Building
strong and healthy communities requires expertise,
experience and vision. In our two-year program,
the Health Partners Fellows will learn and share
academic principles, best practices and proven models
that will help them further our shared mission.
Specifically,
the program focuses on the exploration of the
nature of communities, academic institutions and the
linkages between them, as well as strategies for successfully
leading a redirection of health professions education
and health services.
The fellowship concentrates
on providing a small group of leaders with a two-year set of intensive
learning experiences about collaboration between entities such as government
agencies, social service agencies, academic medical centers, non-profit
corporations and community based organizations. These learning experiences
are set in two related contexts: (1) a cohort of learners who share
common learning experiences with one another, and (2) the individual
experiences of fellows
working in their own organizations.
The overall approach
is to foster a group learning process,
establish a network of colleagues and provide ongoing
support to improve bridge-building skills. The fellowship
provides multiple immersion seminars on core
areas of concentration including:
The
Health Partners Fellows
Class of 2000-2002 includes:
About
ICHLD
Valda Boyd Ford, MPH, MS, RN
Director of Community
& Multicultural Affairs
University of Nebraska Medical Center & Nebraska Health Systems
Omaha, Nebraska
In addition
to her position at the University of Nebraska, Valda serves as executive
director of The Center
for Human Diversity© and president of KIBICO Consulting. An internationally
acclaimed speaker
and lecturer on health promotion, entrepreneurship, and cultural diversity,
Valda has presented
at World Health Organization conferences, the Mayo Clinic, and at worldwide
venues including
Wales, Saudi Arabia, Poland, China, the Caribbean, and Denmark.
She has published
dozens of articles on health care and has developed videos and CD-ROM
teaching tools on the use of Web conferencing
and cultural competency in healthcare. She is currently authoring a
book on cultural competence and is the host and
executive producer of Valda’s Place, a cable television show on
health and diversity issues. Valda recently developed The Center
for Human Diversity©, which offers an intensive, ten-month course
for health care professionals to develop cultural competency.
Valda has started
or expanded four health care businesses and a consulting firm. She has
received several honors and awards, is very
active in a number of professional and community organizations, and
has served on several task forces and work groups for the
state of Nebraska. Valda was health advisor to Senator Vargrave Richards
and currently serves on numerous boards and commissions
that address health care and health disparities.
Karen F. Buchi, MD
Associate
Professor of Pediatrics
University of Utah Health Sciences Center
Salt Lake City, Utah
Karen has been a
member of the department of pediatrics at the University of Utah since
1990. As a general pediatrician, she works with residents in providing
primary care to the most underserved children of Salt Lake County. She
supervises residents in outpatient and inpatient settings, lectures
on general pediatric issues, and serves as a local expert on issues
of the drug-exposed infant. As a researcher, she is active in monitoring
the prevalence of maternal substance use in Utah and is currently investigating
the effectiveness of a lay health educator program in a clinic serving
indigent patients. Currently she directs a primary care pediatric clinic
for the underserved, which also is a teaching and training site for
pediatric residents, medical students and allied health services students.
Karen also is active
in the community as the chair of the board of Holy Cross Ministries,
a community-based service organization that addresses needs of the indigent
Latino population and the elderly. She is a board member of Utah Children,
a child advocacy organization that is active at the state legislative
and policy level.
Saki Cabrera Strait, PhD
Director
of Evaluation & Research Perinatal Council
Oakland, California
Saki has led various
federally funded and local research projects and has developed, implemented
and evaluated community programs focused on education, vocation and
health among youth. Her overall interests include evaluation research,
program development and implementation (focused on blending theory with
practice), grant writing and providing resources to disadvantaged communities.
She is especially
interested in assisting youth to realize their true worth and contributions
to the community.
A native of Bronx,
New York, Saki earned her doctorate and masters degrees at Claremont
Graduate University, with a concentration in applied social psychology
and evaluation research. She graduated summa cum laude at Iona College
with a bachelor of arts, with a double major in psychology and humanistic
communications. She is currently a member of the American Evaluation
Association, American Psychological Association, and American Public
Health Association. She has presented at various conferences and has
published on the topic of maladaptive behavior among Hispanic/Latino
youth. Saki serves on the Health Professions Education Foundation board
and tutors youth in the community.
Casey Dorman, PhD
Director
of Training
County of Orange, Health Care Agency
Professor
Alliant International University's California School of Professional
Psychology, Santa, Ana, California
Since 1992, Casey
has been working with the County of Orange and was appointed director
of training at the Health
Care Agency in 1997. He develops training programs and acts as a community
and university liaison,
with particular emphasis on early childhood mental health programs.
He is a professor in the psychology
department of Alliant International University’s California School
of Professional Psychology,
which merged with United States International University in 2001.
After earning his
doctorate, Casey served as a staff psychologist at the Children’s
Health Council in Palo Alto, California. He then
worked in private practice in Massachusetts, and in 1980 became chief
psychologist at the Massachusetts Hospital School, a
Massachusetts Department of Public Health residential school and hospital
for severely physically disabled children and adolescents.
