Appendix A

Speaker and Planning Committee Member Biosketches¹

Rhonda Barcus, M.S., L.P.C., joined the National Rural Health Resource Center in 2012 and manages the Small Rural Hospital Transition Project and population and community health services. She has worked in hospital settings since 1987. Ms. Barcus is experienced in leadership and organizational development and has assisted hospitals to address organization-wide goals related to improving patient experience and staff retention. Ms. Barcus received her M.S. in psychology from Georgia College & State University. She is also a licensed professional counselor and has worked in the field of substance use.

Darrold Bertsch is the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Sakakawea Medical Center, a critical access hospital located in Hazen, North Dakota, and is also the CEO of the Coal Country Community Health Center, a federally qualified health center with four service delivery sites in west central North Dakota. Mr. Bertsch has served in this unique shared CEO role for the past 9 years, leading collaborative efforts that have improved the delivery of patient care and the development of a patient-centered medical neighborhood of care. Mr. Bertsch has worked in health care for 46 years, with the last 26 as a CEO. Mr. Bertsch is an active proponent of rural health care and serves on various local, state, and national boards and committees.

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¹ * Denotes planning committee member, † denotes roundtable member.

Michael E. Bird, M.S.W., M.P.H.,* is the public health program director for the Indian Health Council. Mr. Bird has more than 30 years of public health experience in the areas of medical social work, substance abuse prevention, health promotion and disease prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, behavioral health, and health care administration. He is the first American Indian and social worker to serve as the president (2000–2001) of the American Public Health Association. He is also the past president of the New Mexico Public Health Association and was a fellow in the U.S. Public Health Service Primary Care Policy Fellowship Program. Mr. Bird has served on the boards of the Kewa Pueblo Health Corporation, American Indian Graduate Center, Bernalillo County Off Reservation Native American Commission, Health Action New Mexico, Seva Foundation, National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health Advisory Committee (Canada), and AARP National Policy Council. He earned an M.S.W. from The University of Utah and an M.P.H. at the University of California (UC), Berkeley. In 2018 he was honored by the UC Berkeley School of Public Health as one of the most influential public health alumni in the institution’s 75-year history.

Daniel Calac, M.D., has served as the chief medical officer of the Indian Health Council located near San Diego, California, since 2003. He was raised on the Pauma Indian Reservation and graduated from San Diego State University. Dr. Calac attended Harvard Medical School and completed his internship and residency at the University of Southern California–Los Angeles County Combined Internal Medicine/Pediatrics Residency Program. He is board certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics. He also practices hospice/palliative care medicine and is board eligible in this field. He is a member of the Pauma Band of Luiseno Indians and is actively involved in his community. His professional interests include chronic disease and clinical research. Dr. Calac serves as the principal investigator for the California Native American Research Center for Health, which is a project funded by the National Institutes of Health that provides a platform for community-based participatory research in American Indian communities. He is actively engaged in several research projects that aim to improve the health of American Indians and encourage students to pursue careers as scientists and/or health care professionals. Dr. Calac also serves on a variety of committees, including the Health Research Advisory Council for the Department of Health and Human Services, the Committee on Native American Child Health, the Cal State San Marcos Foundation Board, and the governance board for the All Tribes American Indian Charter School.

Tim Callaghan, Ph.D., M.A., has research interests in health politics, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, autism policy, opioid policy, rural health policy, state politics, and public opinion about health topics. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health. Dr. Callaghan has had research featured in prominent journals, including the American Journal of Public Health; Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law; American Politics Research; Social Science and Medicine; and Publius: The Journal of Federalism. He serves on the advisory board of the Program in Health Law and Policy and is also the director of evaluation with the nationally recognized Southwest Rural Health Research Center at Texas A&M University. The center, funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, was established to address the needs of rural and underserved populations across Texas and the nation by bringing together a unique combination of faculty expertise in health policy, health economics, aging, long-term care, health law, epidemiology, biostatistics, and chronic disease. Dr. Callaghan received his B.A. in political science and B.S. in biological sciences from the University of Connecticut. He then went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Kate Cassling, M.A., is a director with the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) Action where she works on health care policy advocacy. Prior to joining BPC Action, Ms. Cassling worked for more than 8 years on Capitol Hill, most recently serving as a legislative assistant for Senator Joe Manchin, specializing in health care, education, and labor policy. In that role, she managed the senator’s work on the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee and the Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans. Previously, she worked as a legislative assistant to Congresswoman Dina Titus and as a legislative aide to Senator Susan Collins. Ms. Cassling has a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College and an M.A. in education from Tel Aviv University.

