About the Authors

Tom Farley, M.D. is the Chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. He is board certified in pediatrics and he served as an officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Epidemic Intelligence Service. For 11 years he worked in the Louisiana Office of Public Health, investigating outbreaks of disease and managing programs to prevent infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. He now teaches graduate students in public health and conducts research on better ways to prevent disease. He has authored or coauthored over 70 publications in scientific journals. Articles that he wrote for general readers on obesity (Fixing a Fat Nation) and the HIV risks of gay bathhouses (Cruise Control) appeared in the Washington Monthly. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and four daughters. He can be reached at tfarley@healthscaping.org.

Deborah A. Cohen, MD is a Senior Natural Scientist at the RAND Corporation. She is Board Certified in Public Health and Preventive Medicine and previously served on the faculty at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and at the University of Southern California Medical School. Her research studies have been focused in the areas of STD and HIV control, alcohol policy, and most recently on the role of the built environment in physical activity and dietary behaviors. She has served on several advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Brazil. She now lives and works in Santa Monica, California. She can be reached at dcohen@healthscaping.org.