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The U.S. Oral Health Workforce in the Coming Decade: Workshop Summary (2009)

Chapter: Appendix B: Planning Committee Biographies

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Planning Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2009. The U.S. Oral Health Workforce in the Coming Decade: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12669.
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Page 139
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Planning Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2009. The U.S. Oral Health Workforce in the Coming Decade: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12669.
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Page 140
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Planning Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2009. The U.S. Oral Health Workforce in the Coming Decade: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12669.
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Page 141
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Planning Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2009. The U.S. Oral Health Workforce in the Coming Decade: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12669.
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Page 142
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Planning Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2009. The U.S. Oral Health Workforce in the Coming Decade: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12669.
×
Page 143
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Planning Committee Biographies." Institute of Medicine. 2009. The U.S. Oral Health Workforce in the Coming Decade: Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12669.
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Page 144

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Appendix B Planning Committee Biographies David N. Sundwall, M.D. (Chair), was nominated in January 2005 by Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. to serve as Executive Director of the Utah State Department of Health (UDOH) and confirmed by the State Senate. In this capacity he supervises a workforce of almost 1,000 employees with a budget of over $2 billion. He currently serves as Immediate Past-President of Association of State & Territorial Health Officers (ASHTO), serves on the Executive Committee of ASTHO and chairs their Government Rela- tions Committee. He is a member of the National Governors Association’s (NGA’s) State e-Health Alliance. Previous positions include President of the American Clinical Labora- tory Association (ACLA) 1994–2003, and Senior Scientific and Medical Advisor from 2003–2004. The ACLA is a not–for–profit organization representing the leading national, regional, and local independent clini- cal laboratories. Prior to his position at ACLA, Dr. Sundwall was Vice President and Medical Director of American Healthcare System (AmHS). At that time, AmHS was the largest coalition of not-for-profit multi-hospital systems in the country. Dr Sundwall has extensive experience in federal government and n ­ ational health policy, including: Chairman of the CDC’s Clinical Labo- ratory Improvement Advisory Committee; Chairman of the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME); Administrator, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Public Health Service, U.S. Depart- ment of Health and Human Services (HHS); Assistant Surgeon General in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service; Co-Chairman of the HHS Secretary’s Task Force on Medical Liability and Malpractice, and 139

140 THE U.S. ORAL HEALTH WORKFORCE was the Secretary’s designee to the National Commission to Prevent Infant Mortality. He has also served as Health Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. Dr. Sundwall is Board certified in Internal Medicine and Family Practice. He is licensed to practice medicine in the District of Columbia and Utah and currently volunteers weekly at a UDOH public health clinic for the under- served in Salt Lake City. Dr. Sundwall has academic appointments at three medical schools: the University of Utah, Georgetown University School of Medicine and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. Marcia Brand, Ph.D., is associate administrator for health professions in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). From 2001–2007, Brand was director and associate administrator of HRSA’s Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP). In that position she was responsible for health policy, research, and grant activities that promote better health care services in rural America. On July 9, 2007, Brand became associate administrator of the Bureau of Health Professions (BHPr), while continuing in her leadership position at ORHP. On January 31, 2008, she relinquished her ORHP position and retained her position as BHPr’s associate administrator. At BHPr, she pro- vides national leadership in the development, distribution and retention of a diverse, culturally competent health workforce that provides high-quality care for all Americans. Prior to joining ORHP, Brand led efforts to plan and implement the State Planning Grant Program, which helped states explore options in providing health care coverage for their uninsured residents. She also coor- dinated HRSA’s efforts to implement the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and worked on the Secretary’s Initiative on Children’s Health and the President’s Interagency Task Force on Children’s Health Insurance Outreach, which aimed to increase enrollment in SCHIP and Medicaid. As senior advisor to the deputy assistant secretary for health in 1997, Brand worked on the Secretary’s Initiative on the Future of Academic Health Centers. She served as deputy director of BHPr’s Office of Research and Planning for two years prior to that appointment. Brand earned a doctoral degree in higher education from the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania, and master and bachelor of science degrees in dental hygiene from Old Dominion University in Virginia. Daniel Derksen, M.D., in his role as Senior Fellow for the RWJF Center for Health Policy, works with graduate fellows, medical students, and resident trainees to help them better understand health systems and health policy- making at the state and federal levels. In August 2008, Dr. Derksen began

