Dr. Agnes Binagwaho is the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health of Rwanda. She obtained her medical training in Belgium and France. She is a paediatrician specializing in emergency paediatrics, neonatology, and the treatment of HIV/AIDS in children and adults. She is the Chair of the Rwandan Pediatric Society.
Dr. Binagwaho worked as a paediatrician in France and Rwanda before accepting an appointment as the Executive Secretary of Rwanda's National AIDS Control Commission in 2002. She left that post in October 2008 to take her current position.
Dr. Binagwaho has served 4 years as Chair of the Rwandan Steering Committee for the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and was responsible for the management of the World Bank MAP Project in Rwanda, while also serving on the country’s High Commission on Aid Policy. She is the current chair of the Rwanda Country Coordinating Mechanism for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Dr. Binagwaho is a member of the Editorial Board of Public Library of Science (PLOS) and serves on the board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, the Health Advisory Board for Time Magazine, and the Advisory Board of the Friends of the Global Fund Africa. Dr. Binagwaho is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and of the Steering Committee for the Multi-Country Support Program on SSR/HIV/AIDS, an advisory body of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Amsterdam. Dr. Binagwaho co-chaired the Millennium Development Goal Project Task Force on HIV/AIDS and Access to Essential Medicines, under the leadership of Professor Jeffrey Sachs, for the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Currently she is global Co-Chair of the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA). She is a founding Board Member of the Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development in Africa (TICH), based in Kisumu, Kenya.
Dr. Binagwaho is currently a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She has authored more than 100 presentations and articles for international conferences and journals on paediatrics, HIV/AIDS, and programme management. In Rwanda, Dr. Binagwaho has participated in developing national PMTCT standards, as well as protocols for paediatric HIV/AIDS care and treatment. She is active in advocacy and political mobilisation on behalf of women and children, in Rwanda and worldwide.
Anuradha Acharya
Ms. Acharya is the founder & CEO of Ocimum Biosolutions, a global genomics outsourcing partner for discovery, development and diagnostics. The company was founded in the year 2000 and has completed 3 international acquisitions, Gene Logic's Genomics Division from Maryland, USA, in the year 2007, Oligos Division of Isogen Life Sciences from The Netherlands in 2006, and the GD business of MWG Biotech of Germany in 2005. Ocimum today has over 2000 customers worldwide and operates under the main business units of Lab, Sample and Data Management; BioResearch Design and Execution; Data Analytics and Insights; and Integrated Solutions. Ocimum has raised capital from Kubera Cross Border Fund (KUBC) for an equity investment of up to US$17 million (including the pro rata investment by affiliates of Kubera Partners, LLC, the Investment Manager of KUBC). Ocimum was previously financed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private Equity arm of the World Bank.
Prior to founding Ocimum Biosolutions, Ms. Acharya has had rich experience in the Telecom, IT and entrepreneurship arenas. She worked for a startup in the telecommunications space called Mantiss Information and a consulting firm called SEI Information where she helped create a social networking site for entrepreneurs. Her experience is backed by education at premier institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, India (IIT) and University of Illinois where she has two Post Graduate degrees in Physics and MIS.
She is a regular in technology forums and round tables and one of the well known first generation entrepreneurs in the Indian life sciences space. She was named by Red Herring Magazine to the list of "25 Tech Titans under 35" in 2006. Ocimum has received several awards including "Fastest Growing Life Sciences Company in India", Red Herring Asia 100, "IT Innovation Award" by NASSCOM and has been named to the Deloitte list of Fastest Growing companies in Asia, five years in a row. She has been named Biospectrum “Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2008 and also has been awarded the Astia Life Science Innovators Award in the same year.
Dr. Arletty Pinel is the Director of SurGlobal, a special new program on health and development at the International Center for Sustainable Development in Panama. Dr. Pinel is an internationally recognized health and development expert with decades of global experience in sexual and reproductive health (SRH), HIV/AIDS and sustainable community mobilization. She is a Panamanian national whose professional experience covers a broad range of public health senior-level administration and management positions at national and global levels. Amongst them, Chief, Reproductive Health at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); Fund Portfolio Director for Latin America and Eastern Europe at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Deputy Director of YouthNet at Family Health International; Regional Coordinator for Latin America at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance; and Chief of Health Promotion at the Brazilian Ministry of Health/National AIDS Control Program. Dr. Pinel is a psychiatrist with post-doctorate work at Cornell and Columbia Universities. She is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Barbara Glickstein is a public health nurse executive, health policy expert and broadcast journalist. For more than 25 years, she has produced and hosted
Healthstyles, an award winning, weekly program on public radio in New York City. Glickstein views her radio program as a public health practice, providing ongoing coverage of issues that make a vital difference in our everyday lives. In addition to her own programs, Glickstein was a contributing health reporter on Martha Stewart’s Sirius Satellite radio show
Living Today. She has received numerous awards for her work including one from the American Academy of Nursing and the New York City Public Health Association. She was selected by the Women’s Media Center to participate in their Progressive Women’s Voices Program advocating for and mentoring women to speak out on progressive issues in the national media.
Glickstein was co-founding director of the Continuum Center for Health and Healing at Beth Israel Medical Center in NYC, the largest academic integrative health care center in the United States. Her work was honored when she received the Association of Healing Health Care Projects Leland R. Kaiser Founder’s Award. She is on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Nursing and co-author of
The Role of Media in Influencing Policy: Getting the Message Across in Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care.
Ms. Glickstein is on the Board of Project Kesher, a women’s advocacy organization working in 160 communities across Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Israel and the United States. She has been an activist working primarily in the areas of health care advocacy, gender inequality, religious and ethnic intolerance, trafficking in women and women’s health.
Beatriz de Faria Leão, MD, PhD has been in health informatics since 1980 and is a founder of the Brazilian Health Informatics Association. Dr. de Faria Leão’s main areas of expertise are standards and electronic health records. She was an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the Federal University of Rio Grande Sul and Federal University of São Paulo. From 2000 to 2004, she worked as a Consultant to the Brazilian Department of Health in the National Health Card Project. She has worked as an independent consultant to the São Paulo City Health Department, the Brazilian Agency for Supplementary Health, and Zilics Health Information Systems. Recently, she has worked for WHO in Mozambique as a Consultant in health information systems, standards, and national policies. Dr. de Faria Leão coordinates the Models and Concepts Representation Workgroup of the Brazilian Health Informatics Standards Committee.
Becca graduated with an anthropology degree from the University of Texas at Austin in December ’08. She is now finishing her pre-med coursework at Texas Christian University, with plans to apply to medical school this year.
Though her first major interest was in legislation, further research sparked an interest in the power of physicians and patients in reshaping the culture of health care. After familiarizing herself with Mayo Clinic’s philosophy of care, a general interest in medicine was quickly sharpened into a passion for innovative care delivery solutions.
The more she became involved in the conversations about health care, the more she noticed the absence of future doctors—her fellow med/pre-med students. Becca’s main ambition is to engage the next generation of physicians, working with patients and technology to create a new order of health care players who want to see a change in the status quo.
Christine Gray, PhD
Anthropologist Christine Gray, PhD became a healthcare activist when her daughter Sophia was diagnosed with a sarcoma in 2003. Dr. Gray used to teach gender studies as well as anthropology. “I'm trying to find a way to get women active in breast cancer advocacy to examine the early detection/referral issues very seriously in the same way that gender bias has been dealt with in diagnosis and treatment of women's heart disease.” Dr. Gray has written several posts on
http://e-patients.net/.
Deborah E. Myers has more than 25 years of experience in international economic development, including advocacy, public policy and developing strategic partnerships. She has worked with major corporations, governments, non-government organizations, and international organizations to find solutions to problems facing the people and governments in the developing world.
Deborah founded VirtuArte, an internet-based company that creates awareness of art, folk art, fine crafts and curios – and the people who make them -- from the developing world and sells these pieces to an international clientele. VirtuArte helps artisans from around the globe generate sustainable incomes to support their families, improve their lives, continue their traditional craftsmanship, and share their skills with the next generation.
In 2002, prior to founding VirtuArte, Deborah was the Director - External and Government Affairs & Public Policy at GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK Bio), the vaccine division of GlaxoSmithKline. She was responsible for setting policy priorities, developing strategic advocacy plans and designing company outreach positions.
Deborah also worked for Fisher Scientific Worldwide as Director - Business Development; Rhone Poulenc as Director - International Finance; and SmithKline Beecham as an advisor.
She spent 10 years at the Inter-American Development Bank, an organization that focuses on economic development in Latin America. During President Reagan’s first term, Deborah worked at the Small Business Administration, the Department of Commerce and the White House.
Born and raised in San Diego, California, Deborah is now based in Washington, DC. She received a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles and a MA from Central Michigan University.
Diana is the developer of BrandDanceTM and Principal of DML Consulting - a network of senior-level specialists in brand building and customer relationship management with a particular focus on customer perspective and behavior motivation. During her 20-year healthcare career, Diana has pioneered the use of gaming to unify teams in moving business forward and providing an exceptional customer experience as well as the use of customer experience management and direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing to create unbreakable bonds between Brands, patients, health care professionals and payers. Diana develops innovative collaborations between in and out-of-the-industry resources to connect marketplaces with medicines and promotes the integration of marketing and behavioral change theory to motivate patient compliance and persistence with healthful therapies. Diana has been an Advisory Board Member for Women Business Leaders in Healthcare since 2004. Previously, she held a variety of positions with Merck & Co, Inc. and CommonHealth USA.
Diana J. Mason is Rudin Professor and Director of the Center for Health, Media, and Policy at Hunger College, City University of New York.
Dr. Mason is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the American Journal of Nursing, the oldest and largest circulating nursing journal in the world. She served as the Project Director for a print and video series on nursing care of older adults (funded by Atlantic Philanthropies) as well as print series on palliative nursing (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) and chronic kidney disease (National Kidney Foundation). She was a co-principal investigator for a series of articles and videos on assessing older adults, funded in part by a grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation. Under her leadership, the AJN received numerous awards from the Association for Healthcare Journalists, the Association for Women in Communications, Publications Management; American Academy of Nursing, Folio, and Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Honorary Society.