Jan Marie Eberth, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., is an associate professor of epidemiology and the director of the Rural and Minority Health Research Center at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Eberth conducts research in the areas of health geography, social epidemiology, and cancer prevention and control. As the director of the Rural and Minority Health Research Center at the Arnold School of Public Health, Dr. Eberth works with investigators across the university to identify and address problems experienced by rural and minority populations in order to guide research, policy, and related advocacy. She received her M.S.P.H. in epidemiology from the

Texas A&M Health Science Center in the School of Rural Public Health in 2006 and her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of Texas Health Science Center in the School of Public Health in 2011. Dr. Eberth also completed a National Cancer Institute–funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2012.

Alva Ferdinand, Dr.P.H., J.D.,* is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Texas A&M School of Public Health. She also serves as the director of the Southwest Rural Health Research Center at the School of Public Health. Her research interests are health laws and ethics, disparities in health outcomes, research integrity, state and federal regulation in health care delivery, and effectiveness of laws aimed at improving public health. Dr. Ferdinand has examined such issues as the effect of tax-exemption status on the provision of community benefits among various hospital ownership types, the relationship between neighborhood built environments and physical activity, the effect of strict immigration laws on health services utilization among immigrant populations, and the effects of texting-while-driving bans on roadway safety. She has also examined issues of mental health, access to care, and diabetes in rural areas. Dr. Ferdinand has been called on to provide expert testimony to state and federal legislative bodies on the effectiveness of laws aimed at improving public health. She holds a J.D. from the Michigan State University College of Law and a Dr.P.H. from The University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Katharine Ferguson, M.P.A., is the associate director of The Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group (CSG) and the director of CSG’s Rural and Regional Initiatives. Before joining The Aspen Institute, Ms. Ferguson served in the Obama administration as the chief of staff for the White House Domestic Policy Council and as the chief of staff for rural development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Previously, Ms. Ferguson worked on the Senate Committee on Agriculture and as staff to multiple U.S. senators on topics ranging from community economic development and economic mobility to conservation, agriculture, food, public health, and nutrition. Committed to bridging perceived divides and advancing equity, regardless of the topic at hand, Ms. Ferguson is interested in the practical challenges of civic engagement, institution building, systems change, and governance. In 2018, she served on the transition team for Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. She currently serves on the Steering Committee for the Western Governors’ Association’s Reimagining the Rural West Initiative, and the Service Year Alliance Rural Policy Advisory Council, and she was recently appointed to Colorado’s Just Transition Advisory Committee. A graduate of Tufts University, Ms. Ferguson holds

an M.P.A. from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Mark Holmes, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, the director of the North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center, and the director of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, where he is also the co-director of the Program on Health Care Economics and Finance. His interests include hospital finance, rural health, workforce, health policy, and patient-centered outcomes research. In 2014, Dr. Holmes received the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty. In 2015 he was named Outstanding Researcher by the National Rural Health Association. Previously, he was the vice president of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, where he gained experience in North Carolina health policy. He previously served on the board of the North Carolina Health Insurance Risk Pool. His state policy work led to his 2010 Health Care Hero “Rising Star” award from the Triangle Business Journal. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Rural Health and the North Carolina Medical Journal. He received his B.S. in mathematics and economics from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. from the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alana Knudson, Ph.D., M.Ed.,* is a principal research scientist and the co-director of the Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis at NORC at the University of Chicago. Dr. Knudson is also the deputy director for the Rural Health Reform Policy Research Center, one of seven rural health research centers funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy. She has 20 years of experience implementing and directing public health programs, leading health services and health policy research projects, and evaluating the effects of programs. She conducted numerous health services research studies, health policy studies, and public health projects funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, Health Resources and Services Administration, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Agency for International Development, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Her research and policy project findings have informed state, tribal, and federal health policy. She also has state and national public health experience, having worked at the North Dakota Department of Health and for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Dr. Knudson earned a dual master of education degree and a Ph.D. from Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.

