chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America since 2017.

Larry E. Humes, Ph.D., is a distinguished professor emeritus at Indiana University. He has served as associate editor, editor, and editorial board member for several audiology journals. Dr. Humes has received the Honors of the Association and the Alfred Kawana Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publications from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and the James Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology and a Presidential Award from the American Academy of Audiology. He is

a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and of the International Collegium on Rehabilitative Audiology. His most recent research activities have focused on age-related changes in auditory perception, including speech-understanding ability, and on outcome measures for hearing aids. He is currently a co-principal investigator on a research contract from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute evaluating hearing aid fitting methods. Dr. Humes received his Ph.D. in audiology from Northwestern University, where he now holds an appointment as an adjunct professor.

Alan M. Jette, Ph.D., is emeritus professor and dean at Boston University’s Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and served as Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Boston University School of Public Health from 2005 to 2017. He also served as Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions from 2012 to 2021. Dr. Jette is an international expert on rehabilitation and a leader in developing patient-centered rehabilitation outcome measures in a range of challenging clinical areas such as work disability, post-acute care, spinal cord injury, and neurological, orthopedic, and geriatric conditions. He has authored more than 250 publications in the rehabilitation sciences field and served as a principal investigator for numerous studies funded by the National Institutes for Health, the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, and several foundations. Dr. Jette has served as a member of more than a dozen boards and committees at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He chaired the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee that authored the 2007 report, The Future of Disability in America. In addition to cochairing the IOM Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence he was chair of the IOM Committee on the Use of Selected Assistive Products and Technologies in Eliminating or Reducing the Effects of Impairments. Dr. Jette was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2013. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in public health from the University of Michigan.

Colleen G. Le Prell, Ph.D., is the head of the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing and the director of the recently launched Clinical and Translational Research Center at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she holds the Emilie and Phil Schepps Professorship in Hearing Science. Dr. Le Prell has received funding from government, industry, and philanthropic sources for research that programmatically advances the understanding and prevention of noise-induced hearing loss. Her research activities are currently funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the

Department of Defense. She has previously led clinical trials evaluating possible prevention of noise-induced hearing loss and recently published two comprehensive review papers discussing hearing loss endpoints. Dr. Le Prell previously served as president and in other leadership roles for the National Hearing Conservation Association, and from 2017 to 2025 she served as an invited member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health National Occupational Research Agenda Hearing Loss Prevention Cross Sector Council. She is an invited participant in the World Health Organization “Make Listening Safe” campaign. Since October 2024, she has served as chair of the Auditory System Study Section for the NIH Center for Scientific Review. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Acoustical Society of America and the International Journal of Audiology, and she serves on the editorial board for Hearing Research. In 2020, she was compensated for participation in the Technical Advisory Board Annual Meeting for Hearing Lab Technology. Since 2021, she has received compensation for leading the Scientific Advisory Board for Bellucci Translational Hearing Center Creighton University. From 2021 to 2023, she was a coeditor for a journal supplement on behalf of the Defense Hearing Center of Excellence Pharmaceutical Interventions for Hearing Loss committee: working group on patient outcomes. From 2019 to 2022, Dr. Le Prell was a Board Member for the American Academy of Audiology Foundation and on a leadership advisory team for the National Hearing Conservation Association. From 2018 to 2019 she was a member of the American Academy of Audiology Task Force on the Role of Audiologists in the Provision of Pharmaceutical Agents for the Prevention or Treatment of Hearing loss. From 2018 to 2019 she was a member of the American Academy of Audiology Musician Task Force for Best Practices for Working with Musicians. She completed a Ph.D. in psychology and a postdoctoral fellowship in auditory pharmacology at the University of Michigan in laboratories located at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute.

Uchechukwu Megwalu, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery and division chief of comprehensive otolaryngology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Megwalu received his medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine, completed his residency at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, and received his M.P.H. degree from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. After residency, Dr. Megwalu joined the faculty at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he served as director of otolaryngology at Queens Hospital Center, and assistant regional director of otolaryngology for Queens Health Network from 2011 to 2015. Dr. Megwalu joined the Division of Comprehensive Otolaryngology at Stanford in 2016.

His clinical interests include thyroid and parathyroid disorders, head and neck tumors, sinusitis, and chronic ear disorders. Dr. Megwalu conducts outcomes/health services research, with a focus on health literacy, health disparities, and comparative effectiveness research.

Catherine V. Palmer, Ph.D., is a professor in the Departments of Communication Science and Disorders and Otolaryngology at the University of Pittsburgh and serves as the director of audiology for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Integrated Health System. Dr. Palmer conducts funded research in the areas of auditory learning post hearing aid fitting, the relationship between hearing and health outcomes, and matching technology to individual needs. She is currently in the process of developing a hearing screening product, but it is not on the market. She has published over 150 articles and book chapters in these topic areas as well as provided over 200 national and international presentations. Dr. Palmer teaches graduate level amplification courses at the University of Pittsburgh and serves as editor-in-chief of Seminars in Hearing. She is a licensed audiologist in the state of Pennsylvania. Dr. Palmer is a past president of the American Academy of Audiology and received the Honors of the Academy in 2023. She received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University prior to joining the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.

