Class Secretary: Iben Jensen Eld, 19 Whelden Ln., Stow MA 01775,ibenj@comcast.net

Class President: Colleen Quint, 26 Hadfield Rd., Minot ME 04258, cquint@mitchellinstitute.org

Kendle International Inc. has appointed Doug Campbell its vice president and chief legal counsel. Kendle is a global full-service contract research organization…. Susan Pedreira owns and operates the Java Bean coffee shop in downtown New Bedford, Mass…. Kate Whetten directs the health inequalities program at Duke Univ., and her recent four-year study of North Carolina’s Medicaid funding system raised eyebrows, according to the Herald-Sun  of Durham. Kate found that bringing HIV patients into Medicaid earlier, and thus treating them earlier, could actually save the state $11,500 per patient over a five-year period, and would delay the progression of AIDS. The study shows that low-income HIV patients who qualify for Medicaid actually end up costing the state less than higher-income HIV patients who are excluded from Medicaid coverage until their out-of-pocket spending reaches a certain level. “We found that the people who make even a little more money than those categorically eligible for Medicaid end up costing about twice as much,” Kate told the paper. “That was surprising, because usually we know that the higher your income, the healthier you are. But in this case, higher income may actually make you worse off.” Kate is associate professor of public policy in Duke’s Department of Community and Family Medicine.