Appendix B
Speaker Biographical Sketches
Dennis P. Andrulis, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a senior research scientist at the Texas Health Institute, a health care policy research organization in Austin, Texas. He is also an associate professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health. In his positions, Dr. Andrulis leads the development of initiatives on urban health, health care for vulnerable populations, racial and ethnic disparities, and cultural competence. Previously, Dr. Andrulis was the associate dean for research of Drexel University’s School of Public Health in Philadelphia and directed its Center for Health Equality. His current and recent work have focused on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and its implications for racially and ethnically diverse populations, with a subsequent set of reports being issued in 2013, titled The Affordable Care Act and Race, Ethnicity, and Equity Series. An earlier, related report on diversity, the safety net, and the law appeared in the October 2011 issue of Health Affairs. Other work has focused on the creation of a National Consensus Statement on Diversity and Preparedness; a report on environmental and climate threats titled Climate Change, Environmental Challenges, and Vulnerable Populations: Assessing Legacies of the Past, Building Opportunities for the Future (2012); and a project on the effect of urban sprawl on health care for vulnerable populations. Other publications include a book chapter on diversity; the suburbanization of poverty and implications for health care (in Megacities and Global Health, 2011); a book titled Managed Care in the Inner City: The Uncertain Promise for Providers, Plans, and Communities (Jossey-Bass); Preparing Racially and Ethnically Diverse Communities for Public Health Emergencies (Health Affairs); and a compendium and analysis of national data sources on the
nation’s 100 largest cities and their surrounding areas, titled The Social and Health Landscape of Urban and Suburban America. Finally, Dr. Andrulis is also co-founder of a national conference series on quality health care for culturally diverse populations and has created a National Consensus Panel on Diversity and Preparedness. Dr. Andrulis has a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s of public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ignatius Bau works to advance patient-centeredness and equity as an independent health policy consultant. He has expertise on issues of health care reform, health care disparities, language access, cultural competency, health workforce diversity, health information technology, immigrant and refugee health, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender health. His client organizations have included Consumers Union, National Partnership for Women & Families, ZeroDivide, National Council on Interpreting in Health Care, Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF), National Council of Asian Pacific Islander Physicians, Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, California Health Care Safety Net Institute, San Francisco Senior Center, San Francisco Hep B Free, and Connecticut Health Foundation. Mr. Bau previously worked as a program director and program officer at The California Endowment, as deputy director, policy director, and program coordinator at APIAHF, and as a staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. He has served on expert advisory panels for the Institute of Medicine, National Quality Forum, Joint Commission, Office of Minority Health, Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, California Department of Health Services, and California Health Interview Survey. He has served on numerous boards of directors, including Cal eConnect, California’s health information exchange governance organization.
Anne C. Beal, M.D., M.P.H., is chief operating officer of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). A pediatrician and public health specialist, she has devoted her career to providing access to high-quality health care through the delivery of health care services, teaching, research, public health, and philanthropy. As PCORI’s first COO, Dr. Beal is responsible for ensuring PCORI develops the structure and capacity needed to carry out its mission as the nation’s largest research institute focused on patient-centered outcomes research. Dr. Beal joins PCORI from the Aetna Foundation, the independent charitable and philanthropic arm of Aetna Inc. Prior to her work at the Aetna Foundation, Dr. Beal was assistant vice president for the Program on Health Care Disparities at the
Commonwealth Fund. Early in her career, Dr. Beal worked with a mobile medical unit project delivering health care services to children living in homeless shelters throughout New York City. She was also a health services researcher at the Center for Child and Adolescent Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition, she was associate director of the Multicultural Affairs Office of Massachusetts General Hospital and attending pediatrician within the division of general pediatrics. Dr. Beal has also held faculty positions within both Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. In addition to publishing in the peer-reviewed medical literature, Dr. Beal is the author of The Black Parenting Book: Caring for Our Children in the First Five Years. Dr. Beal has been a pediatric commentator and medical correspondent. Dr. Beal holds a B.A. from Brown University, an M.D. from Cornell University Medical College, and an M.P.H. from Columbia University. She completed her internship, residency, and National Research Service Award fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
Kevin J. Counihan, M.B.A., was chosen by Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy as the state’s health insurance exchange chief executive officer in July 2012. Mr. Counihan has more than 30 years’ experience in the health care industry and previously held the position of president of CHOICE Administrators in California. Prior to CHOICE Administrators, Mr. Counihan served as the chief marketing officer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector Authority, was senior vice president for sales and marketing for Tufts Health Plan, and regional vice president for CIGNA and EQUICOR. Mr. Counihan holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. in finance and marketing from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Jennifer (Jen) DeVoe, M.D., M.Phil., M.C.R., D.Phil., FAAFP, is an associate professor of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. She also serves as the part-time executive director of a practice-based research network of community health centers at OCHIN, Inc. She is the Institute of Medicine–American Board of Family Medicine James C. Puffer Fellow (2013–2015). As a practicing family physician and doctorally trained health services researcher, Dr. DeVoe studies access to preventive care for low-income populations. She has established a track record of developing community collaborations and using rich community electronic health record (EHR) data sources to conduct policy-relevant and practice-relevant studies. Dr. DeVoe is the principal investigator on several health services research and health policy research studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute,
and the Health Resources and Services Administration. She obtained her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1999. A Rhodes Scholar, Dr. DeVoe obtained her master’s of philosophy (M.Phil.) and doctorate of philosophy (D.Phil.) from Oxford University in 1998 and 2001, respectively. She completed her residency in family medicine at OHSU in 2004. She received a master’s in clinical research (MCR) from OHSU in 2010. She maintains a part-time clinical practice in her Southwest Portland neighborhood.
