Executive Director
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Elliott is the executive director of the Essentia Institute of Rural Health (EIRH). He represents and leads the research enterprise that engages Essentia Health providers and its patients and communities in educational and research activities. Dr. Elliott has a successful record in community-based research projects, leading research teams, and building research programs, such as EIRH. He served as chief of education and research at SMDC Health System for 20 years. Some of his most pertinent research experiences and studies in rural health research and dissemination include the Lake Superior Rural Cancer Care Project, a cluster randomized trial of communities conducted across rural Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan testing interventions to improve rural providers’ cancer care knowledge, competencies, and practice behaviors, and their cancer patients’ outcomes; and Minnesota Cancer Pain Project, a cluster randomized trial of communities conducted across Minnesota testing interventions to improve providers’ knowledge, competencies and practice behaviors, and their cancer patients’ pain outcomes. Dr. Elliott has served on many NCI study sections, both as member and chair. He has published more than 125 scholarly works. In addition to research activities, Dr. Elliott practiced medical oncology/hematology for 25 years and served as medical director of the SMDC Hospice and Palliative Care Program and medical director of the SMDC Pain Management program.
Contact Information:
Phone: 218-786-3755Fax: 218-727-8159 Email: telliott@eirh.org
Senior Research Scientist
Dr. Gessert is a senior research scientist at the Essentia Institute of Rural Health. His principal research interests include end-of-life decision-making, with a special interest in rural-urban differences in end-of-life care; the use of feeding tubes in advanced dementia; and improving our understanding of the normal lifespan. His current research includes an examination of family decisions to forego dialysis in end-stage renal disease, and an examination of regional differences in dialysis decision-making. Dr. Gessert teaches bioethics to medical students at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Prior to coming to Duluth in 2000, Dr. Gessert served as the president of the Kansas Health Institute, which studies the social determinants of health, and as vice chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he developed and directed the Wisconsin Area Health Education Center System. Dr. Gessert also serves on the Board of the Duluth Clinic Foundation in Duluth, and chairs the Essentia Health Institutional Review Board.
Phone: 218-786-8176 Fax: 218-727-8159Email: cgessert@eirh.org
Phone: 218-786-2149
Pat Conway, PhD, LCSW, Senior Research Scientist, conducts research and program evaluation with health and behavioral health related programs, including:
Articles and book chapters are currently under development or have recently been submitted in the areas of behavioral health, especially with Native Americans; pregnancy prevention; grandparent caregivers; and orphan train riders. Dr. Conway is the editor of the Journal of Family Social Work. She has worked as a social worker in the fields of child welfare, family violence, mental health, AIDS, health, gerontology, loss and grief, and disabilities. She has been a social work educator since the mid 1980's and has conducted training, research, and program evaluations for private non-profit and public agencies throughout that period. Conway has a BA in Social Work and a Master of Social Work from the University of Oklahoma and a Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin. She enjoys her family, her pets, gardening, reading, knitting, and traveling.
Phone: 218-786-2149Fax: 218-727-8159 Email: Pat.Conway@eirh.org
Dr. Haller is a senior research scientist at the Essentia Institute of Rural Health and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine - Duluth Campus. Her background is in physiology and analytical methodology in biomedical research including design, conduct, monitoring and analysis of clinical trials; population-based studies; utilization of large data sets (such as CMS administrative data) and electronic health records for health services research. Dr. Haller’s primary research interests are in rural and minority health with emphasis on assessment of vitamin D status and its relation to chronic diseases; and health issues in older adults. Currently she investigates the relationships between age and ethnicity and a response to vitamin D supplementation by food, documentation of vitamin D status in rural and American Indian populations, as well as effects of vitamin D status on cardiovascular health and diabetes in American Indian postmenopausal women. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota Medical School Duluth and EIRH, she was a research associate in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology of Thermoreception and Heat Exchange and the Department of Physiology at the Petrozavodsk State University Faculty of Medicine, Petrozavodsk, Russian Federation. Dr. Haller serves on the Board of the Duluth Sister Cities International and the Scientific Review Committee for the Duluth Medical Research Institute.
Phone: 218-786-8185Fax: 218-727-8159Email: ihaller@eirh.org
Phone: 786-8118
Dr. M. Nawal Lutfiyya is a Chronic Disease Epidemiologist with 17 years experience in both medicine and public health. Dr. Lutfiyya came to Essentia from Winnipeg where she was employed by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority as a Senior Epidemiologist and was on the University of Manitoba Medical School faculty in the Department of Community Health Sciences. Prior to working in Winnipeg, Nawal worked at the University of Illinois-Chicago College of Medicine at Rockford where she was the Director of Research for the Department of Family and Community Medicine. During her tenure there she also held a joint faculty appointment in the School of Public Health at UIC. Nawal trained at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She took her undergraduate training in sociology and social psychology at the University of Manitoba. In addition, Nawal has completed both post-doctoral and fellowship training. Dr. Lutfiyya has taught clinical epidemiology, preventive medicine, health communication and chronic disease management to medical students and analytic methods and bio-statistics to both medical and graduate students. GIS featured prominently in the epidemiological and analytic methods courses Nawal has taught. Most recently she developed three GIS workshops for WRHA and University of Manitoba researchers and was asked by the Public Health Agency of Canada to offer the workshops in regional areas of Canada to help build the epidemiological infrastructure in the country.
