University of Pennsylvania
Melissa Berkowitz, MPP is a Project Manager in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. She received her Master of Public Policy with a Policy Analysis Specialization from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany and her BA in History from New York University. She has studied and worked in New York City, Accra, Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Philadelphia in the fields of international entrepreneurial development, low-income home care, veterans’ care, workers’ rights protection, and international education. Her research interests focus on the socioeconomic impacts of life and health shocks. She is currently working on projects related to the informal care market for older adults, the effects of cognitive training on older adults, and the variation in end of life care.
Norma B. Coe, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medical Ethics & Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD in Economics from MIT and BA in Economics from the College of William & Mary. Dr. Coe is a health economist whose research focuses on identifying causal effects of policies that directly and indirectly impact health, human behavior, health care access, and health care utilization. She has studied healthcare costs, costs to caregivers, the quality of care delivered in an informal vs. formal care setting, the cost-effectiveness of various interventions, and worked with forecasting models. In her research projects, Dr. Coe uses econometric and health services research techniques to answer pressing questions for policymakers about aging in America.
Liz Taggert, MPH is a Statistical Analyst at Penn in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy. Ms. Taggert has a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from Drexel University. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Health and Societies. In recent years, she has worked on surveillance of varicella-zoster virus and heavy metal exposures in both local and state health departments. Her research interests include infectious disease epidemiology, chronic diseases of aging, and disease prevention. Her current research projects are focused on patient outcomes for those with dementia related to informal care versus formal care and overall patterns in long-term care utilization.
University of Washington
Sherry Willis, PhD, her research focuses on lifespan cognitive development, adult development and aging, cognitive interventions, midlife risks of cognitive impairment, and everyday functioning. Dr. Willis is a PI on ACTIVE, an NIA funded national behavioral intervention clinical trial. Dr. Willis developed one of the cognitive intervention programs employed in the trial. Five years after training, elderly in the intervention arm maintained a higher level of cognitive functioning on the abilities trained and reported less difficulty in performing activities of independent living compared to controls. Dr. Willis has published in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Psychology and Aging, Behavioral Medicine, Generations, Journal of International Neuropsychology Society, European Journal of Ageing.
Johns Hopkins University
George W. Rebok, PhD has a life-course developmental orientation, a background in gerontology and cognitive aging, developmental psychology, prevention science, and public mental health, and postdoctoral training in neuropsychology, neuroscience, epidemiology, and biostatistics. Dr. Rebok is a PI on ACTIVE, an NIA funded national behavioral intervention clinical trial. His major research interests are focused in three interrelated areas: 1) identification of early risk and protective factors on later life cognitive health and daily function; 2) prevention of age-related cognitive decline, memory loss, depression, and disability; 3) study of the short- and long-term outcomes of cognitive intervention trials with children and with normal and impaired older adults.