Dr. Mason is the co-editor of the award-winning book Policy and Politics in Nursing and Health Care, now in its fifth edition. Since 1986, she has been one of the producers and moderators of Healthstyles, a weekly live radio program in New York City that has received media awards from the State of New York, Public Health Association of New York City, American Academy of Nursing, and the National Association of Childbirthing Centers. She was project director for the WBAI-Global Kids’ Sound Partners for Community Health Initiative (funded by the Benton and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations), designed to train New York City youth in producing radio programs on preventing teen substance abuse.
Dr. Mason is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Long Island University; fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the West Virginia University Academy of Distinguished Alumni; and the Pioneering Spirit Award from the American Association of Critical Care Nurses. She is a graduate of West Virginia University School of Nursing (BSN, 1970), St. Louis University (MSN, 1977), and New York University (PhD, 1987).
Diane Jones
Diane Jones has many years of health care policy and advocacy experience, gained from the perspectives of corporations, a member-based association, and government service.
She is currently with Camden Consulting, LLC, a firm offering strategic advice to corporations and associations on federal legislative and regulatory proposals in the areas of health information technology, and medical device reform.
Prior to Camden Consulting, Diane worked for Microsoft as Director of Industry Relations for the Health Solutions Group. There, she planned and delivered on a strategy of collaboration opportunities with associations and organizations leading health information technology initiatives in the U.S., while contributing to the development of Health IT policy positions for the company.
Before Microsoft, Diane served as Director of Public Affairs for Kodak’s Health Group. In that capacity, she represented the Health Group before federal officials on health information technology adoption, medical imaging utilization and FDA regulatory issues, and represented the company in industry and multi-stakeholder organizations. Before Kodak, she was a senior policy analyst for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, focused on Medicare coverage and payment reforms and the impacts to Medicare enrollees.
Diane began her career as a legislative staffer, on Capitol Hill and for the Council for the District of Columbia. She is a native of Washington DC and received a J.D. from Boston University School of Law and A.B. from Brown University.
Dr. Rios serves as President & CEO of the National Hispanic Medical Association, (NHMA), representing Hispanic physicians in the United States. The mission of the organization is to improve the health of Hispanics. Dr. Rios also serves as President of NHMA’s National Hispanic Health Foundation affiliated with the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University, to direct educational and research activities.
Dr. Rios also serves on the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, Campaign Against Obesity, and the Partnerships for Prevention Boards of Directors, the American Medical Association Commission to End Health Disparities, the PacifiCare-UnitedHealthcare California Investment Committee and is Chair, the National Coalition on Hispanic Health. Dr. Rios has lectured and published articles and has received several leadership awards, including awards from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Congressional Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American Caucuses, American Public Health Association Latino Caucus, Association of Hispanic Health Executives, Minority Health Month, Inc., Hispanic Magazine, Verizon’s First Pollin Community Service Award, and Amerimed. Dr. Rios was appointed to the Minority Alumni Hall of Fame of Stanford University in October, 2006.
Prior to her current positions, Dr. Rios served as the Advisor for Regional and Minority Women’s Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health from November 1994 to October 1998. In 1993, Dr. Rios was appointed to the National Health Care Reform Task Force as Coordinator of Outreach Groups for the White House. In 1992, Dr. Rios worked for the State of California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development as a policy researcher. Dr. Rios has also served as President, Chicano/Latino Medical Association of California, Advisor to the National Network of Latin American Medical Students, member of the California Department of Health Services Cultural Competency Task Force, Stanford Alumni Association and Women’s Policy Inc. Boards of Directors, and the AMA’s Minority Affairs Consortium Steering Committee.
Dr. Rios earned her BA in Human Biology/Public Administration at Stanford University in 1977, MSPH at the University of California School of Public Health in 1980, her MD at the UCLA School of Medicine in 1987, completed her Internal Medicine residency at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose and the White Memorial Medical Center in East Los Angeles in 1990, and her NRSA Primary Care Research Fellowship at UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine in 1992.
Ellen Blackler is Executive Director, Public Policy at AT&T. Ellen develops AT&T’s public policy positions for a range of issues related to both legacy and emerging communications services and also critical business issues including privacy, access for people with disabilities, rural broadband deployment, health care and tax related issues. Prior to joining AT&T in 2003, she was Special Assistant to the Chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission. She has also worked at the New York Public Service Commission and the New York State Legislature, where she handled a range of issues involving energy policy, consumer protection, and the development of competitive telecommunications markets.
Estee Solomon Gray
An inveterate boundary straddler and broker, Estee Solomon Gray has spent her career of 25+ years at the intersection of technology, practice, marketing and social architecture. During that time, she has answered to titles ranging from biomechanic analysis to systems engineer, technology market strategist, management consultant, ‘new economy’ thought leader, startup executive, community leader, social entrepreneur, President and CEO. She is often referred to as “the midwife” who help bring “communities of practice” out of the womb of anthropology, into the maelstrom of a business world hungry for new organizational ideas and practices to fit a new internet-based reality. It was during her tenure in 2005-6 as Visiting Scholar and Fellow in Stanford’s Digital Vision Program in social entrepreneurship that Estee began to focus on the disruptions underway in healthcare. From 2006-2008, she was CEO and co-founder of B!, the first Health2.0 company to focus on the daily physical, social and decision-making needs of the real consumer drivers of this era of user-generated health – women 40 and over. There she and a team that spanned the fitness, wellness, and technology industries developed the blueprint for transforming the 20th century health club into a 21st century networked “healthy lifestyle utility” integrating physical spaces, mobile technologies and a relationship-based service model. Since January 2009 she has been focused on the provider side of healthcare, working with Within3 to help healthcare and life science companies reshape how physicians and others they access colleagues, serve their patients and express their professionalism in a world where connectivity and collaboration are universal. She is also part of an emerging network of Bay Area professional women seeking to change the conversations around aging, vitality and health in their own lives and the networks they live in. Earlier in her career, Estee was VP Marketing and Chief eLearning Officer at one of the first “live” online collaboration companies (InterWise), founder and managing partner of boutique consulting firm (Congruity) and a pioneer member of the technology marketing group at the legendary Regis McKenna Inc. Her professional publications include two pieces co-authored with John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist of Xerox: “The People are the Company”, in the premier issue of Fast Company Magazine (1995), and the introduction to “Creating a Learning Culture”, Cambridge University Press (2004). She is a graduate of Yale University (BSc, Combined Sciences) and Stanford University (MBA and MSEE degrees). An active social entrepreneur, Estee is also a Wexner Heritage Fellow, has received several leadership and service awards from the Jewish community for work with independent schools and JCC’s. She currently serves on the boards of the groupery, a web-service for parent-powered educational groups such as school PTAs, Kehillah High School in Palo Alto and Hillel at Stanford.
Honorable Nancy Johnson is a senior public policy advisor in the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Baker Donelson, PC and a member of the firm's Federal Public Policy Group. She focuses on health care, tax and trade matters on behalf of Baker Donelson clients.
Ms. Johnson served 24 years in Congress, from 1983 to 2007, representing the fifth district of Connecticut, following 6 years of service in the Connecticut State Senate. She co-authored the national Children's Health Insurance Program, was a principal author of the Medicare Modernization Act and authored several taxpayer rights bills as Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee. As a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee and a free-trade proponent, Ms. Johnson played an integral role in passage of every major tax bill, trade agreement and health care initiative during her tenure on the committee.
As a member and chairman of the Health Subcommittee, Ms. Johnson co-authored the laws that expanded Medicare to cover prescription drugs, chronic care management, increased preventive health benefits, and care offered by nurse specialists, physician assistants and nutritionists. She also introduced the health information technology legislation that led to the establishment of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (HIT) and fought for broad adoption of HIT to reduce medical errors and improve care quality. She also led the Long Term Care Coalition, was an avid supporter of Community Health Centers and children’s hospitals, and worked to pass malpractice reform and mental health parity legislation.
Education
• Radcliffe College, Harvard University, B.A., 1957
• University of London, Courtauld Institute, 1958
• Baypath College, Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, 1999
• University of New Haven, Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa, 1995
• University of Hartford, Doctor of Laws, 1989
• University of Bridgeport, Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, 1985
Boards
• Pfizer U.S. Health Advisory Board, 2008
• Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Board of Directors, 2007-2008
• John Marshal Law School, Board of Trustees, 2007-2010
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Health Policy Fellowship Advisory Board, 2007-2010
• E-Health Connecticut, Board of Directors, 2007
• Magellan Health Services, Board of Directors, 2007-2009
• National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Board of Directors, 2007-2010
As founder and President of Strategic Health Policy International, Inc, Glenna Crooks solves some of the toughest health care problems of our times by distilling chaos and complexity into recognizable and easily digestible, action-oriented insights. Her clients, businesses and governments around the world, have used her Centricity Principle™ approach to create successful organizational, national and global transformational strategies. Her work is based on a professional history in senior government positions as a Reagan appointee, lobbyist and professional society and bio-pharmaceutical company executive.
Glenna devotes her time to academic, professional, and philanthropic endeavors as well. She is adjunct professor at the University of the Sciences of Philadelphia, Founder and Chairman of Causeway Collective, and an officer on the David A. Winston Health Policy Fellowship Board. She served on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative Board of Scientific Councilors and was a member of the Institute of Medicine committee to advise the Department of Defense on bioterrorism countermeasures. Glenna was founding Vice-Chair of the Partnership for Prevention, a member of the National Council of the Institute for Child Health and Human Development, Chairman of the National Commission on Rare Diseases. She received the Congressional Exemplary Service Award for Orphan Products Development and is a recipient of the highest award in public health, the Surgeon General’s Medallion, awarded by C. Everett Koop.
Glenna is the author of Covenants: Inspiring the Soul of Healing, and is a frequent keynote speaker at national and international conferences. She is also the founder of Best Edge, a company devoted to helping the highest-performing executive women stay in the game and manage the unique challenges they face as women working to solve health care problems and have satisfying personal lives.
Grace Bender, a native Washingtonian, has more than thirty years experience in public relations, government relations, management, and community volunteer work.
