Department of Internal Medicine Staff

I was born in Santa Rosa, California, the oldest of three, and I grew up in Sacramento. Both my parents worked as special education teachers. After high school I joined the Army were I served in a MASH hospital in Fort Lewis, Washington, then as a combat medic with an engineer battalion in Nürnberg, Germany. I met my wife Mary while in Tacoma and we were married shortly before my transfer to Germany.

Upon discharge from the Army we settled in Reno, Nevada to help my grandmother, who recently became a widow, and to go to school. I attended medical school at the University of Nevada School of Medicne and graduated in 1984. After a one year internship in Internal Medicine at Reno, we moved to Seattle, Washington where I did my neurology residency. After completion of my residency in neurology, I spent a year as a stroke fellow with the department of Neurological Surgery at Harborview Medical Center. Both of our sons were born in Reno, the youngest just before our move to Seattle.

After I finished my training in Seattle, I took a commission with the U.S. Public Health Service. My family and I moved to Anchorage in August 1989 where I started work at the Alaska Native Medical Center where I set up the neurology service within the Department of Internal Medicine. I provide inpatient and outpatient neurological services to patients at the Alaska Native Medical Center, as well as 10 other sub-regional hospitals and clinics around Alaska. I am a Diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology for both the specialty of Neurology and the subspecialty of Vascular Neurology.

I am the principle investigator for the Alaska Native Stroke Registry. This is a population based, prospective, epidemiologic study of stroke in Alaska Natives. This study is supported under a cooperative agreement (1 U01 NS04069-A01A1) from the National Institutes of Health.

I am also principle investigator for the Alaska Native Parkinson's Disease Registry funded by the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA). This will be used as a clinical registry and a population-based epidemiologic study of Parkinson’s disease in Alaskan Natives. I am also the senior local advisor for a study known as "Polychlorinated Biphenyls, Organochlorines & PD Risk: A Case Control Study in Alaska." This study, also sponsored by USAMRAA, is to determine if PCB exposure is associated with an increased risk of neurodegenerative forms of Parkinsonism.