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Chair
Laura is passionate about oral health and is committed to the quadruple aim. Integration of oral/physical/and behavioral health is importnat in offices wherever possible. Laura participates at a National level to represent Oregon on the Oral Helath Progress and Equity Network and the National Rural Health Association Oral Health Workgroup. Laura has been with AllCare CCO for 9 years, and she is keenly aware of the inportance of the oral health workforce to provide needed oral health care for all populations, and particularly those individuals covered under the Oregon Health Plan.
Vice-Chair
Ian (he/him/el) has spent more than 40 years committed to improving access to healthcare for those who are experiencing homelessness and poverty in Oregon. Ian's clinical work included more than 10 years as a Crisis Intervention Supervisor at White Bird Clinic, an FQHC and Lane County's Crisis Line in Eugene, Oregon. For 12 years, Ian coordinated Primary Care services for White Bird and transitioned the clinic's services to a Patient Centered Primary Care Home model. More recently, Ian is currently responsible for integrating technology into healthcare and compliance with HRSA requirements as the clinic's Special Projects Coordinator. As an administrator in medical clinics (FQHC, School Based Health Center, and Community College Health Center) for 12+ years, Ian has seen how race can become a barrier to accessing healthcare and succeeding in its use. This cross-cultural experience is something I can bring to these efforts. Additionally, Ian has training in massage therapy.
Member
Levi has been with State of Oregon agencies for about nine years. Levi builds and coordinates community partnerships in Grant, Harney, and Malheur Counties. Levi is the Coalition Coordinator for One Community All Spirits, advocating for and building visibility of 2SLGBTQIA+ neighbors, with an emphasis on suicide prevention, in coordination with Oregon Alliance to Prevent Suicide.
Gabriela is the director of the Medical Assisting Program at Sumner College. Her professional commitments include workforce development and patient-centered care. She also serves on the River Cities Chapter of Medical Assistants and is an affiliate of the American Association of Medical Assistants and served as President and Education Chair for one year. As a child of migrant farmworkers, she has personally experienced poverty, barriers to accessing health care, and witnessing the challenges that many face in accessing culturally responsive care. Gabriela receives great joy serving students from different backgrounds, cultures, and walks of life and building a strong healthcare workforce.
Stephanie Green, with over 20 years in higher education human resources, is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Adapt Integrated Health Care, a Federally Qualified Health Center in Southwest Oregon. She leads strategic human resources initiatives in compensation, policy development, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Her proven expertise in organizational development and change management has enhanced recruitment, retention, and training, improving employee relations and operational effectiveness. Committed to creating inclusive and safe work environments, Stephanie's efforts contribute significantly to community health and well-being.
Manu is the President and Dental Director for Capitol Dental Care. He has actively promoted innovative delivery of care and has founded multiple collaborative county organizations for reducing oral and overall health disparities and promoting pediatric dentistry. His expertise includes managing offices serving the Medicaid population as a Managing Dentist for California’s largest Medicaid dental provider, and as a Dental Director for a Federally Qualified Health Center/Urban Indian Health Services Health Center. Prior to becoming the President and Dental Director of Capitol Dental, Manu was the acting Regional Clinical Director for InterDent’s Northern California and Nevada regions since 2018, which grew under his leadership.
Megan is a family physician, working at Coquille Valley Hospital, a Critical Access Hospital, and serving as OHSU's Regional Associate Dean for the Campus for Rural Health - South Coast. She was raised in rural Arkansas, and always aspired to be a small town family doctor. She took a circuitous route getting there, working fulltime after high school graduation for some time prior to starting night classes at community college, and was a single mother of two during the majority of her education and training. Megan is passionate about mentoring other non-traditional students into healthcare careers, improving rural health equity, and transforming communities to support healthy aging in place.