Carla Perissinotto, M.D., M.H.S., served as the first associate chief for geriatrics clinical programs at the University of California, San Francisco, from 2017 to 2021. In that role, she managed both inpatient and outpatient clinical programs. Dr. Perissinotto is a professor in the Division of Geriatrics, Department of Medicine. She is board certified in internal medicine, geriatrics, and palliative medicine. Her main work has been in home-based medical care where she provides medical care to homebound older adults. Dr. Perissinotto is passionate about working with diverse communities and improving the training of internal medicine residents and all learners in the care of older adults. She is also a recipient of the highly competitive Health Resources and Services Administration Geriatric Academic Career Award 2010-2015, with which she developed curricula to teach a wide range of learners on the care of elderly patients in diverse settings. Dr. Perissinotto has also gained national and international recognition for her research on the effects of loneliness on the health of older adults. She is frequently invited to discuss her research and discuss the clinical and policy implications of the health effects of loneliness.

Thomas A. Powers, Ph.D., is the founder/managing member of Powers Consulting, LLC, providing management consulting to the hearing health industry. He serves as an expert audiology consultant and strategic advisor

for the Hearing Industries Association, and a limited partner in Amplifi, LLC. Dr. Powers received his B.S. from the State University of New York at Geneseo, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Audiology from Ohio University. He began his career as a partner in an audiology private practice and has over 35 years of experience in the hearing health care industry. Prior to his current role, he was vice-president, government services and professional relations, for Sivantos, Inc. During his tenure at Siemens/Sivantos he was the compliance officer for 7 years. Dr. Powers is a member of American Academy of Audiology, Academy of Dispensing Audiologists, American Speech, Language and Hearing Association, International Society of Audiology, is a Distinguished Policy Fellow in the National Academies of Practice, and is a member of the American Auditory Society and served as president from 2004 to 2006. Dr. Powers currently holds an appointment as assistant professor in the Graduate Faculty in Biomedicine at Salus University and as adjunct research professor at Ohio University. In addition to his professional experience, Dr. Powers is also a hearing aid user.

Nicholas Reed, Au.D., Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Optimal Aging Institute with appointments in the Departments of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Population at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. He is the director of an audiology core, where he oversees the integration and management of hearing measures into multiple large epidemiologic cohort studies and clinical trials. His research focuses on the association of hearing loss among older adults and healthy aging outcomes including cognitive decline and health resource utilization, the effect of hearing intervention on health outcomes, and novel models of hearing care delivery. He was awarded the Early Career Research Award in 2021 from the American Auditory Society. He is currently compensated as an editor for the American Journal of Audiology and previously served in uncompensated roles on scientific advisory boards for Shoebox Audiometry from 2018 to 2021 and Neosensory from 2021 to 2023. In 2022, Dr. Reed coauthored an editorial on the use of the pure-tone average as a universal metric of hearing to improve public awareness and understanding of hearing. Dr. Reed completed his clinical doctorate at Towson University, an audiology clinical fellowship at Georgetown University Hospital, and his research doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. He previously served on the National Academies committees Evaluating Hearing Loss for Individuals with Cochlear Implants and Review of Relevant Literature Regarding Adverse Events Associated with Vaccines.

Sherri L. Smith, Au.D., Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences and is the chief of audiology across the Duke University Health System. She holds a faculty

appointment in the Department of Population Health Sciences and is a senior fellow in the Center for Aging. Prior to joining Duke in 2018, she spent 15 years at the Mountain Home Tennessee Veterans Affairs Medical Center and was an associate professor at East Tennessee State University. Dr. Smith’s clinical, research, and teaching experience focuses on hearing rehabilitation in older adults, with an emphasis on hearing aids, cochlear implants, and patient-centered audiologic rehabilitation. She has a background in patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) development, and the use of several PROMs in the assessment of self-perceived hearing difficulty and hearing rehabilitation outcomes in clinic and in research studies. Dr. Smith is a member of the American Auditory Society, Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology, and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. She was recently elected Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Dr. Smith’s training includes her Au.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Florida (2001/2003), followed by completion of the Veterans Administration Research Career Development program (2005–2013).

Fan-Gang Zeng, Ph.D., is a professor of otolaryngology in the School of Medicine, professor of biomedical engineering in the Samueli School of Engineering, and the founder and director of the Hearing and Speech Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Zeng has expertise in engineering better treatments for hearing loss and tinnitus. He is a member of the Collegium Oto-Rhino-Larygologicum Amicitiae Sacrum and a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Acoustical Society of America, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Dr. Zeng works closely with industry; he holds several patents as well as stock in several companies, but none directly in the space of outcome measures for adult hearing loss. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2023.

