University of Michigan experts in cancer biology, emergency heart care, bone biology and chronic disease care are among the new members of the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.
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The NAM, part of the National Academies, was formerly called the Institute of Medicine.
Dr. Kathleen Cho, Dr. Laurie McCauley, Dr. Robert Neumar and Marita Titler were elected to the NAM in recognition of their major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care and public health.
With their election, U-M now has 54 past and present members of the NAM on faculty.
Cho is the Peter A. Ward Professor and vice chair for academic affairs in the Medical School’s Department of Pathology, and a professor of internal medicine.
A leading pathologist, she is widely recognized for her diagnostic expertise and laboratory research in gynecological cancer. After receiving her medical degree from Vanderbilt University, she trained at Johns Hopkins University and served on its faculty before coming to Michigan in 1998.
A notable area of Cho’s work includes providing insights into molecular mechanisms by which human papillomaviruses contribute to cervical cancer. She also has identified key signaling defects in specific ovarian cancer subtypes and developed unique models for studying ovarian tumor biology. These models are being used to explore new strategies to prevent, detect and treat ovarian cancer.
Cho’s research has earned her more than two decades of grant support from the National Cancer Institute, the Ovarian Cancer Research Program of the Department of Defense and several private foundations.
She has served on a number of National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense study sections, and currently serves on an IOM committee on the State of the Science in Ovarian Cancer Research.
A member of the editorial boards of a number of journals, she has been elected to leadership and advisory positions in top national and international pathology societies, including the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, the American Society of Investigative Pathology and the International Society of Gynecological Pathologists. She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars.
McCauley is the William K. and Mary Anne Najjar Professor of Periodontics and dean of the School of Dentistry, and professor of pathology at the Medical School. The 14th dean of dentistry at U-M, she has been on the faculty at U-M since 1992 and formerly served as chair of the Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine.
She earned her bachelor’s, dental, master’s in dentistry and doctorate in veterinary pathobiology degrees from Ohio State University. A diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology, she is a fellow in the American College of Dentists and the International College of Dentists.
For more than 20 years, she has led an active research program in hormonal controls and cellular mechanisms of bone remodeling, parathyroid hormone anabolic actions in bone, and prostate cancer skeletal metastasis.
She has served on the council of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research and on the National Advisory Dental & Craniofacial Research Council at the National Institutes of Health, as well as serving as associate editor of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.
The recipient of numerous awards and honors, she is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has received the Basic Research in Biological Mineralization Award from the International Association for Dental Research, the William J. Gies Award presented by the American Academy of Periodontology and the inaugural Paula Stern Achievement Award from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Neumar is professor and chair of the Medical School’s Department of Emergency Medicine, an international leader in emergency cardiac care and resuscitation science, and an expert in brain damage after cardiac arrest.
After medical school and a residency in emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, doctoral work in physiology at Wayne State University, and service on the University of Pennsylvania faculty, he came to Michigan in 2012.
As chair of the American Heart Association’s Emergency Cardiovascular Committee, he played a key role in defining post-cardiac arrest syndrome and developing the AHA’s guidelines for advanced cardiovascular life support and post-cardiac arrest care.
An advocate for emergency-care research focused on time-sensitive illness and injury, he has worked through the National Institutes of Health to garner support for the field, including the establishment of a new NIH Office of Emergency Care Research.
His research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of ischemic and traumatic brain injury, and developing strategies for neuroprotection, including therapeutic hypothermia and inhibition of pathologic proteases. As chair, he led the establishment of the Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care.
He has fostered the development of critical care as a new subspecialty of emergency medicine, including leading the creation of the Joyce and Don Massey Family Foundation Emergency Critical Care Center at University Hospital, the first of its kind in the country.
Neumar has received the Award for Outstanding Contribution in Research from the American College of Emergency Physicians, and has served as a reviewer for the NIH, Department of Defense and the American Heart Association study sections.
Titler holds the Rhetaugh G. Dumas Endowed Chair in the School of Nursing, where she is a professor and chair of the Department of Systems, Populations and Leadership.
She earned her master’s and doctorate degrees in nursing at the University of Iowa, where she built her academic career before coming to Michigan in 2009.
She is a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, and serves on the executive committee of the NIH-funded U-M Center for Complexity and Self-management of Chronic Disease.
Titler’s research focuses on outcomes effectiveness and implementation science, largely focused on studying and improving care for older adults in areas such as pain management, cancer care, heart failure and fall prevention. Her work in outcomes effectiveness research has demonstrated the cost and unique contributions of nursing care to outcomes of hospitalized older adults.
Through her work, she seeks to understand why some implementation interventions are effective in translating research into practice in some contexts of care delivery, while others are not.
She is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and directs the National Nursing Practice Network, a community of more than 100 practices and health systems across the U.S. committed to the promotion and implementation of evidence-based practices to improve health care and population health.
Titler has served on the National Advisory Council for the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Committee on Standards for Developing Trustworthy Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Institute of Medicine, as well as the National Cancer Institute’s Symptom Management and Health-related Quality of Life Steering Committee.
Her awards include the American Organization of Nurse Executives National Researcher Award, the Sigma Theta Tau International Elizabeth McWilliams Miller Award for Excellence in Research, and the President’s award from the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research.
— Sharon Grayden of the School of Dentistry and MaryBeth Lewis of the School of Nursing contributed to this article.
