Louis J. Papa, M.D.
Primary Care Physician
Partner, Olsan Medical Group, Strong Health, Rochester, NY
 
Louis J. Papa M.D., FACP is board certified in Internal Medicine and is a primary care physician and partner at Olsan Medical Group.  He is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Rochester, where he helps educate internal medicine residents on primary outpatient care.  In 1989, Dr. Papa graduated from the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Medicine and came to Rochester to complete his residency at Strong Memorial Hospital where he is currently an attending physician. Dr. Papa is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a former Delegate for the Young Physicians Section representing New York State to the American Medical Association, and was named by his peers to "Best Doctors in America" in 2001.  He was selected by "Rochester Business Journal" as one of the "Forty under Forty" young community leaders in 2001 and was named as one of only 25 physicians under 40 years old nationally to receive the "Excellence in Medicine Award" from the American Medical Association Foundation for leadership in 2003. Dr. Papa is involved in a number of medical, civic and community activities and boards including his role as a board member of the largest health foundation in Upstate New York -- the Greater Rochester Healthcare Foundation, volunteer work with the uninsured, as a New York Council member for the American College of Physicians and is currently President of the local medical society.

Christine Rogers
Health Reporter

Christine is an award winning producer and reporter. She is the recipient of two Edward R. Murrow awards for her investigative journalism work. She was nominated for an Emmy for her documentary on sex offenders and was recently recognized by the Mental Health Association of North Carolina for a series of reports on mental illness. Christine has extensive health reporting experience. She produces and hosts Healthwise on UNC-TV, North Carolina's public broadcasting network. Each month she tackles a different health care topic from diabetes prevention and control to the problem of childhood obesity. Christine also produces health features for Ivanhoe Broadcast News which serves over two hundred stations across the country. She received her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University and her master's from Duke University.

Steven David Wittlin, M.D.
Clinical Director, Endocrinology
University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY

Steven David Wittlin, M.D., grew up on Long Island and attended Brandeis University in Massachusetts for his undergraduate studies. He attended Tel Aviv University in Israel for medical school and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Wittlin did his residency/chief residency in Medicine at Booth Memorial Medical Center in Queens, NY and an Endocrinology/Metabolism fellowship at New York University. He was Chief of Endocrinology and Assistant Chairman of Medicine at Booth Memorial Medical Center where he worked from 1981-1993. In 1993, Wittlin came to the University of Rochester where he was the Clinical Director of Diabetes and from 1994 to the present he has been the Clinical Director of Endocrinology. Since 2001 Wittlin has also been Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine. He was voted into Alpha Omega Alpha by the medical students, has been a Kohn Teaching Fellow and received the Rochester Area Diabetes Educators Certificate of Excellence. Wittlin is involved with numerous research pieces and publications and is a member of the American Diabetes Association, American Diabetes Association Council on Diabetes in Pregnancy and Endocrine Society.

Lisa Sanders, M.D.
Yale University School of Medicine
New Haven, CT

Lisa Sanders, M.D., is an internist practicing in Connecticut and is on the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine. In her research and practice, she specializes in the treatment of overweight and obese patients. She writes and speaks widely on obesity, nutrition and weight loss. She is the author of The Perfect Fit Diet: How to Lose Weight, Keep it Off and Still Eat the Foods You Love. Before entering medical school, Sanders was an Emmy Award-winning producer at CBS News, where she covered medicine and health. Dr. Sanders also writes the widely acclaimed "Diagnosis" column that appears monthly in The New York Times. She also consults on the popular Fox television show, House. Dr. Sanders lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband and two daughters.

Terry Davis, Ph.D.
Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Shreveport, LA

Pioneer in the field of health literacy, Terry C. Davis, Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, L.A., where she also heads the Behavioral Science Unit of the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center. For the past 20 years, she has led an interdisciplinary team investigating the impact of patient literacy on health and healthcare.  Dr. Davis, who holds her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Fielding Institute, has published more than seventy articles and book chapters related to health literacy, health communication and preventive medicine. Patient and provider education products developed by Dr. Davis and her team are being distributed by HRSA, the America Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Active in health literacy on the national level, Dr. Davis has served on the National Cancer Institute's Work Group on Cancer and Literacy, the Health Literacy Advisory Board for the American Medical Association Foundation, and as an independent agent of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Literacy. Currently she is chair of the American College of Physicians Foundation's Patient–Centered Health Literacy Advisory Board, serves on the master faculty of the AMA's Train-the-Trainer Health Literacy Curriculum, and as a member of the Healthy People 2010, Health Literacy/Health Communication Section.

Gretchen Becker

Author, "The First Year: Type 2 Diabetes" and "Pre-diabetes"; and coauthor, "The Four Corners Diet"  Diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

Ms Becker studied biology for 8 years at Radcliffe/Harvard, where she published two papers in peer-reviewed journals, and then dropped out to take a more lucrative job as a live-in maid in Manhattan. After hitting the "glass ceiling" in the world of domestic service, she moved on to various other jobs including working as a lab technician in Harlem, a newspaper reporter in Brattleboro, Vermont, and a cheese plant worker in Guilford, Vermont.

She is now a freelance editor of medical books and journals and lives on a small sheep farm in Halifax, Vermont. She is also an elected tax assessor and a trustee of public funds for her town.

Since her diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes in 1996, she has devoted a lot of time trying to learn as much as she can about this chronic disease and to use her background in both science and journalism to help educate fellow patients throughout the world (via the Internet) so they can take control of their disease and avoid serious complications.

Terry C. Davis Ph.D.