Awards, Honors, and Appointments

Joan Teno Honored by Hospice

Joan Teno's work as a researcher - one of the nation's best on aging and dying - has earned her the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine's Award for Excellence in Scientific Research.

Teno (left, with patient), a professor of community health and medicine at Brown, received the honor at the nonprofit's annual assembly, held in January in New Orleans. The award recognizes "meaningful, exemplary research contributions to the field of hospice and palliative care."

When asked how Teno is perceived by colleagues, Marilyn Field, a senior policy officer at the Institute of Medicine, said this: "She is very well-respected for her intellect and her commitment and her achievements. She is a leader."

A glance at Teno's work through the lens of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and government reports, reveals a productive and passionate mind. Teno has training in a variety of issues affecting the elderly, including dementia, falls, cancer care, pain management, and bereavement. She is best known, however, for her work to improve end-of-life care.

Teno has written dozens of journal articles on advance directives. On the topic, she has presented papers at medical meetings, written a chapter for an ethics textbook - and even given an interview on the Today Show.

But Teno perhaps is best known for a report published in 1996 in the Journal of the American Medical Association that bluntly concluded: "Modern medicine has largely failed to note how a patient lives during the now prolonged course toward dying."

Since then, Teno has focused her attention on filling this hole, investigating where Americans die, what kind of care they receive, and how that care can improve.

Teno created a web site called Facts on Dying that gives state-by-state statistics on where people die and the quality of care they receive. With colleagues at Brown, she conducted a groundbreaking study, published in JAMA last year, on the experiences of family members who'd lost loved ones in nursing homes, hospices, and hospitals across the country. The team found that people who died at home under hospice care had a more favorable experience than those who died at institutions.

Due in part to her work, the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office in 2001 created an end-of-life task force to improve care for the dying. And the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization used Teno's research to revise a family satisfaction survey, now used by 400 hospice organizations nationwide, to improve their services. The survey is Teno's proudest achievement.

"It's wonderful to get a paper in JAMA," she says, "but what you really want to do is make a difference."

Elaine Bearer, associate professor of medical science, has earned the Moore Distinguished Scholar Award at the California Institute of Technology, where she is spending the year as a visiting scholar. Bearer is the first person who is not a full professor to receive the Moore award, which is given to outside researchers based on their scientific creativity and contributions.

The award funds Bearer's salary and expenses while at Caltech. A pathologist with an interest in Alzheimer's disease, Bearer is at the Pasadena campus to learn more about high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. Bearer hopes to see how herpes, the cold sore virus, might move through the brain. Bearer has found that herpes interacts with a myloid precursor protein, which makes the plaques found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.

Bearer uses manganese as an MRI contrast agent to trace paths in the brains of living mice. She hopes to use the technique to map not only disease but the routes of perception, thought, and conscious action.

The National Institutes of Health recently selected David B. Abrams to serve as associate director for behavioral and social sciences research and director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research.

In his new role, Abrams, professor of psychiatry and human behavior, professor of community health, and co-director of the Medical School's Transdisciplinary Research at Butler Hospital, leads agency-wide initiatives in behavioral and social sciences research, and facilitates collaborations across socio-behavioral and biomedical disciplines. Abrams also is the founding director of Brown's Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at The Miriam Hospital.

Ross Cheit (left), associate professor of political science and public policy, is the newest member of the Rhode Island Ethics Commission. Gov. Donald Carcieri announced Cheit's appointment on Dec. 20.

Cheit "is one of New England's premier scholars in the field of ethics," Carcieri said. "His vast knowledge and expertise will greatly contribute to the deliberations of the Ethics Commission."

Cheit joined the Brown faculty in 1986. Since then, his work has included an examination of quasi-public agencies' compliance with the Open Meetings Act, and how Rhode Island's municipalities make public records available to the public.

Brown athletes demonstrated their intensity on the courts and on the ice in December, producing tournament championships for men's basketball as well as men's ice hockey.

In Orlando, Florida, senior Jason Forte, the Ivy League Player of the Year, scored twenty-one points and was named the tournament MVP in leading Brown to a 65-52 victory over Charleston Southern in the championship game of the UCF Holiday Invitational. The December 29 win gave the men's basketball team its first in-season tournament championship in thirty-three years, when Brown took first place in the Hall of Fame Classic in the 1971-72 season.

And on December 31, in Storrs, Connecticut, the men's ice hockey team scored five straight goals, including a three-goal third period, en route to a 5-2 win over Holy Cross in the championship game of the Toyota UConn Hockey Classic. The tournament victory is Brown hockey's first championship at a holiday tournament since winning the Downeast Tournament in 1984.

Dennis C. Landis, curator of European books for the John Carter Brown Library, received a citation from the Connecticut General Assembly congratulating him for his "ongoing efforts and dedication to the restoration of the Old Brooklyn Meetinghouse" in Brooklyn, Conn. Landis is Chairman of the Restoration Committee for the Old Brooklyn Meeting House, which was built in 1771.

Arnold-Peter C. Weiss, M.D., professor of orthopaedics and assistant dean of medicine at the Medical School, is co-editor of Hand Surgery, a new two-volume textbook published by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. The Journal of Hand Surgery and the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery both praised Hand Surgery for its contributions to the latest surgical technology.

Keith Brown, assistant professor (research) at the Watson Institute for International Studies, received the 2004 Barbara Jelavich Book Prize Honorable Mention from the American Association for the Advancement for Slavic Studies. The prize recognizes his book The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation.

Thomas J. Biersteker, director of the Watson Institute for International Studies and Brown's Henry R. Luce Professor, serves on the five-member panel that will select the 2004 winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize for the most outstanding book on international affairs.

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University recently named Melani Cammett an Academy Scholar at its Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. The award, a two-year research fellowship, will allow Cammett to conduct full-time research on her new project, "State Building and Social Services in Divided Societies.