STAFF

Executive Director
Evan Krasner, MD
510-845-8395
evan@sfbaypsr.org

Program Associate
Lucia Sayre, MA
510-559-8777
luciasayre@sbcglobal.net

Program Associate
Lena Brooks, MES

STEERING COMMITTEE

President
Robert M. Gould, MD, has been an Associate Pathologist at Kaiser Hospital in San Jose since 1981. Since 1989, he has been President of the SF Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), representing approximately 2,000 local physicians and health providers, and in 2003 was President of National PSR, currently comprised of approximately 30,000 members. As its mission statement indicates, PSR is committed to the elimination of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, the achievement of a sustainable environment, and the reduction of violence and its causes. PSR's historic efforts to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear war grew into an international movement with the founding of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), with whom PSR shared the Nobel Peace Price awarded to IPPNW in 1985.

Dr. Gould has wide-ranging expertise on a variety of public health issues including those related to various aspects of “security” issues as well as a broad array of environmental health concerns. He has been a prominent spokesperson on these issues in the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the California Medical Association (CMA), work which has included the development of numerous policy statements adopted by these organizations.

Vice President
Gina M. Solomon, MD, MPH, is a specialist in adult internal medicine, preventive medicine, and occupational and environmental medicine. She is a Senior Scientist in the Health and Environment Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco where she is also the Associate Director of the UCSF Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. Dr. Solomon’s work has included research on asthma, diesel exhaust, pesticides, contaminants in breast milk, and threats to reproductive health and child development. Dr. Solomon received her undergraduate degree from Brown University, attended medical school at Yale, and did her residency and fellowship training at Harvard.

Dr. Solomon serves on the U.S. EPA’s Science Advisory Board Drinking Water Committee, and is on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Toxicity Testing and Assessment of Environmental Agents. She is Vice President of San Francisco Bay Area Physicians for Social Responsibility. Dr. Solomon has authored numerous articles and reports, and is co-author of the book, Generations at Risk: Reproductive Health and the Environment, published by MIT Press in 1999 and recipient of an award from the American Medical Writers Association. Dr. Solomon received The Breast Cancer Fund’s Heroes Award in 2002, the Clean Air Award for Research from the American Lung Association of the Bay Area in 2004, and a 2004 award of recognition from California Safe Schools.

Secretary/Treasurer
Pearl Leonard, LCSW, (retired) is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Social Welfare. Her professional work was in child welfare, then as a psychiatric social worker, and lastly as a clinical social worker in a variety of family service agencies, until her retirement in 2000.

Mrs. Leonard’s involvement in PSR started in 1980, when she and her husband, Dr. Alvin Leonard, attended the first conference of the San Francisco chapter of PSR. When they returned to their home in Sacramento, she co-founded a chapter of PSR there. Upon moving back to Berkeley in 1982, Mrs. Leonard became active in the SF Bay Area chapter. Since then, she has been a volunteer in the office, held a variety of committee positions, and eventually joined the Steering Committee, where she is now the elected Secretary/Treasurer.

Treasurer
Frank Lucido, MD, has practiced General and Family Practice in Berkeley, California, since 1979. He is also a medical-legal consultant, specializing in medical cannabis consultations, and medical-legal defense of patients and doctors who appropriately use or recommend medical cannabis. He is the founder of MedicalBoardWatch.com and AIMLegal.org

Members at Large

Ronald G. Bieselin, MD

Michael Geschwind, MD, PhD, received his MD and PhD in neuroscience through the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He finished his internship in internal medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, and completed his neurology residency at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. He completed his fellowship in behavioral neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Memory and Aging Center (MAC), where he is now an Assistant Professor of Neurology.

Dr. Geschwind evaluates patients in the MAC clinic and is also active in the training of medical students and residents at UCSF. His primary medical research interest is the assessment and treatment of rapidly progressive dementias, including prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Dr. Geschwind recently helped establish an inpatient hospital program for the assessment of rapidly progressive dementias at UCSF, the first of its kind in the country. He also has an active research interest in cognitive dysfunction in movement disorders, such as Huntington’s Disease, Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD), Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) and other parkinsonian dementias.

Dr. Geschwind has been active in PSR and International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) since his days as a medical student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 1990, he was the US representative on the IPPNW Baltic Bicycle Tour, protesting the presence of nuclear weapons in the Baltic Sea. Participation in this work motivated him to become more active in national PSR, starting the medical student PSR listserv, helping place a student on the national PSR board, directing his medical school PSR chapter for several years. He served as a board member of New York City PSR from 1992–1996. From 1992–1995, Michael served as IPPNW’s Deputy Representative to the United Nations, working very closely with his PSR mentor Dr. Victor Sidel, past-PSR president. Together they put together a manual on arms control education for a joint working group of the UN and the International Association of University Presidents.