Sanne Magnan, M.D., Ph.D.,† is the co-chair of the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She is the former president (2006–2007) and the chief executive officer (2011–2016) of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement. In 2007, she was appointed the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. She served from 2007 to 2010 and had significant responsibility for the implementation of Minnesota’s 2008 health reform legislation, including the Statewide Health Improvement Program, standardized quality reporting, development of provider peer grouping, certification process for health care homes, and baskets of care. Dr. Magnan was a staff physician at the Tuberculosis Clinic at the St. Paul–Ramsey County Department of Public Health (2002–2015). She was a member of the Population-based Payment Model Workgroup of the Healthcare Payment Learning and Action Network (2015–2016) and a member of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Multisector Collaboration Measure Development Technical Expert Panel (2016). She is on Epic’s Population Health Steering Board and on the Healthy People 2030 Engagement Subcommittee. She served on the board of MN Community Measurement and the board of NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center, a federally qualified health center and part of Hennepin Health. Her previous experience also includes the vice president and the medical director of Consumer Health at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Currently, she is a senior fellow with HealthPartners Institute and an adjunct assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Magnan holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Minnesota and is a board-certified internist.

Nir Menachemi, Ph.D., M.P.H., is the Fairbanks Endowed Chair and serves as the chair of the Health Policy and Management Department of the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health. He holds the rank of professor. Dr. Menachemi also holds an appointment as a scientist with the Regenstrief Institute, an internationally recognized informatics and health care research organization that is dedicated to the improvement of health through research that enhances the quality and cost-effectiveness of health care. Before joining the Fairbanks School of Public Health, Dr. Menachemi held faculty positions at The University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health and the Florida State University College of Medicine. He has published more than 200

peer-reviewed scientific papers, and his work has appeared in numerous prestigious professional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, Health Services Research, and the American Journal of Public Health. Dr. Menachemi’s research examines how organizational strategies (e.g., health information technology adoption) affect critical performance measures, including quality outcomes and financial performance. In addition, he has published extensively on health policy and public health topics ranging from obesity issues to the effects of various laws or policies on health outcomes. Dr. Menachemi’s work has been funded by such diverse entities as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and private foundations and corporations. In addition, Dr. Menachemi has developed several long-term partnerships with health departments at the state and local level in both Alabama and Florida. More recently, he has begun similar partnerships with state and local entities in Indiana.

Karen Minyard, Ph.D., M.N., has been the director of the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC) since 2001 and is also a research professor with the Georgia State University Department of Public Management and Policy. Dr. Minyard connects the research, policy, and programmatic work of the center across issue areas including population health, health philanthropy, public and private health coverage, and the uninsured. Dr. Minyard has experience with the state Medicaid program, with both the design of program reforms and external evaluation. Her research interests include financing and evaluation of health-related social policy programs; strategic alignment of public and private health policy through collective impact; the role of local health initiatives in access and health improvement; the role of targeted technical assistance in improving the sustainability, efficiency, and programmatic effectiveness of nonprofit health collaboratives; and health and health care financing. In addition to overseeing the center’s overall strategic vision, Dr. Minyard plays a leadership role in several center projects that weave together the key learnings, skill sets, and areas of expertise of GHPC, including evaluation, technical assistance, policy and economic analysis, backbone and organizational support, health and health care financing, health system transformation, Health in All Policies, and rural health. She is currently the co-principal investigator and is spearheading evaluation efforts for GHPC’s national coordinating center, Bridging for Health: Improving Community Health Through Innovations in Financing, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She also serves on the executive trio of the Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement, along with the Atlanta Regional Commission and the United Way of Greater Atlanta.

José T. Montero, M.D., M.H.C.D.S.,*† is the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support, where he oversees support to the U.S. health departments and those serving tribal nations and insular areas. He provides leadership for key activities and technical assistance designed to improve the public health system’s capacity and performance to achieve the nation’s goals in population health. With his team, Dr. Montero leads efforts to create communities of practice where CDC’s senior leaders work with the executive leaders of the public health jurisdictions, key partners, and stakeholders to identify new, improved, or innovative strategies to prepare the public health system to respond to changing environments. Previously, Dr. Montero served as the vice president of population health and health system integration at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene. He has also served as the director of the Division of Public Health Services at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Montero has held many national and regional committee leadership positions, including serving as the president of the board of directors of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and the chair of ASTHO’s Infectious Diseases Policy Committee. Dr. Montero has an M.D. from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He specialized in family medicine and completed his residency at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. He also holds an epidemiology degree from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, and he received his certification of field epidemiology from the Colombia Field Epidemiology Training Program and an M.H.C.D.S. from Dartmouth College.

