ADAO 14th Annual International Asbestos Awareness and Prevention Conference
“Where Knowledge and Action Unite”
April 13 – 15, 2018
Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel
2018 Conference Info | Know Before You Go | Registration | Marriott Reservations | Events | Agenda | RSVP for Events | Newseum Tour and Causal Dinner | “Meet the Artists” Reception and Awards Dinner | Brunch | Honorees | Speakers | Speaker Information | Tributes | Sponsors | Media | 2017 Livestream Videos
2005 – 2017 Conference Infographic | 2005 – 2017 Conferences Honorees & Keynote Speakers
Posted on February 11, 2018
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) is proud to present a weekly series “Meet the Speakers and Honorees,“ which will highlight the esteemed participants of our highly anticipated 14th Annual International Asbestos Awareness & Prevention Conference! The ADAO conference, which will take place on April 13-15, 2018 in Washington, D.C., combines 30 expert opinions, victims’ stories, and new technological advancements from 9 countries across the globe into one united voice raising awareness about asbestos. ADAO is the only U.S. nonprofit that organizes annual conferences dedicated solely to preventing asbestos exposure and eliminating asbestos-caused diseases. Register here today! http://bit.ly/2018ADAOAAPC
Session I Speakers: Earl Dotter; Dr. Arthur Frank; Dr. Richard Lemen; Dr. Celeste Monforton; Linda Reinstein; Cortney Segmen
Session I Moderator: Dr. Steven Markowitz
***
Earl Dotter, began photographing coal miners in 1969, then the most dangerous job in America. After which, he focused on other hazardous occupations in the USA. After 30 years of documentation he created the exhibit and book, THE QUIET SICKNESS: A Photographic Chronicle of Hazardous Work in America. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health since his appointment in 1999. In the year 2000, Dotter received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship to document commercial fishing. It had become our nation’s most dangerous trade. After 9/11, he photographed the rescue recovery effort at Ground Zero. For that exhibit work he received APHA’s Alice Hamilton Award. Currently, Dotter is following hazardous jobs new immigrants perform in the USA.
Arthur L. Frank, PhD, MD is a physician board certified in both internal medicine and occupational medicine and currently serves as Professor of Public Health and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia. He is also a Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary) at the Drexel College of Medicine. He also holds a position at Drexel as Professor of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. A life-long academic, Dr. Frank has previously taught at Mount Sinai, the University of Kentucky and in the University of Texas System. He has served many governmental agencies in the US and has carried out research and has been a governmental advisor internationally. Trained in both occupational medicine and internal medicine, Dr. Frank has been interested in the health hazards of asbestos for more than 35 years. He has published a great deal of work on the hazards of asbestos, and clinically cared for asbestos affected patients. He has lectured internationally about the problems of asbestos, and worked in many settings looking at the diseases caused by this material. His research interests have been in the areas of occupational cancers and occupational lung diseases, as well as agricultural safety and health. For thirty-seven years he held a commission in the U.S. Public Health Service (active and inactive) and served on active duty both at the NIH and at NIOSH. Arthur is the ADAO Science Advisory Board Co-Chair.
Richard Lemen, PhD, MSPH is a former Assistant Surgeon General of the United States and also served as the Acting Director and the Deputy Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health before his retirement. He has been a practicing epidemiologist for more than forty years, and has taught graduate level courses on environmental and occupational health issues, including asbestos, at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He has also testified on behalf of asbestos victims; Dr. Lemen is a world-renowned author, speaker, and lecturer on this topic.
Steven Markowitz, MD, DrPH, is an occupational medicine physician, directs the Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment (CCHE) at Queens College, City University of New York. He is Adjunct Professor of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He received his B.A. from Yale University and MD and DrPH (epidemiology) from Columbia University. With the United Steelworkers, Dr. Markowitz directs the Worker Health Protection Program, a national medical screening program for Department of Energy nuclear weapons workers that has since 2000 used low-dose CT scanning to screen over 13,000 workers for early lung cancer detection. Dr. Markowitz has also continued the work of Dr. Irving Selikoff in documenting asbestos-related mortality among North American insulators. Dr. Markowitz is Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine (AJIM) and the Associate Editor of a major textbook, Environmental and Occupational Medicine, 4th Edition.
Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH is a professorial lecturer in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Her research includes assessment of worker health and safety laws and policies, and their effectiveness in protecting workers from illnesses, disability and death. She has published articles on strategies used by economic interests, including the asbestos industry, to manipulate scientific evidence to create uncertainty about health risks in order to delay protective regulatory action and compensation. Prior to her academic appointment, Dr. Monforton was a federal employee at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA, 1991-1995) and Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA, 1996-2001). Dr. Monforton served on the special panels appointed by the West Virginia Governor to investigate the January 2006 Sago coal mine disaster that took the lives of 12 workers, and the April 2010 disaster at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 workers. Dr. Monforton is an active member of the American Public Health Association, and serves in a leadership position with the organization’s Occupational Health and Safety Section.
Linda Reinstein is the President/CEO and Co-Founder of Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO). Reinstein became an activist when her husband, Alan, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2003. She co-founded the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization in 2004, and now serves as President and CEO. Reinstein has been a strong political voice for justice in every major asbestos-related issue. Reinstein, a highly sought-after international speaker, has frequently served as a Congressional witness and presented at the Department of Labor (OSHA), British House of Commons, United Nations Congress, American Public Health Association, and to other audiences around the world. Recognized as an expert with nearly 40 years of nonprofit experience in building and sustaining grassroots organizations, Reinstein specializes in developing, implementing, and leveraging integrated social media campaigns. Over the years, Reinstein has been asked to create social media educational materials and facilitate workshops. Focused on national and international occupational and environmental disease prevention, Reinstein’s proficiency in the powerful advocacy space of online media has greatly increased the effectiveness of ADAO’s core mission of education, advocacy, and community support actions. She has won many prestigious awards including the Global Impact Award (2013), from the Independent Asbestos Training Providers; Bruce Vento Hope Builder Award (2011), from the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation; the highest level of the Presidential Volunteer Service Award for her 4,000 hours of volunteerism during her lifetime (2010); and the Heart and Soul Award in from the Manhattan Beach Women in Business Association (2005).
Cortney Segmen is a Teach for America Capitol Hill Fellow. She was the first in her family to graduate from college when she earned her B.S. in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience with a minor in Writing from the University of Michigan before joining Teach for America Detroit as a 2014 corps member. During her three years as an elementary educator, Cortney coached elementary and middle school volleyball, worked as an intern for the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (in 2007, her father passed away after a seven-year battle with peritoneal mesothelioma), and facilitated anti-bias trainings for Camp Kesem-UM counselors. In 2016, Cortney grew more interested in policy after she served as a Leadership for Educational Equity Policy and Advocacy Summer Fellow with the New York City Department of Education’s Knowledge Sharing team. In her free time, she likes to spend time with family and friends, run outdoors, and travel.
***
Check back next week for the fourth installment of “Meet the Speakers and Honorees” featuring our 2018 conference Session II Speakers.
In Unity,
Linda
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, does not make legal referrals.