Appendix C
Biographical Sketches of Workshop Speakers and Moderators
DeVone Boggan serves as founder and CEO of Advance Peace, which disrupts gun violence in U.S. urban neighborhoods. It is a comprehensive, community-driven, developmental strategy that partners with and is informed by those who have the greatest influence on altering the urban gun violence epidemic. Advance Peace provides a unique transformational experience to young men involved in lethal firearm offenses by placing them in a high-touch, personalized Fellowship or what Mr. Boggan has coined as a “blow their minds on LIFE Opportunity.” Mr. Boggan is the former neighborhood safety director and founding director of the Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) for the City of Richmond, California. ONS is a government non–law enforcement agency that is charged with reducing firearm assaults and associated deaths in Richmond. Under his leadership as neighborhood safety director, the city experienced a 75 percent reduction in gun violence between 2007, when ONC was created, and 2015.
Charles C. Branas, Ph.D., is a professor of epidemiology, director of the Penn Injury Science Center, and director of the Urban Health Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Branas works to improve health and health care and is recognized for his efforts to reduce violence and enhance emergency care. Much of his work incorporates human geography and place-based interventions. His studies have been replicated nationally and in cities across the United States and other countries. Dr. Branas has served on boards and offered scientific expertise for numerous U.S. groups, including the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He has also worked with scientific organizations in Canada, Greece, Guatemala, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and South Africa. The U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress have cited his work. He is a past president of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research and an elected member of the American Epidemiological Society. He is currently focused on a series of natural experiments and large randomized controlled field trials that alter urban environments to determine the effects on health and safety in multiple cities.
Jeffrey Butts, Ph.D., is director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, an adjunct member of the doctoral faculty in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a member of the Science Advisory Board for the Office of Justice Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice. Previously he was a research fellow with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and director of the Program on Youth Justice at the Urban Institute. His work focuses on discovering and improving policies and programs for youth involved in the justice system. Since 1990, Dr. Butts has managed more than $18 million of research projects and worked with policy makers and justice practitioners in 28 states and several other countries. He has published two books, dozens of monographs and reports for government agencies and foundations, as well as articles in academic and peer-reviewed journals. His research findings and policy views have been covered by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, National Public Radio, CBS News, and many other media sources. He began his justice career as a drug and alcohol counselor with the juvenile court in Eugene, Oregon. Dr. Butts is a graduate of the University of Oregon and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Ted Corbin, M.D., M.P.P., is an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Drexel University College of Medicine. He also serves as the founding medical director of “Healing Hurt People,” an emergency department–based, trauma-informed intervention strategy for victims of intentional injury at Hahnemann Hospital as well as St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. Dr. Corbin also co-directs the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice at Drexel University School of Public Health, where he holds a joint appointment. He was awarded a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellowship and an Annie E. Casey Foundation grant to explore the impact of posttraumatic stress disorder on violently injured youth and young adults, and to evaluate the effectiveness of Healing Hurt People. His work focuses broadly on addressing the trauma in the lives of victims of violence, especially boys and men of color for whom
violence is a leading cause of disability and death. Dr. Corbin received his B.S. in biology from Lincoln University and his M.D. from Drexel University College of Medicine. He earned his Master of Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. In 2005, he was awarded a Soros Physician Advocacy Fellowship. Dr. Corbin is board certified in emergency medicine. Dr. Corbin provided expert testimony to the Defending Childhood Task Force, charged by Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General, on his work in violence intervention. Dr. Corbin has also provided practice-based evidence to the National Academy of Medicine on public health approaches to violence intervention.