Mrs. Bender has been active in many non-profit organizations both as a board member and as a committee member. Her work has included program development, fundraising, financial management, creating special events, as well as chairing galas and balls. The organizations range from inner-city nonprofits to major cultural institutions. Mrs. Bender was instrumental in creating a foundation that serves the metropolitan area.
In the business world, Mrs. Bender was vice president of a consulting firm that represented companies seeking new business in emerging markets. Her previous experience also included working as a government relations consultant to a law firm representing corporate and institutional clients on legislative issues. Prior to joining the law firm, she worked with a government relations consulting firm. She has also worked as director of public relations for a hotel. In these positions, she was involved in all aspects of public relations and advertising.
Early in her career, Mrs. Bender was the vice president of a leasing corporation, where her responsibilities included leasing equipment and vehicles. Prior to assuming this position, she was vice president of a car rental agency, a subsidiary of the leasing corporation. Responsibilities included the reorganization of this company.
Over the years Mrs. Bender has also worked on numerous national and local political campaigns in various capacities.
Currently her company, infinisity, inc. is producing healthcare aids such as
mymedmanager™, a personal healthcare and medication organizer. This comprehensive, easy-to-use system helps the patient, pharmacist and physician become a healthcare team to review, and manage medications and other health issues as well as ensure that routine screenings and tests are done on time.
Holly Potter is vice president of Public Relations for
Kaiser Permanente. She oversees efforts to promote the company’s story and achievements through both traditional and social media. In addition, her team is responsible for broad public relations, partnerships and stakeholder management programs that help to build Kaiser Permanente’s reputation among opinion leaders and partners in the health, business, philanthropic, and advocacy communities.
An experienced health communications strategist, she has held a variety of leadership positions directing a broad range of communications and advocacy campaigns. She brought to Kaiser Permanente a proven 15-year track record of award-winning public relations programs that influence stakeholders and shift public opinion. In her career, she has advised and partnered with senior executives in the nonprofit, government and corporate sectors to advance policy and promote brand identity.
Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, she ran HTPotter Communications, LLC which served a variety of nonprofit and government clients in California and Washington, D.C. Her former clients include National Campaign Against Youth Violence, California State PTA, Public Health Institute, Drug Policy Alliance, San Francisco Wellness Initiative, Santa Clara County Public Health Department and the White House Council on Youth Violence.
Hygeia is the Greek goddess of health and the prevention of sickness. Our blog admins use her name for guest posts.
Jen joined OrganizedWisdom Health to serve as the company's Chief Patient Advocate. Her role encompasses strategic communication and content development activities including using social media to better serve consumers' need for useful healthcare information and resources. Jen is an active blogger, tweeter, participant and advocate in numerous online health and medical communities. She is author of the Health Management Rx Blog, and has contributed to The Health Care Blog (THCB) and Healthcentral.com. Jen is a co-founder of Nexthealth, a health communications/innovation collaborative based in the Netherlands. Nexthealth's mission is to inject patient-centric innovation into global healthcare research, planning, process design, and delivery. Jen has worked for numerous health-related charities and organizations: As an analyst, volunteer manager, and speaker liaison for The Health 2.0 Conference run by Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya and as Associate Administrator at Christ House, performing operational functions for the Washington D.C.-area 33-bed nonprofit medical facility. She also served as analyst and director during the start-up phase at The Hanover Research Council, closing the firm's first multi-year membership and cultivating HRCs early development in the hospital/healthcare vertical. Jen is former Vice Chair, Board of Directors, for Baltimore-based MEDBANK of Maryland, Inc., an NFP providing free prescription medications to 35,000 residents via pharmaceutical firms' patient assistance programs (PAPs). She received her B.A. in literature with a minor in women, gender and sexuality studies from St. Mary's College of Maryland, and graduated magna cum laude. Jen continues to research the compilation and sharing of experiential personal health narratives and the connection of patients and providers via the semantic web.
Julia Loughran is a Vice President at iConecto – Gaming4Health.com. Julia has 22 years experience in the areas of serious game development, virtual collaboration, team performance metrics, team building and facilitation. Her clients include government and non-governmental organizations including DoD, DHS, DARPA and the United States Institute for Peace. She is the author of
“Taming the Cyber Tooth Tiger: Adapting to a Networked, Digital World” and co-author of the
“Health eGames – How Video Games, Social Media and Virtual Worlds will Revolutionize Health.” Julia has a Master's of Science Degree in Artificial Intelligence/Information Systems from George Washington University, Washington, DC.
Julie Murchinson is the Founder of Health 2.0 Accelerator and a Managing Director of Manatt Health Solutions, a policy and strategic advisory division of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP. She has over fifteen years of experience in the healthcare industry assisting healthcare organizations with information technology (IT) strategy, service operations, business plan development and change management. Ms. Murchinson’s unique approach addresses cross-industry interests in the potential for health information technology and consumer-centric strategies to prepare health care delivery for the reality of personalized health care. Her expertise extends to many areas of the healthcare industry including foundations, community health centers and networks, consumer focused internet companies, pharmaceutical companies and related membership associations. Her work has pioneered industry-leading health IT readiness methodologies, funding and special-interest collaborations, and perspectives on privacy, security, and consumer rights; all resulting in organization-specific and collaborative strategies that are moving health care delivery and policy toward an interoperable, informative and consumer-centric direction. Prior to joining Manatt Health Solutions, Ms. Murchinson cofounded and led Object Health, a management consulting group that merged with Manatt Health Solutions. Object Health assisted healthcare organizations and communities with leveraging health information to improve operational efficiencies and health quality outcomes by addressing the intersection of strategic, operational and technical issues of managing healthcare information.
Karen H. Nielsen, MBA, MPA, is President of Nielsen & Associates, LLC. She has worked in the health care field for over 20 years, predominately focused on collaborative efforts between private and public organizations. Ms. Nielsen consults with industry and non-government organizations (NGOs) to identify and enable public health-centered solutions. Ms. Nielsen has a passion for global health and began blogging during the spring of 2008 to document the challenges of health care delivery for women, children, the HIV-positive and intravenous drugs users in urban and rural India. She is also a contributor to the American Public Health Associations, International Health Section blog where she shares the passion and creative solutions that public health professionals bring to some of the most challenging environments all over the world.
Kathi Cullari's unique combination of government relations, media and marketing, and coalition development experience has earned her national recognition as a leader in integrated communications strategies. Highly regarded for her skills in coalition and grassroots development, she actively works with clients and coalition members to promote quality healthcare throughout the northeast.
A registered lobbyist for 20 years, Ms. Cullari is widely known for her strong public policy skills and political instincts. She is considered an aggressive advocate on behalf of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology research industries and the patients they assist.
In 1999, Ms. Cullari founded Cullari Communications Group, a firm specializing in public relations, third-party ally development and government affairs.
Prior to starting her own business, Ms. Cullari's positions included serving as director of government relations for a statewide business association; director of fellows and intern programs for the Department of Cardiology at the Hershey Medical Center; and working with information technology companies such as EDS, Netscape and Oracle.
Kathryn C. Brown is senior vice president - Public Policy Development and Corporate Responsibility for Verizon. She has been with the company since June 2002, and is responsible for corporate responsibility initiatives, policy development and issues management, public policy messaging, strategic alliances and the Verizon Foundation.
Before joining Verizon, Ms. Brown was a partner at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and a member of the firm’s Communications and Electronic Commerce practice, where she focused on the legal and regulatory challenges for communications companies in the converging telecommunications market.
Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Brown was the Chief of Staff of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) where she managed Chairman William E. Kennard’s agenda on all telecommunications, broadcast, and spectrum matters. She previously served as the Chief of the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau, where she led key initiatives implementing the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Before working at the FCC, Ms. Brown was the Associate Administrator, Office of Policy Analysis and Development, at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications & Information Administration. In that position, she was closely involved in President Clinton’s initiatives to put computers in every classroom in America, and to close the “digital divide” by promoting the deployment of advanced technologies both here and abroad.
Ms. Brown also worked for eight years at the New York State Public Service Commission in various capacities, including as the Director of the Consumer Services Division and as Litigation Attorney and Managing Attorney for Telecommunications with the Office of General Counsel. Prior to joining the NYPSC, she was the Deputy Clerk of the New York State Court of Appeals.
Ms. Brown received her J.D., summa cum laude, from Syracuse University College of Law in 1980 and her B.A., magna cum laude, from Marist College in 1974. She is admitted to practice in New York and the District of Columbia.
Laurie E. Burman is the Executive Director of the Hearing Speech & Deaf Center of Greater Cincinnati, an 83-year-old non-profit agency providing audiology, speech language pathology and deaf services to over 8,000 individuals annually. The mission of the Center is to "strengthen our community by supporting individuals and families to overcome obstacles to communication."
An audiologist by training (B.A., University of Buffalo and M.A., The University of Connecticut), Ms. Burman's clinical expertise is in the area of geriatrics, counseling patients on hearing impairment and outcomes measurement. Prior to her current position, Ms. Burman held a faculty appointment in the communication disorders department of Case Western Reserve University, and was Director of Audiology at the Cleveland Hearing & Speech Center.
Ms. Burman has served on a geriatric assessment team, as a nursing home clinician and as an accreditation site visitor. Locally, she is on a number of advisory committees and collaboratives. She is an active board member of the Ohio Council of Speech and Hearing Administrators, OhioSPAN (Speech Pathology and Audiology Network) and the Ohio Alliance of Community Centers for the Deaf.
Linda Burnes Bolton is Vice President for Nursing, Chief Nursing Officer and Director of Nursing Research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. She is one of the Principal Investigators at the Cedars-Sinai Burns & Allen Research Institute. Her research, teaching, and clinical expertise includes: nursing and patient care outcomes, improving the health of childbearing women, improving nursing and organization functions and reliability, functional health literacy of African Americans and other ethnic and racial communities; quality of care in racially and ethnically diverse communities and cultural diversity within the health professions.
Dr. Burnes Bolton is a past president of the American Academy of Nursing and the National Black Nurses Association. She is a member of the American Nurses Association, American Organization for Nurse Executives, Association of California Nurse Leaders; American Public Health Association, Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science, National Black Nurses Association and the National League for Nursing.
