The National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners Elects New Public Board Member, Honors Outgoing Members

December 15, 2021

The NBOME Welcomes New Public Board Member

Sheri L. Clarke, PhD, East Lansing, Mich.

Clarke has 22 years of experience in graduate medical education and medical school clerkship oversight and serves as the designated institutional official/director of medical education at Ascension Macomb Oakland Hospital, Lansing, Mich., a two-campus hospital with 235 residents and 50 base medical students. She is a past president and treasurer of the Michigan Association for Medical Education.

Clarke co-authored the Physician Career Guidebooks and launched a corresponding YouTube channel to help medical students and young physicians prepare for the next step in their careers. She has served on the boards of several medical education groups, and helped develop the Training Administrator of Graduate Medical Education certification.

The NBOME Thanks Outgoing Board Members

The NBOME also recognized three outgoing board members with an Outstanding Service Award, which recognizes those who have made significant contributions to the NBOME.

Dana C. Shaffer, DO, Des Moines, Iowa

Shaffer has served as Board secretary-treasurer and vice-chair, and as Board chair from 2017-2019. Over the past 14 years, he has served the NBOME as a member of the Test Accommodations Committee, chair of the Finance and Liaison Committees, a member of the Executive Committee and Compensation Subcommittee, and as chair of the Board’s Independent Review Committee.

For more than two decades, Shaffer practiced the complete spectrum of rural osteopathic family medicine in Exira, Iowa. He has served on the state medical licensing boards in Iowa and Kentucky. After serving as in associate dean roles at both Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine and the University of Pikeville- Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine, Shaffer served as dean of the Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine from 2018-2021.

 
Susan I. Belanger, PhD, MA, RN, Lewiston, Maine

In October 2010, Belanger joined the NBOME Board as a public member. She served twice as an Executive Committee member. She chairs the Standard and Assurances Committee and was a member of the Awards Committee. She is also a public member of the American Osteopathic Association’s Commission on College Accreditation. She has served as a hospital vice president, nursing school professor, and clinical ethics consultant.

Belanger is currently the senior vice president for mission integration and the system ethicist at Covenant Health System in Lewiston, Maine. She is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies in Washington, DC.

 
Anita L. Showalter, DO, Yakima, Wash.

Showalter joined the NBOME Board in 2012 and served on the Executive Committee, the COMLEX-USA Composite Examination Committee, and the Nominating Committee.

She is associate dean for clinical education, chair of the department of clinical medicine, and the chief and professor of women’s health at the Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences in Yakima, Wash. She has practiced as an osteopathic obstetrician-gynecologist in Ohio and Kirksville and hopes to complete her career where she began, starting a new private osteopathic OB-GYN practice in her community in Yakima.