Meet the Advisory Board
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External Advisory Board
Francisco Cerda
Francisco Cerda was appointed Texas State Monitor Advocate in Austin, Texas January 1998. As the State Monitor Advocate for Texas, Francisco is responsible for overseeing and ensuring migrant and seasonal farmworkers receive the same equitable services to those that are provided to non-MSFWs throughout the state of Texas.
Francisco serves as Civil Rights Compliance Investigator on complaints filed by MSFWs through the Employment Service system and observes the working and living conditions and coordinates with state and federal enforcement agencies as well as legal entities and farmworker advocacy groups throughout Texas and the United States of the many labor statutes that affect MSFWs.
Francisco has been instrumental in working with many agencies and farmworker organization. He has been associated with numerous organizational committees throughout his career as well.
Francisco has been employed for almost 24 years with the Texas Workforce Commission. Prior to joining the Texas Workforce Commission, Mr. Cerda worked several seasons in the watermelon fields and later began working on his family ranch and surrounding ranches after school and during summer months as a ranch hand in the South Texas area while attending high school and Southwest Texas State University and Texas A&I University.
Billy Cook, Ph.D.
Dr. Cook earned his Doctor of Philosophy in beef cattle production and meat science and his Master of Science in beef cattle production from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. He received his Bachelor of Science in animal health management from Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.
Cook joined the Noble Foundation in 1999 as a livestock specialist on the NF-2 consultation team. In November 2004, he took the consulting support research manager position where he planned, coordinated and implemented the Agricultural Division’s research and demonstration efforts. He was also responsible for overseeing the management of the Noble Foundation’s farm resources. His specific research interests involve replacement beef heifer selection and management and enhancing stocker cattle performance on cool-season and warm-season pastures. In April 2009, Cook became the senior vice president and director of the Agricultural Division.
Cook served as general manager of the Beef Development and Research Center of Texas from January 1998 until joining the Noble Foundation. He managed this newly founded bull performance and development program through the first 18 months of its operation. During this time, more than 1,700 bulls were performance tested.
Cook is a member of the American Society of Animal Science and the American Meat Science Association.
Cook grew up in the small West Texas community of Imperial.
Luis G. Escobedo, M.D., MPH
Luis G. Escobedo, MD, MPH became the Texas Department of State Health Services Regional Director for Regions 9 and 10 on June 1, 2006. He is board-certified in preventive medicine and public health. Dr. Escobedo served as a Commissioned Corps Officer for the US Public Health Service from 1986 to 2006. He received his medical degree in 1979 from Stanford Medical School and holds master’s degrees in public health and health policy and management from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Escobedo is a graduate of the Epidemic Intelligence Service and completed a preventive medicine residency at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1988. He has a bachelor’s degree from New Mexico State University in chemistry. Dr. Escobedo was born in Mexico, grew up in communities on both sides of the US-Mexico Border, and graduated from Gadsden High School in rural Southern New Mexico. 
Robert Hagevoort, Ph.D.
Robert Hagevoort, a native of The Netherlands, earned his bachelor’s degree in tropical animal production from the Deventer College for Tropical Agriculture. He received a master’s degree in range nutrition and a doctorate in animal nutrition from Texas A&M University. Prior to joining NMSU as an Extension Dairy Specialist in November of ’05, Hagevoort served for 10 years as an independent dairy management consultant and nutritionist, primarily in California’s southern and central Valley. As a an Extension Specialist he has been working closely with the Dairy Industry in New Mexico and throughout the Southwest on providing information, regulatory issues, and any other fires that may erupt within the industry.
Corneils de Hoop, MBA, Ph.D.
Corneils (“Niels”) de Hoop is an Associate Professor at Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, where he has worked since 1992. Prior to obtaining his PhD at Texas A&M University, he worked twelve (12) years in the forest products industry, mostly in logging supervision and timber procurement, in Canada and eastern Texas. He also worked a year with the U.S. Forest Service in Kentucky and 1 ½ years with the Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife. He has a Master of Business Administration from Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and a Bachelor of Science in Forestry from the University of Kentucky. He teaches courses in timber harvesting and procurement. His research activities have included expert systems for diagnosis for problems with veneer lathes, assessment of cut-to-length harvesting, stormwater runoff from log yards, wood supply for chip mills, wood residue supply and demand, accidents in the forest products industry, and biomass energy. He is a regular contributor to The Louisiana Logger magazine with articles on logging safety, teaches in logging safety workshops, and is the Technical Editor of the International Journal of Forest Engineering.