She has held board and officer positions for several national organizations and is the recipient of numerous awards for her scholarly and world community service, including receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Organization of Nurse Executives in 2007 and the Distinguished Alumnae Award from Arizona State University in 2008. She is chair of the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative to Transform Care at the Bedside (TCAB) and Principal Investigator of the American Academy of Nursing Technology Drill Down research project. She also holds positions as an Associate Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF) School of Nursing and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Nursing. Dr. Burnes Bolton received her DrPH in Population Health & Behavioral Science from the University of California, School of Public Health at Los Angeles, California.
Lisa Korin is a Masters of Public Health candidate at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD. She is interested in bridging disparities in healthcare access, improving healthcare delivery financing, and curbing the rising costs of healthcare. Prior to attending Johns Hopkins, Lisa was an Account Executive at Independence Blue Cross (IBC) in Philadelphia, PA and working toward an MBA in Healthcare Management at Temple University. At IBC, she managed several different blocks of business; strategized and consulted with various types of customers on insurance plan designs, renewals, and customer/segment-specific trends and utilization; and helped implement worksite healthy lifestyle and disease management programs. Lisa also worked in account management at Digitas Health, a healthcare marketing and pharmaceutical advertising agency, primarily leading a Web-based marketing campaign launch for a Top 10 pharma client. She also worked in New Business Development and as an Associate Editor for ePharmaceuticals, a daily, Web-based pharmaceutical marketing news publication, while at Digitas. Lisa has also authored a number of pieces, including a report on the Rising Costs of Healthcare presented at a Pennsylvania Department of Insurance meeting and a piece on Unisys Corporation featured in FORTUNE magazine while working in their Marketing Communications department. Lisa graduated Magna Cum Laude and with Honors from Drexel University with a BS in Corporate Communication and a Nutrition & Food Science minor.
Liz Scherer is a digital copywriter, health reporter, medical writer, marketing and social media consultant, blogger and women’s health advocate. With over 25 years experience in the healthcare arena, Liz has worked in the private and public sectors on behalf of web-based and traditional science publishers, public relations and advertising agencies and non-profits. Formerly Vice President and Manager of Marketing and New Business for the New York-based public relations firm Cohn & Wolfe, and a consultant for 17 years, Liz is now Principal of Digital Copy, LLC. Her work has appeared on- and offline in websites, videos, CD-ROMs, magazines, peer-reviewed journals and in conference proceedings. Liz’s blog, Flashfree, is geared towards providing evidence-based, alternative and integrative strategies to manage the medical, emotional, social and physical issues of menopause and midlife. It is currently ranked among the Top 100 Women’s Health Blogs and Top 100 Best Wellness Blogs for women.
Lois Privor-Dumm, IMBA, is the Director, Alliances and Information for the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She heads up several vaccine projects related to advocacy and communications as well as access and implementation. She is currently working as Director, Large Country Introduction for the Accelerated Vaccine Introduction Technical Assistance Consortium (AVI TAC), a GAVI-funded project with an aim to accelerate introduction of pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines in low-income countries. She has been at Johns Hopkins since 2005 helping guide strategies and accelerated uptake on both the Hib Initiative and PneumoADIP and has been leading projects in developing and donor countries to support strengthening of policies and awareness for childhood pneumonia as part of a global World Pneumonia Day Coalition effort.
Ms. Privor-Dumm spent years in the vaccine industry working for Wyeth, where she led a US team to launch Prevnar® and helped achieve unprecedented uptake of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine. Following the successful US experience, she worked as Commercial Director for the Latin American countries to introduce pneumococcal and meningococcal vaccines and then as Senior Director for Commercial Operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. She also worked at GlaxoSmithKline as director for global commercial strategy for various pipeline projects. After 18 years in industry, Ms. Privor-Dumm moved to the public sector to apply her expertise in accelerating decision making in the world’s poorest countries.
Ms. Privor-Dumm holds an International MBA from University of South Carolina and completed her internship and coursework in Brussels, Belgium. Her undergraduate degrees are in Business Administration and Spanish.
Lorraine Lee Friedman, JD, (aka Rainey) is the founder and executive director of the DreamDog Foundation as well as an award-winning author and songwriter. The DreamDog Foundation targets childhood development through preschool education and literacy. This past year, the Foundation distributed more than 15,000 new books to homeless and low income children for back to school. Rainey started her life-long commitment of advocacy for children with The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. There, she represented the educational rights of homeless children, lobbying Congress and litigating. Recruited as the Director of Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, Rainey's focus switched from the national scene to local issues, handling a caseload of up to fifty children with special needs. Within her legal career, she became their chief litigator representing children with disabilities in dozens of federal court cases and hundreds of administrative due process hearings, helping them fight for and obtain needed educational and social services. Rainey created Jazz the DreamDog® to help children discover the superhero inside and believe that the real magic to solve problems lies within oneself. She is the author of Monsters in Your Bed... Monsters in Your Head and the songwriter/producer/performer in the award-winning "I Believe in ME!" music CD of original sing along songs. She has also authored Jerome's Jam and created its companion music CD More Love, an iParenting Media Award Winner for music audio. Rainey recently created The Adventures of CiCi & Ace, a unique multi-sensory product combining a storybook, a music CD and Web fun & games that was distributed exclusively by The Children's Place. With more than 175,000 books in print, the CiCi & Ace titles include Ferris Wheel Fun - A Magic Ride!, School is Cool! and The Greatest Gift. All three titles are iParenting Media Award winners.
Lynn Shapiro Snyder, Esq. is the Founder and President of the
Women Business Leaders of the U.S. Health Care Industry Foundation (“WBL Foundation”), an organization meeting the needs of more than 1,800 senior executive women and women board members worldwide who do business with the U.S. health care industry. Ms. Snyder founded this non-profit organization in 2001, along with the support of founding sponsor Epstein Becker & Green, P.C. The Foundation’s mission – to help senior executive women from the health care industry improve their businesses and continue to grow professionally – has led Snyder and the WBL Foundation to assist with many corporate board searches, and the WBL Foundation has successfully placed WBL Foundation Associates on corporate boards. Ms. Snyder’s role as Founder of the WBL Foundation has earned her national media attention. In 2007, she was named a “Woman to Watch” by Jewish Women International. In August 2002,
Modern Healthcare magazine named Ms. Snyder as one of the “100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare” in its inaugural list. In April 2005,
Modern Healthcare magazine named Ms. Snyder as one of the “Top 25 Women in Healthcare.” She is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of gender diversity and the corporate boardroom, and she also the author of Advancing Women in Business: 10 Best Practices – a mentoring resource for women at all stages of their careers. In addition to founding the WBL Foundation, Ms. Snyder is nationally recognized in her role as a senior member of the law firm, Epstein Becker & Green, P.C., where she serves on the firm’s Board and Finance Committee. Ms. Snyder has almost thirty years of experience at the firm advising clients about federal, state and international health law issues, including Medicare, Medicaid, TriCare, compliance and managed care issues. Ms. Snyder serves on a number of corporate boards and advisory boards; she is a board member of Trustmark Mutual Insurance Company and a board member of the Maryland Israel Development Center. She earned a B.A. in Economics from Franklin & Marshall College in 1976 and her J.D. from the George Washington University National Law Center in 1979.
Mary Grealy is president of the Healthcare Leadership Council, a coalition of chief executives of the nation’s leading health care companies and organizations. The HLC advocates consumer-centered health care reform, emphasizing the value of private sector innovation. It is the only health policy advocacy group that represents all sectors of the health care industry. She was appointed to the position in August 1999.
Ms. Grealy has an extensive background in health care policy. She has led important initiatives on the uninsured, Medicare reform, improving patient safety and quality, protecting the privacy of patient medical information and reforming the medical liability laws. She testifies frequently before Congress and federal regulatory agencies.
From 1995 until she began her tenure at HLC, she served as Chief Washington Counsel for the American Hospital Association, a national organization representing all types of hospitals, health systems and health care networks. In her position, she was responsible for the organization’s legal advocacy before Congress, as well as executive and judicial branches of government.
From 1979 to 1995, Ms. Grealy was Chief Operating Officer and Executive Counsel for the Federation of American Hospitals, a trade association representing 1,700 investor-owned and managed hospitals and health systems. She coordinated legislative and regulatory policies as well as lobbying activities for the Federation.
Ms. Grealy has a bachelor degree from Michigan State University and a law degree from Duquesne University. She is a member of the American Health Lawyers Association and the Board of Directors of Duquesne University. She also serves on the advisory boards of Duke Health Sector Advisory Council, Women Business Leaders in Health and the March of Dimes Public Policy Council. She is a frequent public speaker on health issues and has been ranked many times by Modern Healthcare as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare and has been named to Modern Healthcare’s list of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare for 2009.
As a Physician Executive, Meera Kanhouwa is responsible for Microsoft’s worldwide physician and provider communications for the Microsoft Health Solutions Group, and for the Amalga product in particular. Meera’s efforts are part of Microsoft’s commitment to helping the health industry realize its potential for improved productivity, quality and safety. The Health Solutions Group is focused on providing innovative products that enable consumers to live healthier lives at any age, improve patient safety and operational results by providing “Health Intelligence” to caregivers, and reach into emerging regions to improve health worldwide.
Meera’s career has been in the health industry as a practicing emergency physician. Meera attended medical school at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, MA as an HPSP US Army scholarship participant. Meera did her internship at Brooke Army Medical Center in Ft. Sam Houston, TX, before being stationed at Walson Army Hosptial as General Medical Officer in the emergency department. During Meera’s time in the military, she was Quality Assurance Director at Walson Army Hospital, and ARCENT Forward Surgeon with the 1-43 Patriot Battalion stationed in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm.
Subsequent to completing the military requirement, Meera was an emergency medicine resident at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington DC. Concurrent with her residency, she also completed her Master of Health Administration with a focus on health IT. Meera was Chairman, Department Emergency Medicine, at Prince George’s County Hospital, Cheverly, Maryland prior to moving to the Seattle area.