Paul Moore, Ph.D., is a senior health policy advisor to the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, which is part of the Health Resources and Services Administration. Dr. Moore has a lifetime of experience related to rural health care, including more than 30 years in community and hospital pharmacy. He has also served as the chief executive officer of a county health care authority, consisting of one of the nation’s earliest critical access hospitals, the county emergency medical services, a physician clinic, and a home health agency. Dr. Moore is also a past president of the National Rural Health Association and currently serves as the executive secretary for the National Advisory Committee for Rural Health and Human Services.

Tom Morris, M.P.A.,* serves as the associate administrator for rural health policy in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In that role, Mr. Morris

oversees the work of the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, which is charged with advising the Secretary of HHS on rural health issues. In 2012, he was the recipient of the HHS Distinguished Service Award, and in 2015 he was awarded a Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service. Over the course of his federal career, Mr. Morris has testified on rural health issues before the House and Senate. He has past work experience in the Senate as well as various policy and program positions within HRSA and HHS. A 1996 Presidential Management Intern, Mr. Morris came to government after a career as a newspaper reporter and editor. He has an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.P.A. with a concentration in community health from East Carolina University. He also earned a certificate in public leadership from the Brookings Institution in 2008.

Keith J. Mueller, Ph.D., M.A., is the Gerhard Hartman Professor and the head of the Department of Health Management and Policy at The University of Iowa. He is also the director of the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI) Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis and the chair of the RUPRI Health Panel. He has served as the president of the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) and as a member of the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services. He has also served on national advisory committees to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. He has published more than 220 scholarly articles and policy papers and received awards recognizing his research contributions from NRHA, RUPRI, and the University of Nebraska. In 2016, he received The University of Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence. His Ph.D. is in political science from the University of Arizona, and he completed a faculty fellowship with Johns Hopkins University.

Karen Murphy, Ph.D., M.B.A., R.N.,*† is the executive vice president, the chief innovation officer, and the founding director of The Steele Institute for Health Innovation at Geisinger. Dr. Murphy has worked to improve and transform health care delivery throughout her career in both the public and private sectors. Before joining Geisinger, she served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, addressing the most significant health issues facing the state, including the opioid epidemic. Prior to her role as secretary, Dr. Murphy served as the director of the State Innovation Models Initiative at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), leading a $990 million CMS investment designed to accelerate health care innovation across the United States. She previously served as the president and the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Moses Taylor Health Care System

in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and as the founder and the CEO of Physicians Health Alliance, Inc., an integrated medical group practice within Moses Taylor. Dr. Murphy earned her Ph.D. in business administration from the Temple University Fox School of Business. She holds an M.B.A. from Marywood University, a B.S. in liberal arts from the University of Scranton, and a diploma in nursing from the Scranton State Hospital School of Nursing.

Valerie Nurr’araaluk Davidson, a Yup’ik and enrolled tribal member of the Orutsaramiut Traditional Native Council of Bethel, serves as the first female president of Alaska Pacific University. Ms. Nurr’araaluk Davidson’s prior 20-year health career included state service as the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Health & Social Services, where she implemented Medicaid Expansion, Medicaid Reform, and the Alaska Tribal Child Welfare Compact. Ms. Nurr’araaluk Davidson later served as Alaska’s first Alaska Native female lieutenant governor in the final weeks of the Walker administration. Ms. Nurr’araaluk Davidson began her tribal health career at the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

Lars Peterson, Ph.D., M.D.,* is a family physician and a health services researcher who serves as the vice president of research for the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM). He also has an appointment as an associate professor of family and community medicine in the University of Kentucky’s Rural & Underserved Health Research Center, where he provides direct clinical care and teaches students and residents. Dr. Peterson, a native of Utah, received his medical and graduate degrees from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and completed his family medicine residency at the Trident/Medical University of South Carolina family medicine residency program. At ABFM, Dr. Peterson leads a research team focused on elucidating the outcomes of family medicine certification, particularly the effects that certification activities have on the quality of care delivered by family physicians. In addition, Dr. Peterson and his team seek to understand the ecology of family medicine over time—what physicians do in practice and their contribution to high-quality health care. His research interests also include investigating associations between area-level measures of health care and socioeconomics with both health and access to health care, rural health, primary care, and comprehensiveness of primary care. Dr. Peterson has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and made more than 100 national and international conference presentations.