Bob has been involved in health care mental health system design and improvement in Oregon and nationally for the past 30 years, serving ten years on the Oregon Commission on Children and Families, as Chair of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Advisory Committee for the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Services Division, as well as founding co-chair of the Children's System Advisory Committee, later the statewide Wraparound Committee for the Addictions and Mental Health Division of the Oregon Health Authority. Additionally, Bob contributed to the creation of Oregon's psychiatric residential system as well as the development of the Oregon Health Plan. He has served on the Metrics Workgroup of the Oregon Health Plan Transformation and served on the Behavioral Health Collaborative of OHA. Bob helped found a psychiatric mental health program for youth and families, serving in positions of progressive responsibility, including as CEO for 29 years.
Aaron is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). He is currently the Human Resources Director at the Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center, which isowned and operated by the CTUIR. Aaron also worked in the Tribal Employment Rights Office (TERO), prior to working at Yellowhawk. For six years, Aaron served on the Board of Trustees, the governing body of the CTUIR. He was first elected to the Board of Trustees in 2009 as the General Council Chairman. At the age of 23, he was theyoungest person to ever be elected to the General Council Chair position. Aaron also served as Treasurer, where he was responsible for safeguarding all funds and assets of the Tribes.
Jason serves as the Director of Allied Health Programs at Portland Community College, Oregon’s largest Community College. He comes with a rich background in education and health systems administration having served as director of PCC’s Hillsboro Center and Administrative Director at the Family Medicine Residency Program at OHSU. He has a passion for consensus building to solve problems, strategic planning and research and analysis around the future needs of the health care system.
Alayna is a general dentist and dental director at La Clinica, a federally qualified health center in Medford, Oregon. She earned her DMD with honor from OHSU and completed a General Practice Residency at the VA Hospital in Washington, DC. She has a passion for health equity and served as chair of La Clinica's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion council. She is Editor for the Oregon Dental Association, and a member of the ADA's New Dentist Committee. She enjoys reading, hiking, and cooking with her partner, Sean. She doesn't have a dog... yet.
Dr. Rob Ross is a Family Physician who was the Program Director for the rural Family Medicine Residency in Klamath Falls practiced and taught for Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and Sky Lakes. The practice included OB, deliveries, inpatient, ICU and intermittent inpatient Psychiatric care. In this under-resourced environment (for both patients and doctors, he experienced the difficulties for caring for rural inhabitants with little or no access to subspecialty care, long travel distances, and socioeconomic barriers to healthcare, and the desperate need for workforce development not only for physicians, but health workers of all types who get inspiration from helping to solve this crisis. He is currently the Director of Academics and Research at St. Charles in Bend, where he helped develop and initiate a new rural Family Medicine residency in Madras in conjunction with OHSU and St. Charles Health System.
Kristian has spent most of his professional career in workforce development, helping at-risk/opportunity and rural youth develop critical skills and work experience to become productive and positive members of our workforce. Today, Kristian's focus is to help eastern Oregon become more resilient by providing resources and collaboration to help employers build their organizations. He and Eastern Oregon Workforce Board (EOWB) also convene sector partnerships regarding several priority industries, including health care, early childhood education, and natural resources. His goal is to see sustainable workforce solutions for eastern Oregon's modern frontier challenges that bridge a divide between jobseekers and employers, and between eastern Oregon and the rest of Oregon.
Dr. Rosemarie Hemmings has a Masters in Social Work and a Ph.D. in Public Health. Currently she is an Assistant Professor in Community Dentistry and Director of Social Work at OHSU School of Dentistry. Dr. Hemmings is also the CEO/Owner of Black Therapist & Company, LLC. She has developed and teaches an innovative inter-professional curriculum related to social determinants of health, health equity, social and racial justice within the school of dentistry. Dr. Hemmings is an assistant professor in community dentistry and director of social work. Additionally, Dr. Hemmings directs the social work program, which includes masters of social work interns from Portland State University, Arizona State University, Simmons University and Widener University who provide social work interventions to patients within the dental clinic, and residency program. Furthermore, Dr. Hemmings has presented her research nationally related to social determinants of health, intimate partner violence and social work curriculum within dental education. With over 30 years of experience as a social worker, Dr. Hemmings has been in private practice as a psychotherapist for over 15 years and currently has a business Black Therapist & Company in Beaverton where she focuses on creating equity in mental health care for Black, Indigenous, Latino/a/e individuals, other people of color and LGBTQ+ communities. Dr. Hemmings also provides clinical supervision for pre-licensed social workers. Additionally, she serves as a mentor to several social work students and social workers in the Portland area and consults with various organizations on Diversity Equity and Inclusion related matters. Dr. Hemmings has partnered with Oregon legislators on the development of HB 2949 to improve access to mental health providers who are People of Color.