Rachel Davis, M.S.W., is managing director of the Prevention Institute, playing a key role in advancing the conceptual work of the organization. For the past 10 years with the Prevention Institute, Ms. Davis has developed and overseen projects pertaining to preventing violence, community health and reducing inequity, health care reform, and mental health. She develops tools and materials to support local and state initiatives and trains government agencies, foundations, and community collaboratives across the United States. Ms. Davis also oversees qualitative research and literature reviews and writes extensively. She speaks and consults nationwide on topics related to her fields. Ms. Davis serves as project director for UNITY (Urban Networks to Increase Thriving Youth through Violence Prevention), the Institute’s national initiative funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to strengthen and support the largest U.S. cities in more effectively preventing violence. She also provided research, script development, facilitator training, and management expertise to the Institute’s Partnerships for Preventing Violence satellite series, which trained more than 15,000 leaders and practitioners across the country. Ms. Davis has facilitated planning processes for various city and county governments, helping them to generate strategic action frameworks for preventing violence. She is the advisory board chair for the California Cities Gang Prevention Network.
Amanda Geller, Ph.D., M.Eng., is a clinical associate professor of sociology and the director of the M.A. program in Applied Quantitative Research at New York University. Dr. Geller’s research examines the interactions between criminal justice policy and socioeconomic disadvantage and their joint effects on urban neighborhoods, families, and individuals. She focuses specifically on the role of parental incarceration in families, and the administration of justice related to police–public interactions. Her work has been published in outlets that reach the diverse constituencies with interest in the criminal justice system, including the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Demography, the Journal of Marriage and Family, and the
American Journal of Public Health. In the summer of 2013, she presented at a White House workshop on parental incarceration convened by the American Bar Foundation.
Medina Henry, M.P.A., is associate director of training and technical assistance at the Center for Court Innovation. In this role, she provides consulting services to jurisdictions around the nation, including assistance provided under the Problem-Solving Justice Initiative of the Bureau of Justice Assistance at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The Problem-Solving Justice Initiative seeks to promote the use of problem-solving practices in an effort to reduce crime and incarceration while strengthening public trust in justice. Ms. Henry also spearheads technical assistance for nine sites funded by the Minority Youth Violence Prevention initiative, a collaboration between the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at DOJ. She began her career at the Center shortly after earning her M.P.A. at Baruch College. Ms. Henry started as the program coordinator for the Center’s AmeriCorps program and was promoted to planner for the Red Hook Community Justice Center. While in Red Hook, she helped the Justice Center to plan and launch the Red Hook Responders, a social service program focused on addressing the community’s needs after Hurricane Sandy; Red Hook CARES, which provides crisis support and case management to survivors of violence; and a host of other projects.
George Isham, M.D., M.S., is senior advisor to HealthPartners, responsible for working with the board of directors and the senior management team on health and quality of care improvement for patients, members, and the community. Dr. Isham is also Senior Fellow, HealthPartners Research Foundation and facilitates forward progress at the intersection of population health research and public policy. Dr. Isham is active nationally and currently co-chairs the National Quality Forum–convened Measurement Application Partnership, chairs the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA’s) clinical program committee, and is a member of NCQA’s committee on performance measurement. He is a former member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Task Force on Community Preventive Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. He currently serves on the advisory committee to the director of CDC. His practice experience as a general internist was with the U.S. Navy, at the Freeport Clinic in Freeport, Illinois, and as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2014 Dr. Isham was elected to the National
Academy of Medicine. He is a past chair of the Health and Medicine Division’s (HMD’s) Roundtable on Health Literacy and has chaired three studies in addition to serving on a number of HMD studies related to health and quality of care. In 2003 Dr. Isham was appointed as a lifetime National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his contributions to the work of the HMD.