In Seattle, Meera continued to practice emergency medicine at Swedish Hospital. She was Medical Director of Information Services for Swedish Health Services, and was instrumental in piloting and deploying innovative solutions to clinical problems while in this role for 5 years.
Meera joined Microsoft in 2005, and began as the Worldwide Executive Director Public Sector for Health Technology Strategy. In this role, Meera helped to define a global strategy for providers at Microsoft. Currently, Meera is the Physician Executive for the Health Solutions Group, working to bring the newly acquired Azyxxi application to market.
Meera holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College, a medical degree from Tufts University, an MHA from GW University in Washington DC. Meera and her husband Bruce, an interventional cardiologist, have one daughter and reside in Salt Lake City, UT.
Meryl Bloomrosen is Vice President at the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Ms. Bloomrosen supports a number of AMIA committees and task forces, provides executive oversight to AMIA’s contracts and grants, and provides support for AMIA’s ongoing efforts on Clinical Decision Support (CDS) and informatics workforce development.
Prior to her position with AMIA, Ms. Bloomrosen was a Vice President at the eHealth Initiative and the Program Manager of the Connecting Communities for Better Health Program, a HRSA-funded, multi-million dollar cooperative agreement. Earlier in her career she was a senior policy analyst at the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission. She has a certificate in health information management from the U.S. Public Health Service, an MBA in Information Systems from George Washington University, and is currently enrolled in the Graduate Certificate Program in Biomedical Informatics at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. In addition she has completed the Medical Informatics MBL/NLM Course Fellowship program at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA.
Michele Barry, MD, FACP
Michele Barry, MD, FACP is the Senior Associate Dean for Global Health and Director of Global Health Programs in Medicine at Stanford. She also serves as the health consultant for the Ford Foundation overseas programs. As Director of the Yale/Stanford Johnson and Johnson Global Health Scholar Award program, she has sent over 1000 physicians overseas to underserved areas to help strengthen health infrastructure in low resource settings. As a past President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, she led an educational initiative in tropical medicine and travelers health which culminated in diploma courses in tropical medicine both in the U.S. and overseas, as well as a U.S. certification exam. Dr. Barry is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Science and is past-Chair of the Interest Group on Global Health, Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at the IOM. She has been listed in Best Doctors in America and recently joined the Board of Directors of the Bill and Melinda Gates funded Consortium of Universities involved in Global Health (CUGH). Areas of scholarly interest include global health workforce, clinical tropical medicine, emerging infectious diseases, problems of underserved populations and globalization’s impact upon health in the developing world.
Michelle McMurry is a physician, scientist, health policy expert, and advocate for better global health and improved healthcare for all Americans. She is the founding director of the Health, Biomedical Science, and Society Policy Program of the Aspen Institute, a non-partisan think tank. In that capacity she leads a policy team as they illuminate the barriers to better nutrition, personalized medicine, HIV treatment around the globe, and reform of the American medical system. She also directs the annual Aspen Health Forum which brings thought leaders from around the world to debate the role of medicine and technology in improving the health of our nation. Most recently, Michelle’s team launched the Aspen Health Stewardship Project which seeks to broaden the healthcare debate from a narrow discussion of insurance to a more inclusive one of health and how best to protect this valuable resource. She has worked on health projects from Rwanda to Cambodia and is a committed global health advocate.
Michelle has nearly a decade of experience in health and science policy. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Policy at George Washington University. She was formerly a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco and an Adjunct MacArthur Fellow in Global Health at the Council for Foreign Relations. She was also the Hospital Preparedness Coordinator for the Department of Health and Human Services, where she worked on preparing our Nation's hospitals for public health emergencies.
She has crafted legislation on Capitol Hill and participated in national debates on health and social issues. She oversaw health and social policy issues for Senator Joseph Lieberman and was the senior health policy advisor for the Lieberman for President Campaign. She worked on homeland security, health disparities, healthcare quality, and translational research bills.
She studied biochemistry at Harvard and then attended Duke University for medical training. She was the first African-American to complete the combined National Institutes of Health funded MD/PhD program at Duke. A published scientific researcher, Michelle earned her PhD in molecular immunology for her study of gene recombination in immune system cells. She trained in pediatrics at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Ms. Krasner has over fifteen years of healthcare policy and healthcare marketing and communications experience. She has worked in both the non-profit and corporate sectors where her experience has ranged from coordinating high-level press briefings on Capitol Hill to launching health information technology products for Fortune 100 companies and IPO offerings. Ms. Krasner is currently working as the lead Product Marketing Manager at Google Health, a new product that helps users organize, manage and share their medical records online. Prior to coming to Google, Ms. Krasner worked in the Secretary’s Office at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services' (HHS) as Senior Advisor to Dr. David Brailer, M.D.,Ph.D., the first National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Before coming to HHS, Ms. Krasner worked as Marketing Director for CareScience, Inc., a "private-to-public" healthcare technology company that sold Internet-based tools and consulting services to hospitals, integrated delivery health systems, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Prior to her role at CareScience, Ms. Krasner helped lead Press and Communications at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan, national, healthcare policy think tank. Ms. Krasner also worked at Aetna Inc. where spearheaded a national provider relations campaign to Aetna's contracted providers. Ms. Krasner holds an M.A. in Communications and Healthcare Administration from Stanford University and a B.A. in English Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published a series of articles.
Nancy Singer
Nancy Singer is the. President of Compliance-Alliance, LLC, a firm that specializes in the professional development for those employed in the drug and medical device industries. Previously she was AdvaMed’s Special Counsel for FDA compliance and enforcement matters. In her role as Special Counsel, Ms. Singer was a member of the FDA/industry working group that evaluated and suggested reforms to the FDA inspectional process. She then represented the industry on the working group that conceived and validated the procedures for the Quality System Inspection Technique. She served as the industry spokesperson on the educational programs that taught QSIT to representatives of FDA and the medical device industry. For her efforts, she received Vice President Gore’s Reinventing Government Hammer Award and the FDA Commissioner’s Special Citation Award. Her food and drug career began as an attorney at the United States Department of Justice where she did litigation for the Food and Drug Administration. Subsequently she was a partner at the law firm of Kleinfeld, Kaplan and Becker. Ms. Singer received her B.S. from Cornell University and her J.D. and LL.M. degrees from New York University Law School. During her career, she taught food and drug law at Catholic University Law School and George Washington University Law School, was chairman of the Food and Drug Law Section of the Federal Bar Association, and is a retired Commander in the United States Navy Reserve.
Pamela Cipriano, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
Dr. Pamela Cipriano is a distinguished nursing and hospital administrator having served as Chief Nursing Officer and Chief Clinical Officer of the University of Virginia Health System the past nine years, achieving Magnet Recognition in 2006. For almost twenty years, Cipriano has led multiple patient care departments at academic medical centers focused on interdisciplinary team work and quality improvement. This broad focus includes leadership in such areas as clinical excellence, patient safety, quality improvement, technology/systems selection and implementation, shared governance, appreciative inquiry, regulatory compliance, clinical strategy, and community outreach.
Starting her clinical career in adult critical care, Cipriano advanced her education and was a clinical nurse specialist prior to selecting administration as her specialty practice. In recent years she has been focused on making nursing care safer and more efficient through the adoption and implementation of technologies at the point of care. As chair of the American Academy of Nursing’s Workforce Commission, she has helped lead a grant funded project to develop and test a process to identify technologies that enable improved workflow processes in acute care nursing environments.
Cipriano began her leadership activities while a student, serving as President of the National Student Nurses Association. She has continued to serve in national elected and appointed positions throughout her career in the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Nursing, the American Journal of Nursing Company, and the Joint Commission’s National Nursing Advisory Council, among others. She was elected to the National e-Health Collaborative Board to a two year term beginning in January, 2010, and was also recently appointed to the National Quality Forum’s Health Information Technology Utilization Expert Panel.
She is the editor-in-chief of
American Nurse Today, the official journal of the American Nurses Association. She has taught health policy and nursing administration in graduate nursing programs, and has been a Sigma Theta Tau International Distinguished Scholar, and an American Nurses Foundation Scholar. She is a strong consensus builder and brings a breadth and depth of experience to address today’s health care issues.
Pat Ford-Roegner is CEO of the American Academy of Nursing. She has more than 30 years experience in national health policy and governmental affairs.
Pat combines her clinical nursing experiences with community organizing training to advocate for common sense health care. She is known for her work to engage nurses, physicians and other health professionals to be heard by policy makers at the national, state and local levels, including the White House and Congress. Pat builds effective coalitions to reach consensus on issues and demonstrates her commitment to diversity by active engagement with individuals and groups. She is a Board member of the patient centered National Health Council and serves on the Advisory Board for the National Partnership to Prevent Chronic Disease.
Pat joined AAN from the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), where she was Executive Director. She was credited with pumping new life into AIMBE’s membership service programs and, particularly, its public policy initiatives. She built new and stronger relationships with Members of Congress, administration officials and the leadership of key institutions such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
She was a founding member of the National Health Policy Council, a non-profit group that hosted presidential candidate forums on health care in the 1980s and 1990s. Pat is co-founder of the Nightingale Policy Group, which promotes nursing's expertise on a wide range of health issues and has a major goal of putting a human face on the health care debate.
Pat’s career included service as Atlanta regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 1999, overseeing more than 500 employees and more than 20 percent of the agency’s national budget. One of the few nurses who has held a presidential appointment, she led that region to become the first to successfully implement Children Health Initiative Programs in each of its eight states. Prior to that she held a White House appointment co-leading the Health Professionals Council working on health care reform.
Earlier in her career, Pat led a behavioral health care organization where she built new alliances with business and the Republican-led Congress. She added prescription drug use and misuse, parity for mental health and substance use disorders and prevention of these diseases to her repertoire of knowledge on complex health issues. Pat was one of three Americans to testify to a joint committee of Britain's Parliament on addiction policy and politics in 2003. She held senior policy level positions at the American Nurses Association from 1981 to 1990 and with the SEIU from 1990 to 1992.
Pat holds a keen interest in health care coverage for the uninsured, Medicaid coverage and costs, the management of chronic diseases in special populations, children and women's health and the future health care workforce. She translates science and research to practice concepts to new audiences.