Alycia is a family medicine physician and the medical director and founding associate program director for the OHSU Health Hillsboro Medical Center (HMC) Primary Care clinic, South Hillsboro and OHSU HMC Family Medicine Residency Program. She is originally from the island of O'ahu where she grew up in a multicultural melting pot that taught her about the beauty of our cultural differences. She has traveled to countries such as Japan, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines and participated in their vastly different medical education and health care systems. She is passionate and focused about community health and outreach, global health, social justice and treating our underserved populations. She is the diversity lead of her faculty group and is active in multiple DEI committees within OHSU and HMC. In particular she is a member of DISC (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Sub-Committee) which provides DEI guidance to all graduate medical education programs at OHSU, including recruitment practices for a more diverse healthcare workforce of resident physicians and faculty.
Gretchen is a public health professional who traces her commitment to improving community health to early social justice work. Originally from the Midwest, she moved to Portland in 1998 to intern with the Working Families Party. Gretchen has since worked for a variety of Oregon-based organizations focused on upstream community-based solutions including Western States Center, REACH Community Development, and Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. In 2014, she started a consulting business, Sikhara Group, to help organizations build upstream-focused strategic plans, develop and evaluate programs, advance research, and create sustainable funding streams. Gretchen currently works for PacificSource Health Plans where she helps advance health care delivery innovations including access to culturally and linguistically appropriate care and traditional health workers, provider pipeline development projects, and managing the PacificSource Community Health Excellence (CHE) grants program for providers.
Côi is a first generation refugee from Vietnam, born in a refugee camp in Malaysia, and has called Oregon home for over four decades. She has dedicated over twenty years in social services and advocacy for underrepresented communities. Côi is the Executive Director of the Coalition of Community Health Clinics, and worked at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) as their Director of the Pacific Islander and Asian Family Center. She is the Governor appointed State of Oregon Youth Development Council-person, Attorney General appointed Biased and Hate Crime Steering Committee member, Mayor appointed City of Portland Human Rights Commissioner, State of Oregon Racial Justice Health Equity advisor and Board Member and Treasurer for the Coalition of Communities of Color C4 Building Power for Communities of Color. Her identity and background continues to be the catalyst for her passionate work with communities of color, the immigrant and refugee communities, and underrepresented and low-income communities.
Judy Geiger works as Vice President of Patient Care Services at Columbia Memorial Hospital, in Astoria with an estimated 650 employees. Judy graduated from the University of Utah with her BSN and Regis University with her MBA. She lives in Seaside. Judy previously worked at Intermountain Healthcare and Primary Children's Hospital. Judy has now worked on both ends of the hospital spectrum from quaternary pediatric care to a rural critical access hospital. She is committed to Oregon finding better ways to support people with behavioral health issues rather than bringing them to Emergency Departments where they end up being boarded for days or even weeks waiting for placement in a specialized behavioral health setting. Judy also has a deep commitment to expanding the health care pipeline for more people from diverse backgrounds to better match our patient populations. She is passionate about assuring we have a well trained and engaged healthcare workforce for the future. Judy serves on the Clatsop County NAMI Board and the Clatsop Community College Nursing Advisory Committee.
Larissa Mejia-Medina is a graduate of Oregon Health & Science University with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, 2011, she has been working at Rogue Community Health for almost 9 years. Presently, as their Quality Improvement Nurse Director. Larissa has been a resident of the Rogue Valley since the age of 11 and is passionate about delivering high quality, compassionate care to all our community members. As well as helping to reduce health disparities, health cost and barriers to care without compromising integrity or quality. Currently, Larissa serves as a board member of the Jackson County Health Advisory Board and a Board Member of the Kids Unlimited Academy White City Charter School. She has also served as a board member for Addictions Recovery Center since 2017.
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