Kevin Fiscella, M.D., M.P.H., is tenured professor of family medicine and public health sciences and associate director of the Center for Communication and Disparities Research at the University of Rochester. His research and policy work, including more than 170 peer-reviewed publications, has largely focused on practical strategies to reduce health care disparities and improve quality for underserved patients. He was recently named the recipient of the Hames Award for research in family medicine. He has served on numerous national committees related to health care disparities, including two for the Institute of Medicine. He currently serves on an advisory panel for addressing health disparities for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and services on the boards of directors for CHARN, a Health Resources and Services Administration–sponsored Practiced Research Network of federally quality health centers (FQHCs) and the National Commission for Correctional Care. He has worked in FQHCs for more than 30 years.
Cara V. James, Ph.D., is the director of the Office of Minority Health at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Prior to joining the Office of Minority Health at CMS, Dr. James was the director of the Disparities Policy Project and the director of the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, where she was responsible for addressing a broad array of health and access-to-care issues for racial and ethnic minorities and other underserved populations. Prior to joining the staff at Kaiser, she worked at Harvard University and The Picker Institute. Dr. James is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and the Elimination of Health Disparities and has served on several IOM committees including the Committee on Leading Health Indicators for Healthy People 2020. She has published several peer-reviewed articles and other publications, and was a co-author for one of the background chapters for the 2002 IOM report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities Health Care. Dr. James received her B.A. in psychology and her Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard University.
Minister Nancy Kingwood-Small, M.S.H.S., BC-HSP, is currently the deputy director of HIV services at GBAPP, Inc., and serves as project direc-
tor at the Ashe Faith Project. She holds two degrees in human services and a master’s degree in organizational management and leadership from Springfield College. She is a Human Service Board Certified Practitioner. Ms. Kingwood-Small is also a graduate of the Black Ministries Program at Hartford Seminary. She is a licensed associate minister at Mount Aery Baptist Church and in the process of working toward ordination. She is a 2012 graduate of the Connecticut Health Foundation Fellows program. In 2010, Ms. Kingwood-Small had the honor to join the HIV and Women of Color Congressional Briefing Committee to voice concerns of all women living with and at risk for HIV/AIDS.
Alta Lash is the executive director of United Connecticut Action for Neighborhoods (UCAN). She has been involved in community organizing for more than 35 years. UCAN’s current project, Caring Families Coalition, is dealing with the health care issues of Connecticut’s low-income communities. In addition, Ms. Lash teaches grassroots organizing at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work and an internship seminar in the Urban Studies major at Trinity College called Organizing by Neighborhoods.
Michael Miller, M.P.P., is policy director at Community Catalyst, focusing on providing policy and strategy support to state-based consumer health advocacy groups. Over the course of his career, Mr. Miller has developed expertise in the areas of Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicare, and developing state-level options to expand coverage for the uninsured, small group and non-group insurance reform, long-term care financing and delivery, managed care reform, and hospital community benefits and uncompensated care. Prior to joining Community Catalyst, Mr. Miller was the policy director for Health Care for All. He also worked for the City of Boston Elderly Commission as a policy analyst and for the Alzheimer’s Association of eastern Massachusetts as director of the Community Partnership Project. Mr. Miller holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s degree in public policy from Tufts University.
Wayne Rawlins, M.D., M.B.A., is a national medical director for racial and ethnic equality initiatives at Aetna, reporting to Aetna’s chief medical officer. In 2009, he was appointed to the Institute of Medicine’s Subcommittee on Standardized Collection of Race/Ethnicity Data for Healthcare Quality Improvement. Dr. Rawlins also serves as a member of National Quality Forum’s Cultural Competency Expert Panel, the National Business Group on Health’s Racial/Ethnic Health Disparities Advisory Board, and has been appointed to the Regional Health Equity Council (Region 1), Office of Minority Health, U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS). He has also been a faculty participant in Massachusetts General Hospital’s Disparities Leadership Program. Dr. Rawlins is also a member of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, working with HHS to support the development of a national immunization strategy. Dr. Rawlins received his medical degree from the University of Connecticut in 1980, then completed an internal medicine residency and chief residency at the University of Rochester in New York. He is board certified in internal medicine. Dr. Rawlins received his M.B.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2001. He is a member of the National Medical Association, American College of Physicians, and the American College of Physician Executives. Dr. Rawlins also supports his community by participating on the boards of the United Way of Central and Northeastern Connecticut, the University of Connecticut Health Center, and the Connecticut Science Center.
Martha Somerville, M.P.H., directs The Hilltop Institute’s Hospital Community Benefit Program, a central resource for state and local policy makers, health departments, hospital regulators, and community stakeholders who seek to ensure that tax-exempt hospital community benefit activities are responsive to pressing community health needs. In addition to her work in community benefits, Ms. Somerville is an experienced legal analyst with expertise in the areas of administrative regulation, nonprofit hospital governance, health insurance reform, and Medicaid managed care. Before joining Hilltop, Ms. Somerville served as an assistant attorney general representing several health professional licensing boards. Before that, she provided private legal representation to nonprofit hospitals and other health care providers. Ms. Somerville studied law at the University of Maryland, and received a master’s in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
