Washington, DC -- The Center for the Advancement of Health today named University of Pittsburgh Professor Stephen B. Thomas, Ph.D., organizational psychologist Saletta Boni, Ph.D., and journalist Ellen Hume to its board of trustees.

The Center is an independent nonprofit organization funded by foundations to promote greater recognition of how psychological, social, behavioral, economic and environmental factors influence health and illness.

Dr. Thomas is director of the Center for Minority Health and the Philip Hallen Professor of Community Health and Social Justice in the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dr. Boni has consulted on a wide spectrum of organization assessment and development projects with a variety of corporate and health care sector clients. She has extensive background in process consulting and work team development.

Ms. Hume is an experienced journalist, teacher, speaker, administrator, conference director and television commentator with more than 30 years of experience as a reporter and analyst for American newspapers, magazines and television.

Elected to the board earlier this year were Robert S. Levine, M.D. a New York City cardiologist and national leader in efforts to promote wider use of advanced information and communications technologies to improve health care access and quality, and Julius Richmond, M.D., surgeon general of the United States from 1977-1981 and John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy emeritus in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Other trustees are: Chairman John M. Pinney, a consultant in disease prevention and health promotion; Jessie C. Gruman, Ph.D., executive director of the Center; Herbert Pardes, M.D., president and CEO of New York-Presbyterian Hospital; Vanessa Northington Gamble, M.D., Ph.D., vice president for community and minority programs at the Association of American Medical Colleges; Alan McGowan, president and co-director of the Gene Media Forum and formerly director of public understanding of science for the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Delores L. Parron, Ph.D., deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation (program systems) in the Department of Health and Human Services; James Sabin, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Ethics Program and co-director of the Center for Ethics in Managed Care; and Edward H. Wagner, M.D., M.P.H., a general internist/epidemiologist and director of the W.A. MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation at the Center for Health Studies, Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound.

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The Center for the Advancement of Health advocates the highest quality research and communicates it to the medical community and the public. The fundamental aim of the Center is to translate into policy and practice the growing body of evidence that can lead to improving and maintaining the health of individuals and the public.