Thea James, M.D., is an associate professor of emergency medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. She is vice president of mission and associate chief medical officer at Boston Medical Center and a past president of the medical and dental staff at Boston Medical Center. She is an assistant dean in the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, and the director of the Violence Intervention Advocacy Program at Boston Medical Center. Dr. James is a founding member of the National Network of Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Advocacy Programs (NNHVIP). She serves on the Steering Committee and the Research Working Group of NNHVIP. In 2011, Dr. James was appointed to Attorney General Eric Holder’s National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence. The task force report was released and presented to the Attorney General in 2012. Dr. James is member of the Boards of Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation and the Heller School at Brandeis University. She has chaired and served on national committees within the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). She was appointed to the SAEM Women in Academic Emergency Medicine Task Force. Dr. James served on the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine from 2009 to 2012, when she served as chair of the Licensing Committee. Dr. James is the 2008 awardee of the Boston Public Health Commission’s Mulligan Award for public service. In 2012, she was a recipient of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Role Model Award. In 2012, the Boston Business Journal honored Dr. James with its Health Care Hero Award. She was the 2014 recipient of the Schwartz Center Compassionate Care Award. In 2015, the Boston Chamber of Commerce awarded Dr. James with the Pinnacle Award, which honors women in business and the professions. She was selected by Atlanta Victim Assistance Inc. to receive the 2016 Barney L. Simms “Trailblazer” Award in June 2016. Dr. James is a supervising medical officer on the Boston Disaster Medical Assistance Team, which has responded to several U.S. and global disasters, including 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, Dr. James and a colleague co-founded Unified for Global Healing. The organization takes multidisciplinary teams to Africa, India, and Haiti, where they work with local partners to conduct sustainable projects. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Equal Health, formerly called Physicians for Haiti. A graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine, Dr. James trained in emergency medicine at Boston City Hospital, where she was a chief
resident. Board Certified in emergency medicine, she has been the recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Award at Boston University School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine, and has twice received the Department of Emergency Medicine Chair’s Award.
Thomas A. LaVeist, Ph.D., is chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at The George Washington University (GW) Milken Institute School of Public Health. He joined GW after 25 years on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he was the William C. and Nancy F. Richardson Professor in Health Policy and director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and his Doctorate in Medical Sociology from the University of Michigan. He completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship in Public Health at the Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. LaVeist has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals. In addition to his scholarly writing, Dr. LaVeist has written articles for Newsweek Magazine, Black Enterprise Magazine, and The Baltimore Sun. He is a highly sought after lecturer at leading universities, corporations, professional conferences, and workshops. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Defense, Commonwealth Fund, Sage Foundation, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. In 2012 he organized and hosted the International Conference on Health in the African Diaspora, which brought together health advocates from 24 countries in the Western Hemisphere. Dr. LaVeist has provided consultation services for numerous federal agencies and health care organizations on minority health and cultural competency issues and racial disparities in health. His dissertation on racial disparities in infant mortality was awarded the 1989 Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation Award by the American Sociological Association. He is the recipient of the “Innovation Award” from NIH, and the “Knowledge Award” from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. In 2013 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine. The second edition of his edited volume Race, Ethnicity and Health: A Public Health Reader (Jossey-Bass Publishers) was published in 2012. His textbook Minority Populations and Health: An Introduction to Race, Ethnicity and Health in the United States (Jossey-Bass) was published in 2005. He is also the author of The DayStar Guide to Colleges for African American Students (Stanley Kaplan/Simon and Schuster), and co-author of 8 Steps to Help Black Families Pay for College (Princeton Review/Random House). His most recent book project, Legacy of the Crossing: Slavery, Race, and Contemporary Health in the African Diaspora, is planned for publication in 2017.
Sanne Magnan, M.D., Ph.D., is the co-chair of the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement. Dr. Magnan served as president and CEO of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (ICSI) until January 2016. From 2007 until 2010, she was commissioner of health for the Minnesota Department of Health, an appointment by former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. She had significant responsibility for 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. She returned as ICSI’s president and CEO in 2011. Dr. Magnan also currently serves as a staff physician at the Tuberculosis Clinic at St. Paul-Ramsey County Department of Public Health and as a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota. Her experience also includes serving as vice president and medical director of Consumer Health at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, where she was responsible for case management, disease management, and consumer engagement. Dr. Magnan holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Minnesota, and is a board certified internist. She earned her bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from the University of North Carolina. She has served on the Board of Minnesota Community Measurement, and the Board of NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center, a federally qualified health center and part of Hennepin Health. She was named 1 of the 100 Influential Health Care Leaders by Minnesota Physician magazine in 2004, 2008, and 2012. Since 2012, she has participated in the Process Redesign Advisory Group for the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education coordinated through the University of Minnesota. Recently, she became a Senior Fellow, HealthPartners Institute for Education and Research. She is participating in several Technical Expert Panels for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on population health measures, and is a member of the Population-based Payment Workgroup of the Healthcare Payment Learning and Action Network. She is also on the Interdisciplinary Application/Translation Committee of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences.