Steve Shelton, MBA, PA-C
Steven R. Shelton is Assistant Vice President for Community Outreach at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He combines over thirty years of experience as a primary healthcare physician assistant, health professions educator, and administrator of programs such as the East Texas Area Health Education Center (AHEC) to improve the health of individuals and communities. Mr. Shelton’s interests and expertise include an in-depth understanding of health workforce development issues, local health system challenges and opportunities, health literacy and the needs of both rural and metropolitan underserved populations. His work includes activities to promote a deeper understanding of the psycho-social and economic root causes of health disparities as a means to address the need for better health for all through principles of equity and social justice. He is active in community service, and has served in numerous leadership roles at the regional, state, and national level. He is an alumnus of Angelo State University, and the University of Texas Medical Branch, and holds a master of business administration degree from the University of Houston Clear Lake.
Chuck Tucker, M.S. Agriculture
Charles (Chuck) Tucker is the Director of Organization and Member Programs for the Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation. Chuck has held numerous positions within the OMP department in his 24 year career, including three years directing the safety efforts. In his current position, Chuck is responsible for the member program efforts of ArFB including safety, Ag in the Classroom, community development, rural health and the organizational efforts of 76 county Farm Bureaus and 227, 000 member families.
Internal Advisory Board
Sharon Cooper, Ph.D.
Sharon Cooper, Ph.D. is a Professor of Epidemiology and Regional Dean of The University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH) located in San Antonio, Texas. She received her MS in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health in 1976 and her PhD from The University of Texas School of Public Health in 1982. She served as head of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health for five years before joining the San Antonio Regional Campus in July 2007. She has more than twenty-five years of research experience in injury, occupational and chronic disease epidemiology. She is an occupational epidemiologist whose major research focus has been on surveillance of occupational illnesses and injuries, and assessment of occupational exposures and their relation to adverse health effects. She is also interested in research in vulnerable working populations, particularly migrant farmworkers, and in child and adolescent workers. She has published in the area of injuries in farmworkers, substance use and occupational injuries, childhood cancer, pesticide safety training, ethical issues in working with vulnerable populations, and most recently is studying chronic disease risk factors in Hispanic youth. In addition to her work with the Southwest Center for Agricultural Health, Injury Prevention, and Education, she currently directs the occupational epidemiology training grant, a component of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health-funded education and research center in Houston. 
Deborah Helitzer, Sc.D.
Deborah Helitzer, ScD, is a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Assistant Dean for Research Education at the School of Medicine at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Helitzer earned her doctorate from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health (JHSHPH) in the field of international health communication, and led multiple multi-ethnic health communication programs overseas and in the United States. She developed and ran the first health communication program at JHSHPH from 1991-95, and has extensive experience in conducting formative research and implementing communication programs in international and domestic settings with multi-cultural groups. She has been at the University of New Mexico for 14 years and has conducted over 30 research studies during her tenure. Dr. Helitzer’s experience in international health serves her well in New Mexico, as most of her work involves the participation and collaboration of communities that experience significant health disparities, including those which include a high proportion of Native American and Hispanic community members. Her research with Navajo farmers and ranchers is an example of such collaborative endeavors, which involved capacity building of stakeholders to prevent agricultural injuries such as livestock injuries and pesticide poisonings. 
Tim Struttmann, MSPH
Tim Struttmann, MSPH, has been associated with the SW Ag Center for 4 years; prior to that he worked closely with the research team at the Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention. He served as the Principal Investigator for OHNAC project conducting injury surveillance among farm families in Kentucky. As principal investigator of the Community Partners for Healthy Farming project he worked to increase the adoption of Roll Over Protective Structures on tractors through a community based intervention. He was also the principal investigator of the Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation project and investigated over 40 tractor over turns. Using fatality data along with injury data he helped develop a series of interventions to change knowledge, attitudes and behaviors surrounding risks associated with farm work.
His educational background is in public health. He received his Bachelor’s and Masters degree from the University of Kentucky. Mr. Struttmann’s current focus is in detecting adverse events from the administration of the anthrax vaccine among military personnel. He is conducting a large scale retrospective medical record review to determine if there is an association between anthrax vaccine administration and long term negative health outcomes. He also manages a team of medical coders and data processors on behalf of the National Health Care Surveys at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Mr. Struttmann remains a strong advocate for agricultural safety and health and is acutely interested in agricultural aviation both from a safety and health perspective as well as a homeland security issue.
Ann Carruth, RN, DNS
Dr. Ann Carruth is a Professor at Southeastern Louisiana University’s School of Nursing and the graduate program coordinator for nursing. She graduated from Southeastern with a BS in Nursing, University of Mississippi Medical Center with a MSN and LSU Health Science Center with a DNS. She has been a principal investigator in several agricultural based occupational related projects and works with students and registered nurses in the evidence based practice process. As project director of Healthy Farm Families Initiative she had an extensive team of stakeholders developed First Aid Farm Quest CD, an educational program targeting first aid and risk reduction among at risk youth who live or visit farms; First Aid for Rural Medical Emergencies, a educational program targeting health care professionals teaching materials for emergencies in rural areas. As a professor at Southeastern Louisiana university, she conducts and teaches research and serves as a reviewer for research projects.