Board

Neil Murphy, President

Neil works at Southcentral Foundation in the OB/GYN department. He previously worked in the Family Medicine Departments in Bethel 1985-87 and Sitka 1987-90. He has worked in the OB/GYN department.at Alaska Native Medical Center since 1993.

Neil has been a member of the ASCH since 1987. He served as President, 2000-2008, President-elect 1998-2000, and Vice President 1995-1998. After ICCH12 he served a short stint as the Historian for the ASCH Board, as an Honorary Board member.

Neil has been on the Board of Directors for the Albrecht Milan Foundation (d.b.a. Arctic Health Foundation) and served as Treasurer, since 1998. Neil has financially managed the Jens Peder Hart Hansen Memorial Fund since its inception in 2001. 

Neil began his involvement with the IUCH Council in 1998 and served as President 2003 – 2006, Vice President, 2000-2003 and was an ASCH representative to the International Council, 1998 – 2006. Neil was awarded the John A. Hildes Medal in 2012.

Neil has been involved in ICCHs since 1987. He was the ICCH Proceedings Senior Editor for both ICCH13 and ICCH15. He was Co-Chairman of ICCH13 in Novosibirsk and was on the Planning Committee for both ICCH10 and ICCH15 in Anchorage and Fairbanks, respectively. He was a Scientific Editor for the International Journal of Circumpolar Health from 2000 – 2006 and a peer reviewer since that time.

He has been involved in research about diabetes mellitus, especially as it pertains to circumpolar populations and pregnancy. He has been involved with monitoring human papilloma virus disease, as well as implementation of HPV vaccines. He has been involved in tobacco cessation research, especially in pregnant women. He has also published on the history of the circumpolar health movement.

Patricia Cochran, Vice President

Patricia Cochran, Inupiaq Elder, was born and raised in Nome, Alaska.  She has been an Arctic researcher and educator for more than 50 years.  Ms. Cochran serves as Executive Director of the Alaska Native Science Commission (established in 1994), an organization that brings together research and science in partnership with Alaska Native communities.

She served formerly as Administrator of the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies and with the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage.  Ms. Cochran also served as Chair of the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change and was Co-Chair of the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Network on Climate Change.  She is the past Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, an international organization representing 160,000 Inuit of Alaska, Canada, Russian and Greenland; former Chair of the Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat to the 8-nation Arctic Council; and Arctic Representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Ms. Cochran currently serves as Treasurer and Former Chair of the American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian Caucus of the American Public Health Association, President of the Arctic Health Foundation, Vice President of the American Society for Circumpolar Health, and a Member of the American Academy of Sciences Accelerating Climate Action Commission.  She also serves as an Elder/Senior Consultant to Rising Voices, Changing Coasts – the National Indigenous and Earth Sciences Convergence Hub.

Ruby Fried, Secretary

Ruby Fried serves as the Secretary of ASCH and is an Assistant Professor of Health Science within the Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies at University of Alaska Anchorage. Her work focuses on identifying the social, nutritional, cultural and economic underpinnings of health outcomes in terms of both risk and resilience. She also focuses on the ways to approach research and data, with an emphasis on community-based and community-driven research guided by principles of data equity and humility. She spends her free time skiing, hiking, berry picking and otherwise enjoying all that Alaska has to offer.

Tom Hennessy, Treasurer

I have been a member of the Society since 2000 and have participated in many of the local annual scientific symposia and presented abstracts at five International Congress on Circumpolar Health (ICCH) meetings.  I was Co-chair of the Scientific Program Committee for the 2012 ICCH in Fairbanks.  I worked as a medical epidemiologist at CDC for 25 years until I retired in 2019.  For most of that time, I was the Director of the Arctic Investigations Program, CDC’s infectious diseases field station in Anchorage.  I served for five years as the US Representative for the Arctic Human Health Experts Group, an advisory group of the Arctic Council. I also served on the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee to track and integrate US Arctic science research. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked as an advisor to the University of Alaska and led a UAA team that supported the Anchorage Health Department.  I am a graduate of Antioch College (BS), the Mayo Medical School (MD), Emory University (MPH) and CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service.  

Anita Moore-Nall, Board Member

Anita is an enrolled member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Tribe of Montana. Anita is an assistant Professor of Native American Studies at Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana where she started in August, 2023. She was a Postdoctoral Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellow based out of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Alaska Operations Office, from October 2021 – August 2023. She assisted with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 10 and Office of Research and Development Regional Sustainability and Environmental Sciences (RESES) Research Project to address the health impacts of waste in rural Alaska. Anita completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) in the Division of Population Health from 2018-2021. Anita taught Environmental Health and Circumpolar Health Issues at the university. Her research was focused on how the environment/place can affect people’s health. Her PhD was in Earth Sciences, Geology option, from Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. She focused part of her PhD on Medical Geology looking at mercury and lead in the BigHorn River and uranium in home wells on the reservation. She continues to collaborate with the EPA project and connections that she has made in Alaska. Anita is happiest when adventuring outdoors skiing, hiking, trail running and also enjoys beading and sewing.

Jennifer Meyer, Board Member

Jennifer is an Associate Professor of Public Health with the University of Alaska Anchorage Master in Public Health program. After serving in the Peace Corps during the mid-90s, she completed a nursing degree at Johns Hopkins. She worked in emergency rooms and correctional facilities while completing a master’s degree in International Health/Health Services at the University of Washington. She served as a public health nurse in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta for several years and finished her doctorate in public health from Walden University in 2017. She has taught a variety of Public Health, Health Science, Nursing, and Allied Health courses for UAF and UAA since 2009. She has served two terms as president of the Alaska Public Health Association. Her research interests include science communication and misinformation, health policy development – specifically those aimed towards increasing access to community water fluoridation and vaccines, and program evaluation for infectious disease control interventions in Alaska. 

Ashley Hearn, Student Board Member

Ashley Hearn is a current graduate student in the Master of Public Health program at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) and alumnus of the first cohort of McNair Scholars at UAA. Ashley was a participant with the Applied Environmental Research Center (AERC) in 2021 and 2022, where she contributed to fish, moose, and bat research on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER). She also completed a Community Development Public Health Fellowship in 2023 with Cook Inlet Housing Authority where she assisted in developing, conducting, and analyzing resident surveys utilizing Participatory Action Research (PAR) principles. Ashley’s public health interests include climate change, urban design, and policy. In her free time, Ashley enjoys practicing yoga, cross country skiing, amateur beekeeping, and learning to knit.