Dr. Lutfiyya is well published and her work can be found in a wide variety of journals such as the Postgraduate Medicine, Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, International Journal of Health Care Quality, the Journal of General Internal Medicine and the Journal of Women’s Health. Among other things Nawal’s work has focused on childhood obesity in rural U.S. populations, differences in the quality of care in rural vs. urban U.S. hospitals, rural residence as a risk factor for adolescent smoking, and the differences in the quality of diabetes related care received by rural vs. urban adults with diabetes. Her most recent publication, The Impact of Rural Training Experiences on Medical Students: A Critical Review, will appear in the February 2011 issue of the journal Academic Medicine. Presently Nawal is working on a study examining the differences in daily fruit and vegetable consumption between U.S. rural and metropolitan adults identifying the characteristics of U.S. rural adults consuming at least 5 daily servings of combined fruits and vegetables. She plans on presenting the findings of this study to the National Rural Health Association at their annual meeting in May 2011. She is also working on a review study of rural vs. urban childhood obesity prevention interventions.
Phone: 218-786-8118Fax: 218-727-8159 Email: mLutfiyya@eirh.org
Principal Research Scientist
Phone: 218-786-2128
Catherine A. McCarty, PhD, MPH, RD, was born and raised in Duluth. She received her BS and MPH degrees in nutrition from the University of Minnesota and her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh. After completing her PhD, she was the Head of the Epidemiology Research Unit in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne, Australia for eight years. During that time, she directed a population-based study of eye disease in Victoria, Australia and collaborated on similar projects in Hyderabad and Chennai, India. Dr. McCarty returned to the US in 2001 as a Senior Research Scientist at Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation where she was the Principal Investigator for the Personalized Medicine Research Project, a population-based biobank with more than 20,000 adult participants and 20 active research projects. Dr. McCarty's awards include the Gwen Sebold research award at Marshfield Clinic, Alumni of the Year from her undergraduate college at the University of Minnesota and Silver Fellow of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. She has published more than 275 peer-reviewed manuscripts, earned more than $6 million in research grants, been invited to give many scientific talks, and mentored many students. She is on the VA Genomic Medicine Program Advisory Committee and has served as a consultant to several organizations seeking to start biobanks. She plans to continue vision research at EIRH and collaborate on translational research projects in different areas to improve rural health care delivery.
Phone: 218-786-2128Fax: 218-727-8159 Email: CMcCarty@eirh.org
Phone: 218-786-1280
Dr. Waring is an epidemiologist with over 20 years of experience conducting epidemiologic research on a broad range of topics and populations. His expertise includes design, management, and analysis of large population-based databases from studies on Guam, Olmsted County (Minnesota), Harris County and other large metropolitan areas (Texas), and Central Wisconsin. He played an integral role in the development of the Texas Alzheimer's Research Consortium, a large scale longitudinal study of genetic and biological markers for Alzheimer's disease involving five academic medical centers in Texas. Dr. Waring's primary research interests are aging and Alzheimer's disease, particularly modifiable risk factors associated with the cognitive continuum from healthy aging to early dementia. He is also interested in rural health issues, comparative effectiveness research to inform efficient and effective health care delivery, and translational research that bridges the gaps between basic science and clinical practice. He is currently involved in the Aging Studies Workgroup of the NIH funded HMO Research Network (HMORN), the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation Farm Cohort, the University of Minnesota Center for Agricultural Health Studies Injury and Illness Surveillance Study, and a population-based epidemiologic study of periodontal disease in Central and Northern Wisconsin. He is also a member of the Steering Committee for AGRICOH (International Consortium of Agricultural Cohorts) funded by the National Cancer Institute and the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the Comparative Effectiveness Research Workgroup of the NIH-NHLBI funded Cardiovascular Research Network. Dr. Waring plans to continue aging and Alzheimer's research at EIRH and foster collaborations with investigators within the Essentia Health system, the HMO Research Network, the University of Minnesota Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and other community partnerships throughout the region.
Phone: 218-786-1280Fax: 218-727-8159 Email: Stephen.Waring@eirh.org
Biostatistician
Colleen Renier is a Biostatistician with the Essentia Institute of Rural Health. She joined our research division in 1998 after 17 years as the statistical analyst for the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine - Duluth Campus.
Principal research interests include etiology and consequences of injuries sustained by members of agricultural households. Since 1988, Ms. Renier has been a member of the research consortium, headed by University of Minnesota Professor Susan Goodwin Gerberich, Ph.D., which conducted the groundbreaking Olmsted Agricultural Trauma Study, followed by the Regional Rural Injury Study-I, the model upon which CDC/NIOSH's own surveillance efforts are based, the Regional Rural Injury Study-II, phases I and II, and their current effort, the Regional Rural Injury Study-III: Consequences of Agricultural Injuries. Results from these studies have been published extensively. Ms. Renier maintains a Twin Cities office at the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota.
A Scientific Reviewer for Quality of Life Research, Ms. Renier is also a member of the International Society for Quality of Life Research. She has extensive experience in analysis and interpretation of patient reported outcomes (PROs), with a personal focus on health-related quality of life, and has both presented and published in this area.
Direct Extension: 218-786-3834Toll-Free: 800-342-1388, ext. 63834Mobile: 218-310-6613Fax: 218-727-8159 Email: crenier@eirh.org
Brian Johnson joined the Essentia Institute of Rural Health as a Biostatistician in February 2010. He had served as a Biostatistician at Boston Scientific and Medtronic, working in the areas of endoscopy and endosurgery, peripheral vascular interventions, cardiac stenting, and cardiac rhythm management. Mr. Johnson's research interests include design and analysis of clinical trials, adaptive design and analysis, group sequential analysis, noninferiority testing, repeated measures analysis, and confidence intervals for proportions and their differences.
Direct Extension: 218-786-8856Fax: 218-786-8159Email: BJohnson3@eirh.org