He also has served as an associate professor and dean of the School
of Human Behavior at United States International
University in San Diego.
Casey received bachelor’s,
master’s, and doctoral degrees in psychology from the University
of Washington in Seattle. He is the author
of Cognitive Effects of Early Brain Injury (Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1994) and approximately two dozen research articles,
primarily on brain injury and learning problems in children.
Patricia A. Johnson, MSW, MA
Program
Consultant
US Department of Health & Human Resoruces
Health Resources Services Adminstration, Chicago, Illinois
In her role as program
consultant to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
Patricia is responsible for the oversight of primary care service delivery
grants in Indiana and Ohio as well as the development of programs to
improve health care access throughout a six state region. As an agency
of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HRSA ensures the
availability of quality health care to low income, uninsured, isolated,
vulnerable and special needs populations. Prior to joining HRSA in 1999,
Patricia worked in child welfare, behavioral health, public health,
and tobacco research. In May 2002, Patricia
was recognized for exemplary job performance and became a finalist for
the “Outstanding Professional Federal Employee
of the Year” award for the Chicago Metropolitan Area. She has a
master of arts in political science from the University
of Illinois at Chicago and a master of social work degree from the University
of Illinois at Urbana. She is a member of
the Academy of Certified Social Workers and is licensed in the State
of Illinois as a licensed clinical social worker.
Francisco Lamus Lemus, MD
Chair, Public Health
& Social Projection
School of Medicine at Universidad de La Sabana
Bogota, Columbiá
Francisco is a pediatrician
who is concentrating his efforts on the identification, implementation,
monitoring and evaluation of primary health projects in several Colombian
cities. For the past three years Francisco has been implementing the
World Health Organization’s Health Promoting School Initiative
in eight schools of the Sabana de Bogotá which will design and
implement instruments and methodologies that help transform schools
into healthy environments.
Currently Francisco
is chair of public health of the School of Medicine at Universidad de
La Sabana in
Bogotá, where academic and research activities related to family
medicine, health administration and public health are being developed.
He belongs to a team comprised of seven health professors and several
schoolteachers. He holds a master’s degree in public
health and a master of science in applied development.
DeAnne K. Hilfinger Messias, PhD
Associate Professor
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
For more than 20
years DeAnne has been instrumental in forging transnational linkages
between U.S.
and Brazilian nurses, fostering and sustaining collaborations and exchanges
between practitioners,
educators, and researchers. DeAnne is an associate professor at the
University of South Carolina,
holding a joint appointment in the College of Nursing and the Women’s
Studies Program.
Currently she is
leading a statewide initiative to ensure compliance with federal standards
of care for persons
with limited English proficiency and to increase awareness of and access
to health care among recent
immigrant groups. DeAnne also is a co-investigator on a study using
participatory action research to improve intraorganizational capacity
for cervical cancer screening among Hispanic women in South Carolina.
DeAnne earned a
bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois in Latin American
Studies, a bachelor of science in nursing from
the University of Arizona, a master’s in community health nursing
at Indiana Wesleyan University and a doctorate in nursing
from the University of California, San Francisco. From 1998 to 2000
she was a Fellow of the World Health Organization
Collaborating Center in Healthy Cities and the Institute of Action Research
for Community Health at the Indiana
University School of Nursing and was a founding board member of the
South Carolina Hispanic/Latino Health Coalition.
Dale Eileen Meyer, MS
President &
CEO
People Encouraging People, Inc.
Baltimore, Maryland
Since 1989, Dale
has been president of People Encouraging People, Inc., a multi-serviceorganization
serving those who are disabled or disadvantaged. Under Dale’s direction,
the organization
has grown to a $9 million company that addresses the needs of approximately
1600 persons
per year. She provides leadership and strategic direction for all agency
functions and operations.
Over the past decade, she has created alliances with a range of community
businesses and organizations and developed opportunities and affordable
housing for residents. She also secured more than $6 million in HUD
and other housing funds and increased her agency’s assets by 100%
during the past five years. Dale also serves as president of
several subsidiary corporations including Cloville Homes, Mount Washington
Homes, Hamden Falls Homes, Overlea Homes,
Greater Hamilton Homes and the PEP Foundation. Dale has an extensive
background in the mental health field, has served
as chair of Terra Health Systems, and has held several positions, including
director of vocational services at Sinai Hospital
in Maryland.
She holds a master’s
degree in rehabilitation from Western Maryland College and has participated
as board member and advisor to numerous community organizations including
the Community Behavioral Health Association of Maryland, Maryland Health
Partners, Cardinal Sheehan School, and the Black Mental Health Alliance.
Heraldo Povea-Pacci, MD
Health Equity Programme
Coordinator
Undergraduate Medical Education, Faculty of Health
University of Newcastle, Australia
Chair, Organizing Committee
New International Community Based Medical School
ARCIS University, Chile
Heraldo is
a scientist, lecturer and medical practitioner specializing in immunopathology.
