Rita Kukafka, DrPH, MA, FACMI

Dr Kukafka received her Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences from Brooklyn College, a Masters in Health Education from New York University, and a Doctorate in Public Health with a concentration in Sociomedical Sciences from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She also then completed a National Library of Medicine postdoctoral fellowship, and received a Master's degree in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia. At the time of her election Rita was an Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics and Sociomedical Sciences (Public Health) at Columbia, and director of the graduate education training program in Biomedical Informatics. Throughout her career, Dr Kukafka has promoted and fostered the growth of public health informatics as a field. She has pursued an informatics research program where social and behavior change theories are applied within biomedical informatics to inform the design, evaluation and dissemination of expert systems, and computer-mediated communications to practitioners and patients. She has been an active contributor to AMIA as a member of the Fall Symposium Scientific Program Committee, and an AMIA Board member. She has chaired the Consumer Health Informatics Working group for AMIA, and served on an Institute of Medicine study committee that asked the question, in the 21st Century, of ëWho Will Keep the Public Healthy?í Her election to the College recognizes these academic and community service achievements.