Steven S. Coughlin

Steven S. Coughlin, PhD, MPH, health researcher, ethicist, writer, and artist, received his PhD degree in epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins University in 1987 and his MPH degree from San Diego State University in 1984. He is a senior epidemiologist in the Environmental Epidemiology Service in the Department of Veterans Affairs and an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Emory University. Previously he was a senior cancer epidemiologist at the CDC, and an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Program in Public Health Ethics at Tulane University. Dr. Coughlin is an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and Editor-in-Chief of The Open Health Services and Policy Journal (www.bentham.org/open/tohspj/index.htm). He is the author or coauthor of more than 190 articles and the author or co-editor of several books including Ethics and Epidemiology (Oxford University Press, 1996, 2nd edition 2008), Case Studies in Public Health Ethics (American Public Health Association, 1997), The Principle of Equal Abundance (Xlibris, 2007), The Nature of Principles (Xlibris, 2008, www.books.google.com), and Ethics in Epidemiology and Public Health Practice (Quill Publications, 1997, www.books.google.com). In additon, he has produced numerous photographs and other artworks. Dr. Coughlin's scientific accomplishments include completing the first two case-control studies and the first cohort mortality study of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDCM) carried out any where in the world as well as the second incidence study of IDCM in a United States population. These groundbreaking studies, which were carried out in collaboration with senior epidemiologists and cardiologists in Baltimore, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans in the 1980's and 1990's, with financial support from the National Institutes of Health, showed that African Americans have a 2 to 3-fold increased odds of IDCM and that those who are diagnosed with IDCM have a 5-fold increased risk of dying as compared with whites. Pronouced associations were also found between IDCM and bronchial asthma and asthma medications. Dr. Coughlin's innovative work in the early 1990's on ethics instruction in epidemiology and public health research, including a key paper on model curricula for public health ethics and a national survey of ethics instruction at schools of public health in the United States, helped pave the way for the model curricula on public health ethics developed by the Association of Schools of Public Health. Dr. Coughlin was chair of the writing group that drafted ethics guidelines for the American College of Epidemiology. Since 2004, Dr. Coughlin has been involved with an international humanitarian effort, coordinated by the Yvette Flunder Foundation, City of Refuge Church, in San Francisco, the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, and the Metropolitan Community Churches worldwide denomination (based in West Hollywood, CA and Dallas, TX) to support children in Southern Africa who have been afflicted by or impacted by the AIDS pandemic. In partnership with Brandon Freel, Pastor Tony Maniquez, and Antonio Granillo Montes, Dr. Coughlin was co-founder and benefactor of the Albergue Las Memorias Centre de Arte in Tijuana, Mexico. In addition to art photography, he does mixed media and acrylic painting. Dr. Coughlin is Founder of the Indio Center for Art, Religion, and United Societies (ICARUS), a non-profit organization that was incorporated in California in 2008 to provide life-changing and life-saving services to socioeconomically disadvantaged persons and artists in more than 4 countries (http://icarusonline.org).