Carlos Roberto Jaen, assistant professor of family medicine at UB, has been appointed by Gov. George Pataki to the Public Health Council of New York State for a term expiring Jan. 1, 1999. The Council's responsibilities include approving certificates of need for health-care facilities, investigating complaints against hospitals and making changes in the public-health code.

Jaen has been active in public health research since 1985. Director of the UB Center for Urban Research in Primary Care, he was principal investigator on the first comprehensive health survey of Buffalo's Lower West Side, completed in 1994.

He was one of 15 people in the U.S. selected to receive 1995 Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar Awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation this past May. He will use the $240,000 grant to study asthma among Buffalo's urban poor and identify ways to improve access to health care for the disease.

A graduate of Niagara University, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in biology, Jaen holds a doctorate in epidemiology from UB and received his medical degree from the university in 1989. He joined the UB faculty in 1992.