Pat was inducted as an AAN Fellow in 1998. She received the 1995 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Social Work and Social Policy. Pat holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work and Public Policy from the University of Pennsylvania, a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Policy from West Chester State University in Pennsylvania and an Associate’s Degree in Nursing Science from Gwynedd Mercy College in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Patrice Milos is Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer for Helicos BioSciences. A passionate believer in personalized healthcare, Dr. Milos joined Helicos BioSciences in June 2007. Her expertise and extensive knowledge in the life sciences advances the company's efforts to develop innovative and breakthrough technology involving single molecule DNA sequencing in pursuit of the $1000 Genome.
Previously, Dr. Milos served as Executive Director at Pfizer Global Research and Development. While at Pfizer, she was responsible for leadership, strategic alignment and execution of the scientific disciplines of pharmacogenomics, proteomics, metabonomics and RNA profiling across the Pfizer portfolio from early discovery into the marketplace. She joined Pfizer in 1993 and held numerous research positions of increasing responsibility focusing on a variety of areas relevant to human health including Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases, Pharmacogenomics, DNA Sequencing, Biomarkers and Molecular Sciences.
Dr. Milos serves on the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research and was pivotal in the establishment and oversight of key Pfizer strategic investments in the genomics area, most notably, the Genetic Association Information Network, a partnership with the National Institutes of Health. She also sits on several editorial boards for journals and has published and presented extensively in the genomics area.
Dr. Milos conducted post-doctoral fellowships at Brown University and Harvard University. She earned her MS and PhD degrees at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY and received her BA from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. She lives in Edgewood, Rhode Island with her husband Curt Spalding and their two children, Henry, 16, and Hannah, 13, who keep everyone very busy with hockey, basketball and sailing.
Phyllis E. Greenberger, M.S.W., is the first president and CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research, a Washington, D.C., based advocacy organization formed in 1990 to improve the health of women through research. The Society was the driving force behind the 2001 Institute of Medicine report
“Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?” that called on researchers to understand the implications of basic biological sex differences for the betterment of human health.
The Medical Herald selected Greenberger as one of the twenty most influential women in medicine today. She has been quoted in numerous publications including:
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and
US News and World Report. She is frequently called upon to speak on topics such as the importance of the inclusion and retention of women in clinical trials and the importance of sex-based biology and gender-based medicine. Greenberger frequently testifies before Congress advocating for additional research and funding for women’s health.
She serves on many boards of directors, advisory and editorial boards, and was a member of the Research Committee of the Presidential HIV/AIDS Advisory Council (PACHA) and the National Institutes of Health’s National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council (NAEHS). Currently, she serves on the Advisory Board for the Association of Black Cardiologists’ Center for Women’s Health, the Board of Advisors for the Iris Alliance Fund, and as the consumer representative to the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee (MCAC) for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and has been a consistent advocate for coverage for new technologies.
Phyllis Beck Kritek has deep roots in health care, beginning with her clinical career in mental health nursing and extended to several academic leadership roles, including dean, department chairperson, director of research, and creator and director of two doctoral programs. Long recognized for her leadership in the national nursing community, Dr. Kritek is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN), and a member of several professional organizations, where she has served in a variety of leadership roles.
Dr. Kritek has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and books. She has served on the editorial board of several nursing journals and was the Editor of Nursing Forum from 1989 1992. She has produced two books on subjects that have become widely associated with her professional foci, conflict resolution and healing. Dr. Kritek was on the leading edge of the shift to a healing focus in health care. Her book, Negotiating at an Uneven Table: Developing Moral Courage in Resolving Our Conflicts, now in its 2nd edition, explores conflict engagement under conditions of structured inequity, an area of expertise she developed during a Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship.
Dr. Kritek has been providing consultation and training in conflict engagement for over twenty years. She resigned her academic position in 2003 to dedicate herself full time to this work through her sole proprietorship, “courage”. She is sought as a speaker, a consultant, and a facilitator by organizations and health care agencies exploring strategic changes. She is noted for her unique ability to create conceptual maps that assist individuals and groups in grappling with challenges and dilemmas. She is convinced that constructive conflict engagement has “come of age” as an acknowledged need, particularly within US health care settings.
Randel Richner founded Neocure Group in June 2006, a consulting firm specializing in reimbursement, health policy, economics, and government advocacy support for biopharmaceutical and medical technology companies. Prior to founding the Neocure Group, Richner was Vice President, Global Government Affairs, Reimbursement and Outcomes Planning for Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC) for 9 years. At Boston Scientific, Richner built a global reimbursement and outcomes strategic process for new and existing less invasive medical technologies for BSC product platforms. During this time, she was actively engaged in national and international policy and legislative arenas as an advocate for the benefits of innovative medical technology, FDA, regulatory, international trade and payment issues.
Prior to BSC, Richner worked for GlaxoSmithKline (formerly SmithKline Beecham) in both London, England and Philadelphia, focusing on global pricing and economic issues for cardiopulmonary and diabetic drugs, publishing extensively. She was a member of the Global Health Policy Group (GHPG) consortium of leaders of health economics groups in the pharmaceutical and device industry. Richner has been an active member of the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Research (ISPOR) serving as a Board member for 2 years, founder of the US Medical Device Council of ISPOR, and Asia-Pacific Medical Device Council.
Richner has been a leader in policy initiatives in Washington with Congress and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She served on a four-year term as the first industry representative to the Executive Committee (EC) of the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee (MCAC), contributing to the development of national coverage and MCAC process guidelines. In 2007, she was reappointed to MedCAC for a 2 year term. She is a frequent contributor on policy panels on health care issues related to the technology industry, such as an Institute of Medicine (IOM) special committee on cost-effectiveness and post-market surveillance in 2005. Richner is on the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE); National Institute of Health Commercialization Program (NIH-CAP) Advisor; Executive Advisory Board of the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health (CEVRH) Tufts New England Medical Center; Executive Advisory Board to the Dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and the University of Michigan Ross Business School Healthcare Life Sciences Corporate Advisory Board. She serves on the board of Entellus Medical.
Richner has a master’s degree in public health policy and administration from the University of Michigan where she is also a magna cum laude graduate of the bachelor’s in science nursing program. Before her career in health economics and policy, she was a practicing dialysis and transplant nurse for 13 years at the University of Michigan Hospital and Northern Michigan Hospital.
Robin Strongin is an accomplished public affairs expert with more than 25 years of experience working in Washington, DC. Her areas of specialization include health care, science, technology and innovation. Robin has worked with and for Federal and state governments, regulatory agencies, Congress, think tanks, nonprofit organizations, corporations, coalitions and trade associations. Before becoming President of Amplify, Robin was a Managing Partner at the public affairs firm Polidais, LLC. Before joining Polidais, Robin served as a Senior Research Associate with the National Health Policy Forum at George Washington University. While at the Forum, she organized seminars for congressional and executive staff, authored numerous publications, and worked closely with a range of state and federal agencies, professional societies, advocacy groups and consumer organizations. She served as acting Executive Director and Director of Research for the Health Care Technology Institute. Her previous tenures with health and policy organizations include the National Leadership Coalition on Health Care and the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission (now the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission). She was selected as a Presidential Management Intern and worked in the Office of Legislation and Policy of the Health Care Financing Administration (now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), in addition to serving in the Office of Congressman James J. Florio (D-NJ). Robin is currently serving on the Public Affairs Council's Senior Executive Task Force and the AcademyHealth Health Policy Communications Interest Group Advisory Committee. She has recently been appointed to the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).
Rosemary Gibson is a writer, strategist, and thought leader in U.S. health care. Her new book, The Treatment Trap, puts a human face on overuse of unnecessary medical treatment. Rosemary has made her mark as a national leader in patient safety. She is author of the critically acclaimed, Wall of Silence, a book of narratives of patient experience with medical errors. At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey, Rosemary led national initiatives to improve health care quality for sixteen years. She was the chief architect of a $200 million national strategy to establish palliative care in the mainstream of the U.S. health care system. Rosemary was honored as the recipient of the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Rosemary worked with Bill Moyers and Public Affairs Television on the PBS documentary, "On Our Own Terms," which showed to more than 20 million viewers how the U.S. health care system can better care for seriously ill patients and their families. She supported physician and nurse leaders who launched faculty development programs in palliative care, revised medical and nursing textbooks to include the care of dying patients, expanded palliative care content on medical and nursing licensing exams, and initiated a series in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "Perspectives on Care at the Close of Life." Rosemary is a frequently invited speaker on patient safety and health care quality for physicians, nurses, hospital administrators and trustees, health care ethicists and policy makers. Earlier in her career, Rosemary was Senior Research Associate at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy organization; Vice President of the Economic and Social Research Institute, a policy think tank; and consultant to the Medical College of Virginia and the Virginia state legislature's Commission on Health Care. She also served as a volunteer and Board member at a free medical clinic in Washington, D.C.She is a graduate of Georgetown University and has a master’s degree from The London School of Economics.
Rozalynn works as Director of Policy Research and as a lobbyist for the South Carolina Hospital Association (SCHA). Prior to joining SCHA, Rozalynn worked in strategic planning and system development with Palmetto Health and in health and human services policy research in the Office of former South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges. Rozalynn holds a bachelor’s degree in Health Care Management from Lander University and a Masters of Health Administration from the University of South Carolina. She is a graduate of Leadership Columbia, serves as board treasurer for the SC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, and has been recognized as one of 20 emerging leaders under the age of 40 in the The State Newspaper's "20 Under 40" Feature. Rozalynn is also a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and serves as an elder at her church, Right Direction Christian Center.
When she’s not doing health policy and advocacy, Rozalynn is blogging for the Family Ties section of her state newspaper’s website (www.thestate.com/family). On Mother’s Day 2008, she founded The Motherhood Priority, a non-profit organization advocating for mother-friendly policies and practices in the workplace (www.themotherhoodpriority.com). As a native of Mt. Carmel, SC, with a population of 237, the small town’s values of family and community were instilled and continue to influence Rozalynn today. She acquired a passion for the plight of working mothers when she became one in October of 2006, giving birth to her daughter, Gabrielle. Rozalynn’s priorities changed almost instantly from breaking the glass ceiling to being the primary nurturer of her daughter’s destiny. Rozalynn believes there is no job more important than motherhood and is dedicated to working with businesses and government to reestablish the priority of motherhood in the workplace.
