Steven Coughlin, Ph.D., MPH

Founder and President

Indio Center for Art, Religion, and United Societies (ICARUS)

United States

Professional Summary

Steven S. Coughlin, PhD, MPH is Founder and President of the Indio Center for Art, Religion, and United Societies (ICARUS), Inc., a non-profit organization based in Indio, California and Atlanta, Georgia that provides life-changing and life-saving services to socioeconomically disadvantaged persons and artists in more than 4 countries, in collaboration with community-and faith-based organizations. The latter partners include Mother of Peace Childrens' Home in Mutoko, Zimbabwe, the Yvette Flunder Foundation in San Francisco, the City of Refuge Church in Tijuana, Mexico, and Alburgue Las Memorias (shelter/refuge) in Tijuana. Dr. Coughlin lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his partner (Brandon Freel), a successful artist and musician. As a senior health researcher and an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, Dr. Coughlin does health research on a variety of topics and lectures on disease prevention and control, survivorship, ethics, and other topics. Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Program in Public Health Ethics at Tulane University. Dr. Coughlin is an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and Editor-in-Chief of The Open Health Services and Policy Journal (www.bentham.org/open/tohspj/index.htm). He is the author or coauthor of more than 190 articles and the author or co-editor of several books including Ethics and Epidemiology (Oxford University Press, 1996, 2nd edition 2008), Case Studies in Public Health Ethics (American Public Health Association, 1997), The Principle of Equal Abundance (Xlibris, 2007, www.philosophicprinciples.com), The Nature of Principles (Xlibris, 2008), and Ethics in Epidemiology and Public Health Practice (Quill Publications, 1997, www.books.google.com). Dr. Coughlin's scientific accomplishments include completing the first two case-control studies and the first cohort mortality study of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDCM) carried out any where in the world as well as the second incidence study of IDCM in a United States population. These groundbreaking studies, which were carried out in collaboration with senior epidemiologists and cardiologists in Baltimore, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans in the 1980's and 1990's, with financial support from the National Institutes of Health, showed that African Americans have a 2 to 3-fold increased odds of IDCM and that those who are diagnosed with IDCM have a 5-fold increased risk of dying as compared with whites. Pronouced associations were also found between IDCM and bronchial asthma and asthma medications. Dr. Coughlin's innovative work in the early 1990's on ethics instruction in epidemiology and public health research, including a key paper on model curricula for public health ethics and a national survey of ethics instruction at schools of public health in the United States, helped pave the way for the model curricula on public health ethics developed by the Association of Schools of Public Health. Dr. Coughlin was chair of the writing group that drafted ethics guidelines for the American College of Epidemiology.

Skills

Specialization

public health, ethics, continuing education, nonprofit leadership, art, continuing education, faith-based collaborations, humanitarian relief, HIV/AIDS-related philanthropy, economic development, social justice concerns