School of Public Health alumni notes
E. Kwame (MPH 1999) and Theresa (Morales) (MPH 1998) Baidoo
Kwame is in his third year of family practice residency in Long Beach, California. The Baidoos had their second son, Daniel, in September 2007, and they report that their older son, Isaiah, is an incredible big brother. Theresa enjoys staying at home with the boys.
Robert Charles Bevins (MSPH 1965)
Robert worked for the county health departments in Port Huron, Michigan, and Santa Cruz, California, for eight years. He then went back to physical therapy as a career, while maintaining an interest in doing public health work for the church. Robert holds fitness seminars and depression seminars. Both Bob and his wife, Doris Babcock Bevins, help with cooking schools. They have been on two mission trips—one to Botswana and one to Jamaica. Doris is also a physical therapist (a 1966 LLU graduate), and the two of them have worked for the same employer in Lewiston, Idaho, for 30 years. Bob reports that their three adult children are serving the Lord in their churches.
Pooja Goel (MHA 1999)
Pooja works for DaVita, Inc., the second largest dialysis provider in the United States. As director of special projects, she conducts work for the chief operating officer. Davita’s nonprofit arm, Bridge of Life, establishes dialysis centers around the world in areas of need. This summer, she will lead a mission to establish a center in Phalodi, India. Pooja says, “Being an alumna at LLU, I was interested in applying more real-world concepts to the classroom. I recently guest-lectured for a health care delivery class at LLU SPH and covered case studies related to chapters in the text. It was a great experience, and in a way allowed me to come full circle.”
Fereydoun (Fred) Karimi (MPH 1969, DHS 1975)
After graduating in 1976, Fred worked for two years in Iran as a hospital administrator. Following the Islamic Revolution, he returned to the United States and opened a medical laboratory in Chino, California. He is now retired and living with his wife, Irene, in Palm Desert, California. Fred enjoys being involved with his grandchildren as they grow up. “LLU changed me and saved my life,” he reports. “I will always be grateful to Loma Linda and especially to Dr. Harding and Dr. Dysinger.”
Vivien Le Tran (MPH 2002)
Vivien is manager of quality incentive programs for Coast Healthcare Management in Lakewood, California. One of her responsibilities has been to maximize the overall performance of the company’s independent physicians associations (IPAs). Her team implemented several clinical initiatives resulting in improved performance, which led to two of the company’s IPAs being recognized by Integrated Healthcare Association for outstanding clinical performance under the statewide Pay for Performance program. St. Mary IPA received the Ron Bangasser Memorial Award for Quality Improvement for Los Angeles County. Lakewood IPA received an honorable mention in the clinical category.
Ken Lizzi (MPH 1977)
Ken is the new respiratory therapy program director at Pima Medical Institute, a medical career college located in Renton, Washington. Previously, he worked at Tacoma Community College as chair of the respiratory therapy program, and at Midwestern State University (Wichita Falls, Texas) as clinical chair of respiratory care. The respiratory therapy trade journal, AARC, included coverage of Ken in a recent issue.
Ruth Titi Manyaka (MPH 1971)
Ruth served as keynote speaker during the May 2007 commencement at Linfield College in Oregon, where she earned a degree in biology in 1969. Ruth’s experience has included serving as a biology teacher at a secondary school in Douala, the commercial capital of Cameroon. She retired from teaching in 1999, after which she founded Women, Environment and Health—a nongovernment organization that serves vulnerable populations in Littoral Province in Cameroon.
George Rasmussen (MPH 1980)
After graduation, George went to Egypt for four years, where he taught health principles and held stop-smoking clinics. Back in the United States, he bought what he calls “The Old Home Place” in 1984. He pastored one church for six years and another for two. George also worked on 20 Maranatha mission projects. He lives with his wife, Roma Belle (Snyder) Rasmussen, in Spangle, Washington. “We are in the process of publishing a book on speaking in tongues, using the much-needed information from E.G. White and the Bible,” he reports.
Luella Thornton (MPH 1993)
Luella is serving on the 17-member Riverside County (California) Advisory Council on Aging for the 5th District. This group counsels the Riverside County Board of Supervisors on matters related to aging. In addition to being a certified health education specialist, she is certified in grief facilitation and parish nursing.
Ester Tabucol Vizcarra (MPH 1978)
Ester worked as a health educator at Loma Linda Community Hospital for many years, where her husband, Catalino, also worked as a surgeon. Today, she stays busy with Maranatha mission projects—working as a nurse for medical outreach, providing kitchen help, teaching English, and building churches and schools in Brazil, Chile, Galapagos Islands, Iceland, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, and, in June 2008, Zambia.
Donna Meyer Voth (MPH 1972)
When Donna’s husband, Alfred Voth (a 1975 LLU graduate who earned a BS in anesthesia), retired in January 2007, the couple made plans to move from the cold in Michigan to California, where they would be closer to relatives. After taking the past several years off, Donna has come out of retirement to contract teach nutrition at Pacific Union College in Angwin, California.
Sakena Yacoobi (MPH 1981)
Sakena was honored in December with the 2007 Gleitsman International Activist Award from the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She is founder and executive director of Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), which she established in 1995 to provide teacher training to Afghan women, to support education for girls and boys, and to provide health education to women and children. Until the fall of the Taliban in 2001, AIL operated underground, supporting home schools for more than 3,000 girls, and was the first organization to open Women’s Learning Centers which taught women to become economically independent. Today, AIL serves 350,000 women and children each year. It employs about 415 Afghans, more than 70 percent of whom are women.