Steven Marans, Ph.D., M.S.W., is the Harris Professor of Child Psychoanalysis and professor of Psychiatry at the Child Study Center and Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, and is a child and adult psychoanalyst. Dr. Marans is the director of the Childhood Violent Trauma Center and the founder of the Child Development-Community Policing (CD-CP) Program. Begun in 1991, it is a national model for collaborative responses of mental health and law enforcement professionals to children and families exposed to violence that occurs in
homes, neighborhoods, and schools. Dr. Marans is also the co-developer of the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention, an evidence-based, brief early intervention that decreases the development of longer term posttraumatic disorders in children who have been impacted by recent trauma. Among his writings, Dr. Marans co-authored The Police–Mental Health Partnership: A Community-Based Response to Urban Violence based on the CD-CP experience and, in 2005, a book titled Listening to Fear: Helping Kids Cope, from Nightmares to the Nightly News. Dr. Marans served on the U.S. Attorney General’s National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence and is a co-author of the task force’s report.
John Markovic, M.A., is a senior social science analyst in the Research and Development Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). His responsibilities include grant management and maintaining a substantive focus on multiple issue areas, including urban violence, gangs, the use of geographic information systems (GIS) to promote public safety, homeland security, and police communications and technology. He has actively participated in DOJ-wide initiatives and other federal partnerships, including the Violence Reduction Network, the Gang Research Evidence Integration Team, a Geospatial Technology Working Group, and an innovative grant collaboration supported by COPS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. Prior to joining COPS, Markovic was a program manager at the International Association of Chiefs of Police, managing work on broad-ranging topic areas, including crime mapping and geospatial analysis; juvenile justice; civil rights; and promoting diversity in policing. Mr. Markovic’s other experience includes applied research and geographic information system analysis at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, and Mount Sinai Hospital of Chicago, where he conducted research in a unique Pediatric Ecology Program engaged in medical/legal assessments of alleged cases of child abuse and neglect. Mr. Markovic’s current research focuses on public health approaches to violence reduction, as well as the use of social network analysis to promote targeted intervention to reduce violence. Mr. Markovic holds an M.A. in criminal justice from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Howard Pinderhughes, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing. Dr. Pinderhughes is the author of Race in the Hood: Conflict and Violence Among Urban Youth, which examined the dynamics of racial violence in New York City. His forthcoming book, Dealing With Danger: How Inner City Youth Cope with the Violence That Surrounds Them,
examines the production of youth violence and how urban adolescents think about, experience, and make decisions about the use of violence. Additionally, he served as the co-principal investigator for the Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention, one of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Academic Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention.
John A. Rich, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health. He has been a leader in the field of public health, and his work has focused on serving one of the nation’s most ignored and underserved populations—African American men in urban settings. In 2006, Dr. Rich was granted a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In awarding this distinction, the Foundation cited his work to design “new models of health care that stretch across the boundaries of public health, education, social service, and justice systems to engage young men in caring for themselves and their peers.” Prior to Drexel University, Dr. Rich served as the medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission. As a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center, Dr. Rich created the Young Men’s Health Clinic and initiated the Boston HealthCREW, a program to train inner city young men to become peer health educators who focus on the health of men and boys in their communities. He earned his Dartmouth A.B. in English, his M.D. from Duke University Medical School, and his master’s from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his internship and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and was a fellow in general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School. He received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Dartmouth in 2007 and now serves on its Board of Trustees. In 2009, Dr. Rich was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine. His recently published book about urban violence, Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men, has drawn critical acclaim.