A diploma nursing school graduate of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Ruth Watson Lubic also received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from Teacher’s College, Columbia University, followed soon thereafter by a certificate of nurse-midwifery awarded by MCA/SUNY Health Sciences Center in Brooklyn. Broadening her scope, she earned a doctorate in education (Ed.D) from Columbia in applied anthropology.
From 1970 to 1995, she was the General Director of Maternity Center Association, a venerable organization dating from 1918, which was organized by women and operated continuously by women of great distinction. MCA’s focus is the health and welfare of childbearing families, and Dr. Lubic put her unusual education and personal philosophy to full use as its CEO. While maintaining her upper West Side residence in Manhattan with her husband, she currently serves as Founder and Chair Emerita of the Family Health and Birth Center and Founder and President Emerita of the Developing Families Center in Washington, D.C. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the New York University Division of Nursing and at the Georgetown University School of Nursing. From 1995-1997 she was an expert consultant in the office of the DHHS Assistant Secretary for Health, Philip R. Lee, M.D.
It was Dr. Lubic’s vision which lead to establishment of the first demonstration freestanding Childbearing Center (CbC) in the United States. Operating from the MCA town house in Manhattan (1975-1996) before being transferred to become the St. Vincent’s Medical Center’s Elizabeth Seton Childbearing Center, the CbC served as a model for more than 150 centers in this country. Instrumental in the growth of this movement was the American Association of Birth Centers (AABC) of which Dr. Lubic was a co-founder and first president. Because of her knowledge and skills as a public speaker, she has consulted with organizations in Japan, Australasia and several European countries. Birth centers on the CbC model were established in Australia, Sweden and Germany. Her insights have led Dr. Lubic to redefine the stereotype of the low-income mother as being consistently high-risk. MCA established its second freestanding birth center in 1988 in the depressed inner city area of the southwest Bronx. Apart from achieving remarkable medical statistics, the social and familial impact of the Center has been extraordinary. Turned over to a community health center in 1992, it continues to operate successfully.
The recognition of Dr. Lubic’s achievements in public health have been many. In 1971 she was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Subsequently she was elected to fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing, the American College of Nurse-Midwives, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Applied Anthropology. She was a member of the first official American Medical Delegation to the Peoples Republic of China in 1973. She was designated by the Ladies Home Journal, (October, 1983) as one of “America’s 100 Most Important Women”. Honorary doctorates were awarded by the University of Pennsylvania, and four other institutions. She is particularly pleased with the Rockefeller Public Service Award given her by Princeton University, and being designated as a “Distinguished Alumna” of Teacher’s College, Columbia University. In 1997, she received the Carola Warburg Rothschild award from Maternity Center Association and The Association for Women in Education in 1999 bestowed its Woman of Distinction Award at its conference for Women Student Leaders.
A milestone as well as a change of direction was the result of receiving the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur so-called “genius” Fellowship in 1993. Dr. Lubic used her five year stipend in a seven year venture in bringing to families in Wards 5 and 6 of our nation’s capital, (the locus of the worst infant outcomes in the United States,) her concept of a Developing Families Center, which has operated since 2000.
Dr. Lubic has served as Visiting Professor to the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, Australia, and as Kate Hanna Harvey Visiting Professor, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University. In what is the most significant development in nurse-midwifery education in many decades, Dr. Lubic (in collaboration with Case Western Reserve University, the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky and AABC) was one of the prime movers in a new concept of nurse-midwifery education which amalgamated home study and precepted “hands on” experience in efficiently educating professional nurses in their own communities to become certified nurse-midwives. In June, 1999, Dr. Lubic was the Irving Harris Professor at the School of Nursing of the University of Illinois-Chicago.
To be honored by one’s peers is of particular significance. Among others, the American College of Nurse-Midwives awarded the Hattie Hemschemeyer Award in 1983; the American Nurses Association designated her the 1985 Maternal and Child Health Nurse of the Year, and gave Honorary Recognition, it’s highest award, in 1994; the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing conferred its Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the Nursing Education Alumni Association of Teacher’s College gave her both its Achievement Award and the McManus Medal. The year 2001 was a high point for Dr. Lubic. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences awarded in Washington its Gustav O. Lienhard Award for “outstanding achievement in improving health care services in the United States.” The American Academy of Nursing designated her as a Living Legend for “contributions to the provision of health care services in the United States and in all regions of the world”, and the Medical Honor Society, Alpha Omega Alpha, elected her to honorary membership. In 2003, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York bestowed on Dr. Lubic its prestigious Lillian D. Wald Award, and in 2006, she received the American Public Health Association’s Martha May Eliot Award.
Early in her career, Dr. Lubic served as officer and director of boards of various professional and health associations including the Presidency of both the Pan American Health and Education Fund and the American Association for World Health. In addition to publishing over seventy-five articles, she is co-author of the book “Childbearing - A Book of Choices”.
Dr. Lubic’s residence is in New York City. She is married to an attorney who is an honorary nurse-midwife. They have one son who is practicing law in New Jersey, and two grandchildren.
Ruthann Russo is a managing director with Navigant Consulting and a partner in the law firm of Russo and Russo based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and New York City. She has been working in and advising healthcare organizations and their medical staffs for over 20 years. She was previously the chief executive officer of HP3, HP3 Research Institute, and Cabot Marsh Corporation.
Dr. Russo has written seven books addressing the industry-wide issues of documentation, coding, and compliance in healthcare including her most recent, A Compelling Case for Clinical Documentation, published in 2008. She also wrote Mindful Healthcare: The Conscious Person’s Guide to Living in Harmony with the US Healthcare System and the Raw Food Diet Myth: What you need to know about the raw and living food lifestyle to improve your health, fitness and life. She created the HealthMap™ program to help healthcare consumers proactively create a vision and plan for their care.
Dr. Russo is a graduate of Dickinson College, American University’s Washington College of Law, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School’s program in public health, Columbia University’s Teachers College certification program in health counseling, and Touro University, where she earned her doctoral degree in business administration with an emphasis on healthcare management.
Sally Greenberg joined the National Consumers League as Executive Director on October 1, 2007. Sally's focus at NCL is on four key priority areas: fraud, child labor, LifeSmarts, and health care forums. At NCL, she's testified before the White House Interagency Working Group on import safety and is our primary spokesperson on a variety of issues.
Sally comes to NCL from Consumers Union, where she’d worked since 1997 on auto safety and legal and liability reform and to improve the legal system for consumers. During her tenure at CU, Sally covered both auto and product safety, intellectual property, securities reform and investor protections, and civil justice reform. Before CU, Sally worked at the Justice Department’s Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, and before that, spent a decade serving as the Eastern States Civil Rights Counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, based in Boston.
Sally was president of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts and the Women’s Bar Foundation, served on several gubernatorial commissions in Massachusetts, and currently serves on several boards of directors, including the board of HALT, an organization that works to protect the rights of consumers in their interactions with lawyers and the legal system. Since 1994, Sally has served on the Board of Directors of Trillium Asset Management, the oldest and largest investment management firm dedicated to socially responsible investing.
Sally Stansfield, MD
Sally Stansfield is the Executive Secretary of the Health Metrics Network (HMN), responsible for managing the technical and financial contributions of HMN partners to accelerate reform of health information systems for improved health outcomes on behalf of the Network and its host, the World Health Organization (WHO).
Prior to 2006, Dr. Stansfield was the Associate Director for Global Health Strategies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She draws upon more than 30 years of clinical and public health practice, experience in research agencies, universities, governments, non-governmental organizations, and multilateral agencies. Dr. Stansfield's areas of expertise include public health research, policy, strategic planning, program design and development, evaluation, and the development of health information systems. She has designed and managed programs for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Agency for International Development and Canada's International Development Research Centre and has advised governments in Bangladesh, Cambodia, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, many other countries, primarily in Asia and Africa.
Her many awards include the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honorary, the International College of Surgeons Award for Scholarship, the Public Health Service Distinguished Service Commendation, a Fulbright Fellowship, and the Yale Tercentennial Medal.
Dr. Bhagat is a mother of a young adult with a chronic medical condition, a physician, and the founder of a grassroots non-profit charitable organization, Physician-Parent Caregivers (PPC). When Dr. Bhagat’s daughter became critically ill at the age of 8 years, she had to withdraw from a medical fellowship at the Armed Forces Institutes of Pathology not to care for her child, but to manage her health care. In spite of having preferential care from her pediatric group, prime health insurance, and medical training, she went on to experience a health care nightmare from renowned providers in the nation’s capital. Her daughter suffered several misdiagnoses and numerous medical mistakes. Care coordination was non-existent and continuously consumed large chunks of her time. Education in one of the country’s best school systems proved to be equally treacherous.
Shocked by the inability of the health care system to provide safe quality care for her daughter, Dr. Bhagat felt she needed to understand the health care system from the outside. She decided to study health policy and pursued a Masters in Public Health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. When she conducted formal research on Physician-Parents of children with special health care needs, she came to the conclusion that the unique voice of Physician-Parents was necessary to help all families obtain quality health care for their children. The resonating question asked at the Physician-Parent Roundtable was, “If we are unable to secure quality health care for our children, how do non-medical parents manage?”
Dr. Bhagat received her medical degree from the University of Bangalore and completed her residency in pathology and laboratory medicine at the Georgetown University Medical Center.
Sharon is President and CEO of the Genetic Alliance, a network transforming health by promoting an environment of openness centered on the health of individuals, families and communities. She is the founding Executive Director of PXE International, a research advocacy organization for the genetic condition pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE). Following the diagnosis of their two children with pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE) in 1994, Sharon, a former college chaplain, and her husband, Patrick, founded and built a dynamic organization that fosters ethical research and policies and provides support and information to members and the public.