Thomas L. Hall, MD, DrPH, is a lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. He received a BA, MD and MPH from Harvard, and a DrPH in International Health from Johns Hopkins. During his early years he served as medical director of a small rural Puerto Rican hospital, earned his MPH degree, and then was director of Training and Research at the University of Puerto Rico's new teaching health center. He then spent eight years at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where he taught planning and international health, directed two national health workforce studies (Peru and Chile), earned a doctorate and rose to associate professor. From 1971 to 1979 he was professor at the University of NC (Chapel Hill) School of Public Health and director of the Carolina Population Center, dedicated to teaching, research and service activities related to population and family planning.

From 1979–1988 he directed a regional health planning agency in Seattle, taught health planning at the University of Washington, and served as Chief Medical Officer (Research) in the New Zealand Department of Health. During the early 1980s he was president of Washington State PSR and in the late 1990s was on the PSR National Board. In 1988 Tom joined UCSF where he directed a postdoctoral research training program on HIV prevention research and participated in several other HIV-related programs. In 1996 he "retired" but continues to work full-time at UCSF during the academic year on international health teaching, mentoring, and on consulting internationally on health workforce planning and policy development.

Sarah Janssen, MD, PhD, MPH has a broad background in reproductive physiology, clinical medicine, and public health. She currently works as a Science Fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) where she is an expert in the area of endocrine disruption. In her capacity as a Science Fellow at NRDC, Dr. Janssen reviews the latest scientific evidence on endocrine disruptors and translates the findings into layperson language for non-scientists such as policymakers and the general public, attends and presents at relevant scientific meetings, prepares and publishes manuscripts on endocrine disrupting chemicals, and maintains collaborations with academicians conducting research on endocrine disruption.

Dr. Janssen is a graduate of the Medical Scholars Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where she received her MD and PhD in Reproductive Physiology. Dr. Janssen completed residency training at the University of California, San Francisco, obtained a MPH in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley and is board-certified by the American College of Preventive Medicine in the specialty area of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Dr. Janssen is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and works part-time as a physician with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California.

Dr. Janssen has been involved with PSR since she was a medical student at UIUC. As co-president of the student chapter, she was involved in a number of environmental health issues such as health hazards from medical waste incineration and mercury thermometers. Her work in student PSR was recognized with the Broad Street Pump Award from National PSR in 1998. Dr. Janssen continues to be interested in a broad range of environmental health issues and currently serves as co-chair of the Healthy Food Committee of San Francisco Bay Area PSR.

Brian Linde, MD, is a Pediatric Hospitalist at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, and Contra Costa Regional Medical Center in Martinez, California. He also works at La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland, California. Dr. Linde received his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley, attended medical school at USC and did his residency in Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, returning to the Bay Area as soon as he could. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Dr. Linde’s interests include International and Environmental Health. He has been on the Board of Directors of the Hesperian Foundation, publisher of Where There is No Doctor, for the past seven years. He joined the Committee on Environmental Health of California’s Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics four years ago and now serves as Co-Chair of that Committee with Dr. Mark Miller.

Tom Newman, MD, MPH, is Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Pediatrics and Chief of the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at the School of Medicine of the University of California at San Francisco. His research, on such diverse topics as the effect of the military draft on subsequent mortality, carcinogenicity of cholesterol-lowering drugs, infant safety on airplanes, and jaundice and urinary tract infections in infants, has received international recognition; in 2004 he received the Career Research award from the Ambulatory Pediatric Association. He is an author of many research papers and coauthor of a textbook, Designing Clinical Research. He serves on the SF Bay Area PSR Steering Committee and the National PSR Security Committee and chairs the SF Bay Area PSR Security Committee. He also serves on the Pediatric Advisory Committee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In the 1980s he co-taught a UCSF course on nuclear weapons and in 2004 resumed lecturing on that topic to diverse audiences.

Jeffrey Ritterman, MD, is chief of cardiology at Kaiser Richmond, where he has worked since 1981. He is on the steering committee of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, on the board of the Public and Environmental Health Advisory Board, which advises the Contra Costa Board of Supervisors, and on the advisory board of the Center for Health in North Richmond. For the past 25 years, Dr. Ritterman has worked to put a human face on tragedies across the globe. He was a cofounder of The Committee for Health Rights in Central America, The Salvadoran Medical Relief Fund, and the Southern Africa Medical Aid Fund. He has personally delivered medical supplies to Salvadoran refugees living in camps in Honduras and Costa Rica during the war in El Salvador in the 1980s. He has also delivered medical supplies to the African National Congress's clinic in Lusak, Zambia, prior to the end of Apartheid. And after returning from a Peace Delegation to Amman, Jordan, in 2005, Dr. Ritterman prepared a presentation titled "Medical and Human Rights Consequences of the War in Iraq."

Dr. Ritterman reviews the medical literature on the effects of sanctions and the Gulf War on the health of Iraqis; reviews medical literature on the medical consequences of the war (Robert's cluster study), medical complicity in interrogation at Abu Ghraib, medical care for the US wounded, including types of wounds, status of the Iraqi health system, and the public health consequences of the war.

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