Therese S. Richmond, Ph.D., FAAN, CRNP, is the Andrea B. Laporte Professor of Nursing and associate dean for research and innovation at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) School of Nursing. Dr. Richmond’s research interests focus on injury and violence. She has an extensive body of research aimed to improve outcomes after injury and she addresses the interaction between physical injury and the postinjury psychological consequences. This work has helped to identify groups of injured patients most likely to experience suboptimal outcomes and points to screening and interventions to improve those outcomes. Dr. Richmond has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health to examine the effects of developing depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following injury on disability and quality of life, and she developed a pre-
dictive screener to identify those patients at highest risk for the future emergence of postinjury depression and PTSD. She is currently funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research to examine psychological consequences of serious injury in urban African American men. Dr. Richmond conducts studies to prevent violence and to reduce its impact on individuals, families, and communities. She co-founded the Firearm & Injury Center at Penn and directs the Training, Education & Outreach Core of the Penn Injury Science Center. She is committed to community-based participatory research and interdisciplinary partnerships. She co-directs a National Institutes of Health-Fogarty Training Grant to train injury and violence scientists in Guatemala. Dr. Richmond’s research contributions have been recognized by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) Excellence in Research Award, and the AACN General Electric Healthcare Pioneering Spirit Award for her research in firearm injuries and violence. She has been inducted into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame.
Lourdes Rodríguez, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., is a program officer for the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth) on projects related to building healthy communities. In this capacity, she works toward supporting neighborhood-level interventions to increase healthy food options and improve the built environment; advancing public policies that promote healthy living; and increasing access to programs that help New Yorkers lead healthier lives. She also works to support the Foundation’s goals to advance primary care, especially on projects aimed to address social determinants of health. Prior to joining NYSHealth, Dr. Rodríguez served as the associate director of community partnerships for the Healthy Neighborhoods initiative at City Harvest. In this position, she oversaw the implementation of the organization’s community engagement activities to help address the epidemics of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other diet-related diseases in five low-income neighborhoods of New York City. From 2004 to 2012, she was on the faculty of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She currently holds an appointment as adjunct associate professor at the New York University Global Institute of Public Health. In 2011, she co-edited a book examining community mobilization for health, and has authored numerous publications on the subjects of violence prevention, health of vulnerable populations, mental health, community mobilization, and active living. Dr. Rodríguez received a B.S. in industrial biotechnology from the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico, an M.P.H. from the University of Connecticut, and a Dr.P.H. from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She serves on the board of Inwood Community Services, Inc., and on the consensus group of City Life Is Moving Bodies (CLIMB), a
neighborhood-based initiative that plans Hike the Heights, an annual northern Manhattan community mobilization event.
Roberto Rodríguez is a native of the Bronx. At the age of 17, his poor decisions and participation in high-risk activity led to a 16-year prison sentence. While incarcerated, Mr. Rodríguez went through a deep transformation, which developed his positive outlook on life. He is now employed at the Jacobi Medical Center’s Stand Up to Violence (SUV) program as an outreach supervisor. In this role, he strives to prevent young men and women from engaging in high-risk activity and repeating the mistakes he made. His experience gives him credibility with young adults and makes him a powerful messenger. As a supervisor, Mr. Rodríguez’s continued success after being released from prison more than 7 years ago is an inspiration for the program’s employees, most of whom are currently navigating the difficult reentry process. Mr. Rodríguez was previously employed at Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization that works with the formerly incarcerated. He has also achieved great success and notoriety training dogs as companions for disabled veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. In 2011, he was featured on OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network) for his participation in the Puppies Behind Bars program. Mr. Rodríguez is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts at The College of New Rochelle.
Daniel W. Webster, Sc.D., M.P.H., is a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Webster is director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, deputy director for research for the Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence, and core faculty of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. Dr. Webster holds a joint appointment as professor in the School of Education’s Division of Public Safety Leadership at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Webster is one of the nation’s leading experts on firearm policy and the prevention of gun violence. He is co-editor of Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis (JHU Press, 2013). He has published numerous articles on firearm policy, youth gun acquisition and carrying, the prevention of gun violence, intimate partner violence, and adolescent violence prevention. He has studied the effects of a variety of violence prevention interventions, including state firearm and alcohol policies, policing strategies, street outreach and conflict mediation, public education campaigns, and school-based curricula. Dr. Webster teaches Understanding and Preventing Violence; Research and Evaluation Methods for Health Policy; and a Graduate Seminar in Health and Public Policy.
