Dr. Grace Ma

Biography

Dr. Grace Ma is a Professor in the Department of Public Health and Director of Center for Asian Health, College of Health Professions at Temple University. She received her PhD from the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests focus on community-based participatory cancer prevention and early detection, health disparities, smoking cessation and other substance abuse intervention, chronic illness, quality of health care and healthcare service policies among Asian ethnic populations. Dr. Ma’s current ATECAR-Asian Community Cancer network, funded by NCI-NIH, focuses on smoking cessation and lung cancer prevention, cervical and breast cancer, Hep B-liver cancer, colorectal and stomach cancer, chronic disease interventions and healthcare access in Asian communities. She established the first Asian Community Cancer Coalition (ACCC) with a membership of 48 community-based organizations and 24 health provider partners in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.  Dr. Ma’s research network and comparative research collaboration extends to the Southeast and Southwest regions of China. She serves on International Advisory Committees for TB, Hepatitis B, tobacco control and other chronic disease issues in Asian communities. Over the past decade, Dr. Ma has been awarded over $15.5 million for seventeen (17) NIH, other federal and foundations’ funded research projects in her expertise areas. She is an active member of several professional associations, journal editorial boards, national and statewide tobacco and cancer control plans. Dr. Ma has authored or co-authored several books and over 60 publications in peer reviewed journals and delivered over 260 professional presentations at regional, national and international conferences. The impacts of these publications and presentations are reflected in public health academics, research and practices, as well as in Asian and minority health care policies and programs.  Dr. Ma is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar, who has received numerous distinguished awards from academic institutions, scientific associations, and government agencies that include the 2005 National Institutes of Health’s Martin Luther King Award in Reducing Health Disparities, the 2004 NCI-CRCHD Community Healthcare Leadership Award, and the 2001 NCI’s Atlantic Region CIS award.   Contact me | Back to top | Home Gene Matthews, J.D. is the Director of the Institute of Public Health Law, which is an operating arm of the CDC Foundation in Atlanta, Georgia. The mission of this new Institute is to expand the use of law as a tool in the practice of public health through outreach, training, and coordinated research. Mr. Matthews served as the Legal Advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta from 1979 to 2004 and, as manager of the legal staff there for 25 years, handled a wide range of public health law issues. Most recently, Mr. Matthews provided leadership for CDC's development of a Public Health Law Program, and he has guided this exciting initiative to reach out to both the legal community and to public health practitioners.  In June 2004, Mr. Matthews received the Distinguished Career Award of the Public Health Law Association. He holds faculty appointments at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health and the Georgia State University College of Law. Mr. Matthews is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Law and is a member of the North Carolina Bar.   Contact me | Back to top | Home An internationally-recognized expert on mental disability law, Michael Perlin has devoted his career to championing legal rights for people with mental disabilities. A prolific author of thirteen books and well over 150 scholarly articles on all aspects of mental disability law, Professor Perlin says that his ninth book, The Hidden Prejudice: Mental Disability on Trial (2000), "represents my lifetime work." The book is an attempt to educate society about how the fear of persons with mental illness creates a hidden bias against them that prevents equal justice, a form of discrimination he calls "sanism." A teacher-lawyer-advocate who advises mental health professionals, hospitals, advocates, activists, lawyers, and governments, Professor Perlin has worked directly on mental disability cases as a deputy public defender and as director of the Division of Mental Health Advocacy in the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate.  Professor Perlin travels around the globe to speak out about the legal rights of people with mental disabilities. In conjunction with Mental Disability Rights International, a U.S.-based human rights advocacy organization, he has presented mental disability training workshops in Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Uruguay.  In his role as Director of the of the International Mental Disability Law Reform Project of New York Law School’s Justice Action Center, he has run similar workshops in Taiwan. Professor Perlin has created the first online, distance learning program in mental disability law, and has taught sections of this program internationally in Nicaragua and Japan

Research Interest

Clinical Sciences.