Born and raised
in Chile, Heraldo has been working to develop links between his faculty
and local indigenous and
disadvantaged communities in Chile, Peru and Bolivia. This exchange
program has had several positive
outcomes including preparation of a postgraduate program for health
professionals in Chile and Australia, establishment
of a Chilean University in an indigenous territory, research projects
on community health in indigenous areas, and
the introduction of health equity to the medical curriculum.
Prior to his current
position, he worked as a general practitioner in Santiago, Chile for
nine years. Through this period he developed
a novel concept for providing primary health care based on a computer-assisted
daily assessment of risk.Heraldo
completed a master’s degree in immunology at the University of
London while simultaneously being trained as a scientific
researcher at the Nuffield Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
University of Oxford. He also holds a bachelor of
humanities in biology, a master of science from Brunel University, United
Kingdom and a doctorate from the University of Newcastle,
Australia.
Patricia Rodney, RN, MPH, PhD
Associate Professor/Coordinator
International Health Track
Morehouse School of Medicine
Atlanta, Georgia
Patricia is an associate
professor at Morehouse School of Medicine in the International Health
Track in the
master of Public Health Program, Community Health & Preventive Medicine.
She has served as
the evaluator for the International NGO Partnership, WHARP/SisterLove
Project in South Africa.
Patricia is a member
of the Healthy Start Initiative Consortium, Center for Black Women’s
Wellness, where
she chaired the training and public education committee. She also is
an adjunct professor at Governors
State University, Illinois, and a visiting professor, St. George’s
University, Grenada,West
Indies.
Patricia received
her doctorate from the University of Toronto, Canada, a master’s
in public health from Emory University, and a
registered nurse degree from the Royal Northern Hospital in London,
England. She serves on the advisory boards of the University
of Michigan Population Fellows Program, the Medical Education Cooperation
with Cuba, the Congressional Black Caucus
Foundation, Inc., Public Health Fellowship Program in Washington D.C.
and the Women and Development International
Training Project for Clark Atlanta University.
Patricia is author
of The Caribbean State, Health Care and Women: An Analysis of Barbados
and Grenada During the 1979-83 Period,
(The African World Press, New Jersey, US, 1998) and is co-author of
a video titled Women, Politics, and Equity. Patricia
is currently working on a book titled An Assessment of Cuban Trained
Caribbean Health Professionals, (Edwin Mellen Press
Ltd., NY).
E. Roberta (Bobbi) Ryder, BA
Chief Executive Officer
National Center for Farmworker Health Inc.
Buda, Texas
Since 1986, Roberta
has worked with the National Center for Farmworker Health, Inc. (NCFH)
a private, not-for-profit corporation whose mission is to improve the
health status of farmworker families through the innovative application
of human, technical and information resources.
Prveviously, Robert
ran a rural community and migrant health center in Michigan serving
approximately 20,000 medical and dental users annually. Additionally,
she served two-four-year terms as ombudsperson to the director of the
Bureau of Primary Health Care, U.S. Public Health Service providng advice
and consultation on migrant issues in order to assure current and on-going
input to the bureau.
She holds a bachelors
of arts degree in Latin American studies and child psychology (dual
major) and a minor in linguistics from Michigan State University. She
has also completed the Hispanic Health Leadership fellowship program
at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. Upon graduation
from MSU, she established and directed a network of migrant day care
centers in Southwest Michigan. He then went on to found a non-profit
migrant child care corporation in which migrant and seasonal farm worker
families received childcare and Head Start services.
Chevell L. Thomas, EdM
Health Insurance
Specialist
Department of Health & Human Services
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Baltimore, Maryland
Chevell provides
technical assistance to states in developing, implementing, and monitoring
health care delivery systems for disabled, low-income and elderly populations.
In addition, he drafts federal regulations
and policy affecting Medicaid, Medicare and State Children’s Health
Insurance Program beneficiaries
nationwide.
He currently manages
the Outreach to Rural and Underserved Communities Project, a partnership
of minority institutions, community-based
organizations, and federal, state, and local governments to reduce racial
and ethnic health disparities by increasing
client awareness of available health care services.
Chevell began his
career as a teacher but eventually left the classroom to work as an
educational consultant. He has developed curricula,
conducted teacher in-service training and provided technical assistance
to organizations interested in developing partnerships
with schools.
He holds an EdS
in transition special education from the George Washington University,
a master’s in education in teaching and
curriculum from Harvard University, and bachelor of science degrees
in physics and engineering physics from Morgan State
University.
About
the International Center for Health Leadership Development
The International
Center for Health Leadership Development was established to foster the
development of those who seek to create health partnerships. The center
conducts leadership development activities that help to better prepare
leaders from communities, community health centers and health professions
education to build linkages between communities and institutions. The
center's approach is to help individuals discover their leadership capabilities,
and to help them see that leadership is, in many ways, a function of
the relationship between leaders and followers.
To accomplish this
task, the center is involved in several activities: consulting services,
fellowship programs, short courses, policy briefs and research.
For further information
about the center or its activities, please call us at (312) 355-1087.