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE FELLOWS

Cameron Gettel, M.D., M.H.S., is an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and a clinical investigator at the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. He also serves as the codirector of the Yale Emergency Scholars Fellowship. Dr. Gettel’s research aims to advance the understanding of emergency department care transitions in the growing geriatric population through the identification and development of patient- and caregiver-reported outcome measures and then to design, implement, and validate innovative care transition strategies and interventions to improve clinical outcome. At the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, he works to develop the next generation

of performance measures across multiple care settings. Dr. Gettel has led work with the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine and the American College of Emergency Physicians, respectively addressing fundamental emergency workforce topics and developing innovative models to improve quality measure reporting within the specialty. Dr. Gettel received a B.S. from Elizabethtown College and an M.D. from Pennsylvania State College of Medicine. He completed a residency in emergency medicine at Brown University followed by a health services research and policy fellowship in the National Clinician Scholars Program at Yale University.

Paule Joseph, CRNP, Ph.D., is an early-career Afro-Latina nurse scientist, educator, and philanthropist who was born and raised in Venezuela, South America. As an international expert in chemosensation and metabolic diseases, she bridges the intersections of nursing, science, nutrition, public health, policy, and health disparities. She is a 2019 NIH Lasker Scholar and Distinguished Scholar. She is chief of the Section of Sensory Science and Metabolism in the Division of Intramural Clinical and Biological Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism with a dual appointment at the National Institute of Nursing Research. Dr. Joseph leads a multidimensional translational research program combining research and clinical practice focused on chemosensation (taste and smell), obesity, and substance abuse. Her interdisciplinary laboratory team conducts research focused on understanding neurological and molecular mechanisms underlying chemosensation and motivational pathways of eating behaviors and how they might differ among individuals with obesity, alcohol, and substance use disorders. Dr. Joseph is a leader of national and global nonprofit organizations dedicated to decreasing health disparities and increasing minority health promotion and access. When individuals reported taste and smell loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Joseph and her team began investigating the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on the chemical senses.

NATIONAL ACADEMIES STAFF

Tracy A. Lustig, D.P.M., M.P.H. (Study Director), is a senior program officer with the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). Dr. Lustig was trained in podiatric medicine and surgery and spent several years in private practice. In 1999 she was awarded a congressional fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and spent 1 year working in the office of Ron Wyden of the U.S. Senate. Dr. Lustig joined the National Academies in 2004. She has directed consensus studies on the geriatrics workforce, oral health, ovarian cancer research, social isolation and loneliness, and the pediatric subspecialty workforce, and served as the

codirector for a 2022 study on nursing home quality. She has also directed workshops on hearing loss and healthy aging, the allied health workforce, the use of telehealth to serve rural populations, assistive technologies, and biomarkers of disability. In 2009 Dr. Lustig staffed an Academies-wide initiative on the “Grand Challenges of an Aging Society” and subsequently helped to launch the Forum on Aging, Disability, and Independence. She is the study director for the Committee on Meaningful Outcome Measures in Adult Hearing Health Care. Dr. Lustig has a doctor of podiatric medicine degree from Temple University and an M.P.H. with a concentration in health policy from the George Washington University.

Ella Morse, M.P.H., is a research associate with the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). Before working at the National Academies, she directed the Arlington Public Schools COVID-19 Response Team as lead pandemic coordinator. In this role, she served 42 schools, 28,000 students, and 7,000 staff members by managing weekly in-school testing and case investigations, implementing mitigation strategies, and safeguarding isolation guidelines and procedures. Previously, Ms. Morse completed internships focusing on COVID-19 surveillance for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services and women’s health research for the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation. She holds a B.S. in public health with a minor in sustainability and an M.P.H. concentrating in epidemiology, both from the George Washington University.

Abian Hailu, B.S., is a senior program assistant with the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). Prior to joining the National Academies, he worked as an intern for two maternal health organizations focusing on policy research and reproductive justice. In this role, Mr. Hailu helped implement a new program aimed at supporting fathers alongside mothers during the postpartum period. Additionally, he created and helped distribute a comprehensive nutrition database specifically tailored to promote perinatal health in underserved areas. Mr. Hailu holds a B.S. from Virginia Commonwealth University in health sciences with a minor in psychology.

Sharyl J. Nass, Ph.D., serves as senior board director of the Board on Health Care Services and co-director of the National Cancer Policy Forum at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). The National Academies provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. To enable the best possible care for all patients, the board undertakes scholarly analysis of

the organization, financing, effectiveness, workforce, and delivery of health care, with emphasis on quality, cost, and accessibility. The forum examines policy issues pertaining to the entire continuum of cancer research and care. For more than two decades, Dr. Nass has worked on a broad range of health and science policy topics that includes the quality and safety of health care and clinical trials, developing technologies for precision medicine, and strategies to support clinician well-being. She has a Ph.D. from Georgetown University and undertook postdoctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as a research fellowship at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. She also holds a B.S. and an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has been the recipient of the Cecil Medal for Excellence in Health Policy Research, a Distinguished Service Award from the National Academies, and the Institute of Medicine staff team achievement award (as team leader).