Janice C. Probst, Ph.D., M.S., is a distinguished professor emerita at the University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health. Dr. Probst is a nationally recognized researcher in the areas of health services and policy, with a specific focus on rural health and health disparities. She was a founding faculty member for the Rural and Minority Health Research Center (formerly, the South Carolina Rural Health Research Center), which was established in 2000. She has more than 140 peer-reviewed scientific publications, along with more than 200 presentations at scientific conferences. Dr. Probst is a member of the National Rural Health Association Health Equity Council and serves on the board of directors of the South Carolina Office of Rural Health. Dr. Probst completed her B.A. at Duke University, her M.S. at Purdue University, and her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina.

Tim Putnam, D.H.A., M.B.A., F.A.C.H.E., is the president and the chief executive officer of Margaret Mary Health in Batesville, Indiana, and has more than 30 years of health care experience. He received his D.H.A. from the Medical University of South Carolina, where his dissertation was focused on acute stroke care in rural hospitals. He currently chairs the National Rural Health Association’s Policy Congress, the National Rural Accountable Care Consortium, and was appointed by the governor to the Indiana Board of Graduate Medical Education, which he also chairs. In 2015, Dr. Putnam was certified as an Emergency Medical Technician and serves on the Batesville Fire and EMS Lifesquad.

Allen Smart, M.P.H., M.A., is a national spokesperson and an advocate for improving rural philanthropic practice under his group PhilanthropywoRx. In addition, he recently completed a role as the project director for a national rural philanthropic project partially supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and based at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina. He regularly consults with regional and national foundations on rural and philanthropic strategy. Mr. Smart is the former interim president, the vice president of programs, and the director of the Health Care Division at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. Prior to coming to the Trust in 2006, Mr. Smart was the vice president of programs at the Rapides Foundation, a health care conversion funder in Alexandria, Louisiana. He has also served as the director of community development for a midwestern Catholic Hospital System and as the grants administrator for the City of Santa Monica, California. Mr. Smart received his M.P.H. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, his M.A. in telecommunication arts from the University of Michigan, and his B.A. in philosophy from Macalester College. As part of his personal and professional interest in

philanthropy, Mr. Smart regularly writes for sites such as The Daily Yonder, Inside Philanthropy, and Grantcraft and Exponent Philanthropy and presents to national and regional organizations like Grantmakers in Health, the Southeastern Council of Foundations, the National Rural Assembly, and the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy. He is a member of the National Advisory Committee for the Rural Resource Hub at the University of North Dakota; the Culture of Health Prize Selection Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the board of directors for Healthy Communities by Design; and the board of the North Carolina Healthcare Association Foundation.

P. Benjamin Smith, M.B.A., M.A., is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and the deputy director for intergovernmental affairs for the Indian Health Service (IHS). IHS, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, is the principal federal health care provider and health advocate for American Indians and Alaska Natives. As the deputy director for intergovernmental affairs, Mr. Smith provides leadership on tribal and urban Indian health activities, particulary the implementation of the Title I and Title V authorities under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act and Title V of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, through oversight of the Office of Tribal Self-Governance, the Office of Direct Service and Contracting Tribes, and the Office of Urban Indian Health Programs. Mr. Smith previously served as the director of the Office of Tribal Self-Governance, where he oversaw all aspects of the administration of the Tribal Self-Governance Program, authorized by Title V of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. Prior to his federal service, Mr. Smith worked as a self-governance specialist for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, performing research, advisory services, and consultation on health programs with national, state, and local health departments. Throughout his career, Mr. Smith has received numerous awards, including the 2014 Arthur S. Flemming Award from The George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, which honors outstanding federal employees for their exceptional contributions to the federal government. He has also received several IHS National Director’s Awards for his contributions to tribal consultation activities, IHS Strategic Plan updates, and the agency lead negotiators curriculum. Mr. Smith received his M.B.A. from The George Washington University, an M.A. in international peace and conflict resolution from American University, and a B.A. from Brigham Young University. He is also one of the Navajo Nation’s Chief Manuelito Scholars.

Sirin Yaemsiri, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., is a senior statistician at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Previously, she was a health statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she provided data expertise to the Healthy People 2020 initiative. In addition to rural health, Dr. Yaemsiri’s areas of interest include vital statistics, health disparities, developing key indicators, assessing data quality, statistics, and data visualization. Dr. Yaemsiri holds a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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