Faculty Biographies
David K. Brown, PhD - Associate Professor
Dr. Brown received the M.A. from New York University in 1960 and the Ph.D.
from West Virginia University in 1974. He was on the faculty at Concord College
from 1966-1977.
In May 2004, Dr. Brown received a letter from Governor Bob Wise thanking him for
his distinguished service to the state of West Virginia.
Read the letter to
Dr. Brown from Governor Wise (PDF)
He has served on the faculty of the
Center for the Study of Aging at the University of Alabama, and has
conducted numerous management training events and seminars around the
country. His publications are in the area of aging and health policy and
human services management. The University Press of America has published
his text book on aging policy.
From 1984-1989, he served as Executive
Director of the Mississippi Council on Aging, and assumed the position
of Executive Director of the West Virginia Commission on Aging on
October of 1989. In June of 1992, he became the Director of the West
Virginia Office of Aging. He served on the Board of Directors of the
National Association of State Units on Aging and the Advisory Board of
the Center for Social Gerontology. He holds the prestigious Vernon
Dahmer award from the NAACP.
Dr. Brown was appointed by President
Clinton to the 1995 White House Conference on Aging National Advisory
Committee, and sat on Vice-President Gore’s Committee to Re-Invent
Government through the Administration on Aging.
He holds the rank of Professor in the
Department of Community Medicine.
Publications by Dr. Brown..
R. Turner Goins, PhD - Associate Professor
Dr. Goins is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Community Medicine,
West Virginia University. She received her MS
and PhD in Gerontology from the University of Massachusetts- Boston.
She was an NIA post doctoral fellow at Duke University Medical Center’s
Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, with an emphasis in
epidemiology. The major focus of Dr. Goins’ research has been on
health and access to health care for rural elderly populations.
She recently completed a two-year career development grant with the
Native Elder Research Center at the University of Colorado Health
Sciences Center, which extended her program of research to
reservation-based American Indian elderly.
Dr. Goins' Research Interests..
Publications by Dr. Goins..
Mary W. Carter, PhD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Carter’s work explores factors that
contribute to variations in healthcare utilization and quality of care
among older adults. Her particular research interest includes the
extent to which structural and organizational factors of healthcare
markets and providers (e.g., profit status, chain membership,
operational expenses, nurse staffing patters) contribute to (1)
ambulatory care-sensitive hospitalizations, (2) highly discretionary
hospitalizations and (3) poor nursing home quality performance and
resident outcomes. As a health services researcher, Dr. Carter’s work
utilizes large, national data bases and analytical research methods for
longitudinal data. Currently, she is collaborating on a project
supported by the Alzheimer’s Association investigating factors
contributing to ambulatory care-sensitive hospitalizations among nursing
home residents with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Additionally,
she is exploring how resident risk of hospitalization varies in relation
to facility performance on select quality indicators (e.g., decubitus
ulcers; physical restraint use), as well as examining visit rates to
emergency departments and outcomes of these encounters by elders
presenting with ambulatory care-sensitive conditions. Dr. Carter
received her degree in gerontology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Following completion of
her doctoral studies, Dr. Carter was selected as a National Institute on
Aging Postdoctoral Fellow with the Division of Health Services Research
and Policy at the University of Minnesota’s school of Public Health,
where her research explored factors associated with improved quality of
care and health outcomes in nursing homes.
Dr. Carter's Research Interests..
Publications by Dr. Carter..
Bei Wu, PhD - Assistant Professor
Dr. Wu received her Ph.D. degree from the Gerontology Center, University of
Massachusetts Boston in 2000. She was a Senior Research Associate at
the Health Economics Research, Inc. and Center for Health Economics
Research from 2000 to 2002. Her main research interests are
Access to care and health services utilization (including dental care
utilization), dementia and caregiving, and minority and international
aging. She has experience in
conducting quantitative, qualitative, and evaluation research. She was
the co- investigator on the two national dementia caregiver intervention
policy evaluation studies funded by the Retirement Research Foundation
and the Helen Bader Foundation. As a Co-PI and project coordinator,
she was also extensively involved in a small demonstration of in-home
individualized interventions for Chinese dementia caregivers funded by
the Boston Foundation. She participated in Medicare Risk-Adjustment
Study for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. As a part of
the study, she took the lead in developing rates as possible benchmarks
for Congestive Heart Failure and these rates were provided to a national
panel of clinicians making recommendations about quality indicators. As
a Principal investigator, she is current working on two projects related
to immigration impact on Chinese elders’ health and health services
utilizations, and evaluation of long-term care system in rural areas of
China. In addition, as a PI, she is taking a lead on conducting a
pilot study on cognitive function’s impact on oral health of older
adults in West Virginia.
Dr. Wu's Research Interests..
List of Publications by Dr. Wu..
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