May 1, 2013

New and Continuing Personnel at IWRI

IWRI has indeed grown significantly since its inception and thus I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you the following bios for our new staff:

Nicole Fossos-Wong is a new member of the Sacred Journey Project Team. Nicole grew up in the Seattle area and briefly lived in Austin, TX before returning to Seattle last spring. Her passions in life are cooking, enjoying the outdoors, and spending time with her family and Golden Retriever, Charlie. She and her husband are expecting their first child, a daughter, later this spring. She is very excited to take on the new adventure of becoming a parent. Nicole joined the University of Washington as a staff member in 2005 and has worked in the research areas of trauma, substance use and risk prevention and intervention since that time. She will serve as a Project Coordinator and will be assisting in the cultural adaptation of the Cognitive Processing Therapy Treatment Manual for use with young women in the Yakama Nation and in carrying out the pilot study this fall.

 

 

My name is Rachelle McCarty, ND MPH. I’m originally from Idaho but have lived in the Puget Sound region since 1991, and I love it here. I have an undergraduate degree in Psychology, a Master’s in Public Health – Epidemiology, and my Naturopathic Doctorate degree. The common thread linking all of these educational pursuits is my desire to empower individuals and communities to optimize health-promoting behavior effectively and in a manner that is respectful of beliefs, culture, and environment. When I’m not at my workstation in Tulalip, I enjoy skiing at Steven’s Pass, training for my second sprint triathlon, spending time with family, and enjoying my friends while playing music, discussing books, or catching up over a potluck.  A great passion is travel; my family hosted many foreign exchange students when I was growing up and I was also an exchange student to Germany, and studied abroad in England. I’m thrilled to join the IWRI team as a Project Director on the Healthy Hearts 2 project at Tulalip.

My name is Cam Solomon. I am IWRI’s new Data Analyst/Data Manager for the IWRI-NoCE. I have a wonderful family, a wife, Amy, and a 5-year-old boy named West, who are my main focus in life. I have a number of interests, including biking, hiking, skiing, camping and anything else that gets me out into the woods and mountains. I am starting to get involved with urban infrastructure to improve biking and pedestrian experiences, to provide more health, more happiness, and a better city and world. In particular, I’m working with a Greenways group up in my sidewalk-less community in Lake City, to try to provide ways for folks to get around without cars, if that’s what they choose.

 

 

Familiar faces, continuing IWRI-NoCE Staff:

Michelle Tiedeman – Ms. Tiedeman, a member of the Alutiiq tribe, graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Psychology and has been working with IWRI since 2009 as a Research Coordinator on the original Healthy Hearts project based at Tulalip. She will continue this role on the Healthy Hearts 2 project, also based at Tulalip. She has a 6-month-old son named Leo who she describes as amazing and her greatest blessing. In her free time (when she can find any), she enjoys playing and watching basketball.

 

 

 

 

Chuan Zhou – Dr. Zhou has worked with Dr. Bonnie Duran and the Center for Indigenous Health Research with the National Congress of American Indians for several years as a statistician. He is a Research Associate Professor with the Department of Pediatrics and Health Services here at the University of Washington. As a member of the IWRI-NoCE, he will continue to provide his statistical expertise to all of our Center’s research projects.

 

 

Please give a warm welcome to these team members – we are glad to have them as a part of our IWRI National Center of Excellence family!