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June 26 - Dr. Claire Coles, Barbara Wybrecht, Patton Boggs LLP and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community were recognized this week in Washington, D.C. at the NOFAS Leadership Awards Benefit for their outstanding contributions to FASD prevention, education and advocacy. Ginny Boylan received the NOFAS Service Award for her decade of contributions as a member of the NOFAS board of directors. Tom and Linda Daschle and Senator Lisa Murkowski attended and spoke passionately about their commitment to fulfilling the promise of FASD prevention and enhancing access to services for families. Sam Donaldson of ABC News served as Master of Ceremonies.
Claire D. Coles, PhD, is the director of the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Drug Exposure Center at Marcus Autism Center, and also is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine with a joint appointment in the department of pediatrics. Dr. Coles is a developmental and clinical psychologist who received her doctoral degree from Emory University Department of Psychology. She completed her predoctoral internship at Grady Memorial Hospital and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Human Genetics Laboratory Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Coles is Director of the Maternal Substance Abuse and Child Development Laboratory at Emory University School of Medicine and was director of psychological services at Marcus Autism Center from 1993 to 2000. Previously, Dr. Coles maintained a private psychology practice in Atlanta.
Nationally, Dr. Coles was appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the National Task Force on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome/Fetal Alcohol Effects, and served from 2000 to 2004. She was a member of the Advisory Committee, National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2001, the FAS Work Group, Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education, 1999 to 2001, and the Committee to Study Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Science, 1994 to 1996. She also is past president of the Fetal Alcohol Study Group, a committee of the Research Society on Alcoholism.
Barbara Wybrecht, RN, BSN, PHN, is an FASD Clinical Nurse Specialist at the Spectrum Health FASD Diagnostic Clinic in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Wybrecht is among the leading authorities in Michigan and nationally in the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders arena. She has broad expertise in the field as a clinical specialist, trainer, consultant and parent.
Among her accomplishments are co-founding, with her husband, Parents Supporting Parents, a support group for birth, foster and adoptive parents of children and adults with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS); coordinating the first conference in Michigan for parents of children with FAS, 1992 and successive national conferences in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1997 for professionals in the fields of education, nursing, social work and substance abuse as well as parents; initiating, with Dr. Sheila Gahagan, the FAS Comprehensive Diagnostic Clinic at The University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and; collaborating with State Senator Alma Wheeler Smith resulting in legislation and funding establishing three additional diagnostic clinics across the state. She has presented well over nine hundred workshops, seminars and trainings throughout Michigan and the nation on various aspects of FAS.
Patton Boggs LLP is a top international law and lobbying firm concentrating on public policy, litigation, intellectual property, and business law. For more than 40 years, the firm has maintained a reputation for cutting-edge advocacy by working closely with Congress and regulatory agencies in Washington, litigating in courts across the country, and negotiating business transactions around the world.
Since 1996, Patton Boggs has provided pro bono legal services to NOFAS. In 2009, the firm prepared and submitted, on behalf of NOFAS, an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in support of a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Louisiana Supreme Court in the case of Brandy Aileen Holmes. Ms. Holmes is a 29-year-old woman with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) on death row in Louisiana. The NOFAS brief argues that Ms. Holmes’s FAS should have been considered as a mitigating circumstance in sentencing. The case has profound implications within the FAS field, and beyond, regarding the standards of decency for the treatment of the functionally disabled.
NOFAS owes enormous gratitude to our pro bono attorney and board chair, Kate Boyce, and the Patton Boggs team who worked on the project led by Harry Silver and Karen Thiel.
The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota) Community is a federally recognized Indian tribe formally organized under federal reservation status in 1969. Tribal members are direct lineal descendants of Mdewakanton Dakota people who resided in villages near the banks of the lower Minnesota River. Chief Sakpe, [Shock-pay], which means the number six, spoke for a village that was located near what is today the town of Shakopee, which was named after him. The SMSC presently owns more than 2,800 acres of land in Prior Lake and Shakopee, Minnesota, all of which are located within or near the original 250-acre reservation established for the Tribe in the 1880s.
Since federal recognition in 1969, the SMSC has worked diligently to achieve a significant level of self-sufficiency and a meaningful level of self-determination. When the tribe’s needs are met, its membership has generously provided financial assistance in Minnesota and nationally to other Tribes and Indian and non-Indian organizations through an expansive charitable giving program. Since 2003, the SMSC has supported NOFAS programs in Indian country and beyond to prevent Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and increase access to services for individuals and families living with the disorder.
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