APPENDIX B 141 his term as President of the New Mexico Medical Society. During that term, he worked on medical homes legislation for Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the State Coverage Insurance Plan, culmi- nating in the enactment HB 710 (Medical Homes) in 2009 in New Mexico. He sees patients and teaches health professions students and resident train- ees at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and at the First Choice South Valley Health Commons in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Derksen completed a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow­ ship with Senator Jeff Bingaman in Washington, DC, in July 2008. Senator Bingaman has been in the Senate for over 25 years and is the only Democrat serving on both the Senate Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee. Dr. Derksen worked as staff for Senator Bingaman including work on bills related to the health professions workforce, obesity, oral health, federal entitlement programs, a medical homes pilot project, and other health issues. Dr. Derksen is a Professor in the Department of Family & ­Community Medicine at UNM in Albuquerque. His numerous leadership roles at UNM included Vice Chair of Service, ­ Director of the Office of Health Services where for five years he developed public and private payer contracts on behalf of the UNM Health Sciences ­Center, served two years as Director of University Physician Associates (the 550-member faculty practice plan) and the TriWest Board of Directors (­CHAMPUS managed care). He served as Director for over 10 years of the UNM Locum Tenens and Specialty Extension Services Programs that provided over 700 days/month of clinical services emphasizing safety net practices in medically under- served areas. He was principal investigator for grant initiatives to improve insurance coverage and access to health care including the Kellogg Com- munity Voices initiative (which helped develop the UNM Care Plan for the county’s uninsured, and helped initiate UNM’s dental residency) and the state’s Area Health Education Center. He served on steering committees for the RWJ Communities in Charge and State Coverage initiatives, which culminated in a CMS HIFA waiver for NM’s State Coverage Insurance Plan (a public–private partnership to provide health insurance to the state’s uninsured working poor). Len Finocchio, Dr.P.H., is a senior program officer for the Foundation’s Innovations for the Underserved program, which works to reduce barriers to efficient, affordable health care for the underserved. Finocchio manages projects focused on state and county programs for the uninsured, access to oral health services, public insurance enrollment, health providers’ scopes of practice, and children’s coverage issues. Prior to joining CHCF, Finocchio worked as a health policy and ­research consultant specializing in health services program design and development,

142 THE U.S. ORAL HEALTH WORKFORCE particularly for uninsured children. He has worked as associate director at the Institute for Health Policy Solutions in San Mateo, California; as a principal policy associate at Children Now in Oakland, California; and as associate director for state programs at the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for the Health Professions. Finocchio received a doctor of public health, with a concentration in health policy, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Los Angeles. He received a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of California, Davis. Shelly Gehshan, M.P.P., was chosen in 2008 to lead the new Children’s Dental Health Initiative at the Pew Center on the States in Washington, DC. She has nearly 20 years of experience working for state policy makers on issues affecting low income women and children. She served as a senior program director for 3 years at the National Academy for State Health Policy, and as a program director at the National Conference of State Leg- islatures for nearly 9 years. From 2002 to 2008, Ms. Gehshan has served as the vice-chair of the board of directors for the Children’s Dental Health Project, a Washington, DC-based group that supports state and local oral health programs for children. Ms. Gehshan is considered an unbiased source of information for policy­makers on sensitive health topics, such as oral health workforce. She has published extensively on oral health topics, including reports on improv­ ing access to dental care in Medicaid, racial disparities in oral health, dental workforce issues and community water fluoridation. In 2002, she completed a study for RWJF called “Access to Dental Care for Low Income People: Barriers and Opportunities for the Robert Wood Johnson Founda- tion,” which has been widely read and quoted. In 2004, she was chosen by the American Dental Association to address their House of Delegates meeting in Orlando, Florida, on access issues. In 2006, she was chosen to attend the ADA Advocacy Summit at their headquarters in Chicago. Ms. Gehshan also serves on an Advisory Committee for the ADHA on the development of a new advanced dental hygiene practitioner. She recently assisted the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Oral Health Policy Center on a project to imporve oral health and school readiness. Prior to joining NCSL, she served for 6 years as the Deputy Director of the Southern Governors’ Infant Mortality Project. She has published and spoken extensively on oral health, health care financing, perinatal substance abuse, and maternal and child health issues. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Cornell University and a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of California at Berkeley.

APPENDIX B 143 Elizabeth Mertz, M.A., is a program director at the Center for the Health Professions, University of California, San Francisco. As an active part of one of the nation’s leading academic health centers, the Center focuses its efforts on understanding the challenges faced by the health care workforce and developing programs and resources that assist in making successful transitions within the emergent health care system. Since joining the Center in 1997, Mertz has researched and published on a broad range of health professions workforce policy and analysis issues, as well as managed and taught in a number of leadership training and development courses for health care professionals. She is currently the director of the UCSF Phar- macy Leadership Institute and the principal investigator on a health care workforce research project exploring new care delivery models. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California, a Master’s degree from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and is currently working toward her Ph.D. in Medical ­Sociology at UCSF.

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Access to oral health services is a problem for all segments of the U.S. population, and especially problematic for vulnerable populations, such as rural and underserved populations. The many challenges to improving access to oral health services include the lack of coordination and integration among the oral health, public health, and medical health care systems; misaligned payment and education systems that focus on the treatment of dental disease rather than prevention; the lack of a robust evidence base for many dental procedures and workforce models; and regulatory barriers that prevent the exploration of alternative models of care.

This volume, the summary of a three-day workshop, evaluates the sufficiency of the U.S. oral health workforce to consider three key questions:

  • What is the current status of access to oral health services for the U.S. population?
  • What workforce strategies hold promise to improve access to oral health services?
  • How can policy makers, state and federal governments, and oral health care providers and practitioners improve the regulations and structure of the oral health care system to improve access to oral health services?
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