She is at the forefront of consumer participation in genetics research, services and policy and serves as a member of many of the major governmental advisory committees on medical research, including the HIT Standards Committee for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, liaison to the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders and Genetic Diseases in Newborns and Children and the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research, NHGRI, NIH. She serves on the boards of GRAND Therapeutics Foundation, the Center for Information & Study on Clinical Research Participation, Rosalind Franklin Society, The Biotechnology Institute, DNA Direct, National Coalition of Health Professional Education in Genetics, and the Coalition for 21st Century Medicine. She is on the steering committees of Genetic Association Information Network of NHGRI, the CETT program, the EGAPP Stakeholders Group, and the editorial board of Biopreservation and Biobanking, and the Google Health Advisory Board. She is the chair of the Coalition for Genetic Fairness that was instrumental in the passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. She is a member of the IOM Roundtable on Translating Genomic-Based Research for Health. She is chair of the Social Issues Committee of American Society of Human Genetics. In 2005, she received an honorary doctorate from Iona College for her work in community engagement and haplotype mapping; in 2007 received the first Patient Service Award from the UNC Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy; and in 2009 received the Research!America Distinguished Organization Advocacy Award.
Ms. Terry is a co-founder of the Genetic Alliance Biobank. It is a centralized biological and data [consent/clinical/environmental] repository catalyzing translational genomic research on rare genetic diseases. The BioBank works in partnership with academic and industrial collaborators to develop novel diagnostics and therapeutics to better understand and treat these diseases. Along with the other co-inventors of the gene associated with PXE (ABCC6), she holds the patent for the invention. She co-directs a 33-lab research consortium and manages 52 offices worldwide for PXE International.
Terry is committed to bringing together diverse stakeholders that create novel partnerships in advocacy; integrating individual, family, and community perspectives to improve health systems; and revolutionizing access to information to enable translation of research into services and individualized decision making. She lives with her husband Patrick and their two children in Maryland.
Since co-founding the Gaithersburg, MD health care benefits firm Golden & Cohen, in 1992, Stephanie Cohen has helped it grow into one of the largest among female-owned companies in the Washington metropolitan region. With more than two decades of experience in small group health insurance, disability programs and life insurance, she was a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, serves on the prestigious United HealthCare, Coventry, Aetna and Kaiser Broker Council and is a member of the Womens’ President Organization, the District of Colombia Insurance Commissioner Advisory Council and The Greater Washington Health Underwriters.
She has grown increasingly frustrated with the ballooning cost of health coverage and has decided to make a change. On October 29, 2008 she hosted the DC Health Summit (http://dchealthsummit.com/) — a meeting of 100 top health care insurance providers, doctors, hospitals, business owners, and politicians who came together to discuss the value of workplace wellness programs as a way to lower insurance rates. Stephanie’s goal is to establish a consortium of leaders that will begin a national dialog and ultimately develop workable solutions to fix the nation’s health insurance problem.
Stephanie is a native of Maryland, and received her BS in Marketing from University of Maryland, in 1986.
Stephanie Mensh found herself thrust into the role of personal caregiver and patient advocate in the same shocking instant that her husband, Paul Berger, suffered a severe stroke. Stephanie was only 31, Paul 36, when their middle class, career-oriented lives lurched suddenly off track. That was over 20 years ago. Since then, they have both thrived due to teamwork and Stephanie’s caregiving mantra: push the survivor to be as independent as possible; do what you (the caregivers) do best; and communicate.
To help other caregivers, persons with disabilities and their families, Stephanie serves on the consumer board of the newly established Stroke Comeback Center in Oakton, VA, and as an appointed representative to the Fairfax County (Virginia) Human Services Council and the Tysons Land Use Task Force. She served on the Steering Committee of the National Quality Forum’s project on Stroke Measures as a consumer representative. Previously, she served as co-chair of the Community Education Committee, of the “Operation Stroke” pilot sponsored by Inova Health Systems (Fairfax, VA) and the American Heart/American Stroke Association Mid-Atlantic affiliate. She served as President of the Northern Virginia Brain Injury Association, and as a member of the Executive Board of the National Aphasia Association.
Stephanie has co-authored books on stroke recovery with her husband, including How to Conquer the World With One Hand…and an Attitude. She works with Paul in their publishing company, Positive Power Publishing, and contributes to their website on stroke recovery, www.strokesurvivor.com. She has made numerous presentations to professional and consumer groups on caregiving and patient advocacy.
Stephanie has worked professionally for New Editions Consulting, Inc., as a Senior Research Manager; for the National Association of State Mental Retardation Program Directors as Legislative Assistant; and the National Council of Community Mental Health Centers as Research Assistant/Editor. She served as Managing Editor of Health & Healing, an alternative health consumer newsletter with a circulation of 500,000.
Currently, she serves as Vice President, Reimbursement Policy, for the Neocure Group, a consulting firm specializing in strategic reimbursement policy and health economics for the medical device industry. Stephanie focuses on Medicare coverage, coding, payment, quality and value strategies. She served in a similar position as a Senior Reimbursement Advisor for King and Spalding, LLP, and as Vice President, Payment and Policy, for the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed). Prior to joining AdvaMed’s staff, she worked for the Institute for Clinical PET, as Executive Director, and for the Coding Institute, as Consulting Editor. Previously, she worked for the American Urological Association as Director, Department of Health Policy, and for the American Academy of Ophthalmology as Assistant Director of its Washington, DC Office.
Lending her expertise in reimbursement policy, Stephanie co-chaired the Medical Device Regulatory, Reimbursement and Compliance Congress at Harvard for the past three years, and produced a special 2-day course on reimbursement for the University of Southern California at Irvine’s Masters of Regulatory Science Program.
Stephanie holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration, Finance, from George Mason University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science & English from The American University.
Tamar Abrams is a strategic communications consultant based in Arlington, VA. She works with nonprofits, foundations and individuals to help them develop the messages, strategies and vehicles that will resonate with their key audiences. Tamar has worked as a television producer, newspaper writer and magazine editor. She has also served as communications director for NARAL, special projects coordinator for Planned Parenthood Federation of America and vice president of communications for Population Action International. She writes regularly for Huffington Post and has written for Washingtonian and Washington Jewish Week. She is the proud single mom of an awesome and fierce 16 year old daughter.
With a 30 year career in the healthcare industry, Teri Louden has developed a national reputation for her leading edge marketing and strategy expertise in launching medical products and advanced medical technologies as well as new health care service businesses. In recent years, she has focused on the futuristic world of medical technologies, including the many life and world changing technologies such as genomics, medical informatics, robotics, wireless diagnostics, implantable, and many other leading edge medical technology breakthroughs. In her vision of the future, both health care and consumer technologies continue to come together to change the world of health care as we know it today…for the better and with a more enhanced focus on diagnostics, prevention, and wellness services.
This medical/consumer technology exploration lead her into the amazing future world of medical gaming and virtual world information technologies. As she has spent time researching and exploring this new and exciting area of medical technology, it has now become her next major leading area of interest and focus and expertise across the world of health care technology and services.
An early pioneer among women in business, her career has included key positions in Fortune 500 medical companies as well as emerging medical technology businesses, and also founding and leading the growth of The Louden Network, a healthcare business marketing and strategy consulting firm. An accomplished keynote presenter and publicist, Teri has lectured at many corporate and executive conferences across the healthcare industry and has published and been quoted in many leading edge books, articles, and newsletters across the industry.
In 2001 she left her consulting practice to be part of the launch team for a venture-backed San Diego-based company called CardioNet, the first company in history to integrate the use of wireless and medical diagnostics technologies to allow for 24/7 outpatient arrhythmia monitoring. (Note: they just had a successful public offering in April 2008 and are trading on NASDAQ under the symbol BEAT). Teri has recently returned to her own consulting practice and as her company tag line implies, her focus is to help her clients “think differently about healthcare” and develop truly innovative and creative strategies that take advantage of the future technological world that is changing our world every day, and making the global world of health care a reality.
Teri’s career in healthcare began with Baxter Travenol Laboratories, where she first worked on market launch projects for new medical disposable products, and subsequently became one of the first women in medical sales. Following Baxter, she was a health care strategy consultant for Booz, Allen, and Hamilton in their Chicago office where she worked with hospital and medical center clients on strategic planning and product line expansion assignments. She was hired by American Hospital Supply in the early 80’s and served as Director of Corporate Strategic Planning and also developed the company’s annual future forecast of the state of the healthcare industry.
She holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from North Carolina State University and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia.
As the daughter of a career Air Force pilot, Teri grew up in an environment of international travel and frequent change that nurtured an adventurous, confident sense of “change-as-opportunity” from an early age. She has recently published a book called On God’s Wings, a real life inspirational story about the medical miracle experienced by her father, who in 1949 survived a devastating crash of the B-45 Tornado, the first US jet bomber, and went on to fly in both the Korean War and Vietnam after almost three years of rehab at Walter Reed Hospital. He is one proud dad and still going strong at age 87!
Tine Hansen-Turton, MGA, JD, vice president at the Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC), has earned a reputation as an effective change agent, systems-thinker, social innovator and policy advocate. She assists PHMC and its affiliates with business and programmatic strategy, development, coordination and implementation, as well as with policy development and state and national advocacy. Tine serves as CEO the National Nursing Centers Consortium (NNCC), a non-profit organization supporting the growth and development of over 250 nurse-managed health centers, serving more than 2.5 million vulnerable people across the country in urban and rural locations. She is also co-founder and executive director of Convenient Care Association, a national trade association of over 1250 emerging private sector based retail health clinics with the capacity to serve 17 million people. Tine has been instrumental in positioning Nurse Practitioners as primary health care providers globally
Val Jones, M.D., is the CEO of Better Health, LLC, a medical blogger network and education company. Most recently she was the Senior Medical Director of Revolution Health, a consumer health portal with over 120 million page views per month in its network.
Dr. Jones is the author of the popular blog, "Getting Better with Dr. Val", which won The Best New Medical Blog award in 2007 and was a finalist in the health policy and ethics category for 2008.
Dr. Jones has been quoted by various major media outlets, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the LA Times. She has been a guest on over 20 different radio shows, and was featured on CBS News. Dr. Jones volunteers as a rehabilitation medicine physician at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and is a graduate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Disclosures: Dr. Val Jones is a consultant for MedPage Today.
