Pathways to Prevention (P2P) Program

Achieving Health Equity in Preventive Services - Workshop Panel

Workshop Panel for the Achieving Health Equity in preventive Services
P2P Workshop Panel (left to right): Doug Campos-Outcalt, Sandra Millon-Underwood, Steven Teutsch, Susan Koch-Weser, Tim Carey, Betty Bekemeier
NIH/Chia-Chi Charlie Chang

Workshop and Panel Chair

Tim Carey, M.D., M.P.H.

Tim Carey is a general internist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He is a graduate of Colby College and the University of Vermont College of Medicine. After internal medicine residency training at Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco in the mid ’70s, he joined the National Health Service Corp and practiced at the Frontier Nursing Service in eastern Kentucky for 4 years. Dr. Carey was trained in health services research through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at UNC, then joined faculty there in 1985. He holds joint appointments in the Departments of Medicine and Social Medicine at UNC.

Dr. Carey’s clinical practice focuses on chronic disease management, especially in the elderly. His research interests are varied, including identification of risk factors for and optimal treatment of low back pain, health disparities, comparative effectiveness research, and management of nutritional issues in the frail elderly. More recently, he has worked to improve utilization of data generated through electronic health records for quality improvement and research. Dr. Carey has held a variety of positions at UNC, leading the Division of General Medicine for a decade, and served as Director of the Sheps Center for Health Services Research for 16 years. He was Co-Director of the RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center for 15 years. He has served on his local Health Department board and also practiced at Chapel Hill’s clinic for homeless individuals. Dr. Carey currently serves as co-principal investigator of UNC’s NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hub, the NC TraCS Institute.

 

Panel Members

Betty Bekemeier, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N., FAAN

Betty Bekemeier is a Professor at the University of Washington (UW) School of Nursing and Director of the UW School of Public Health’s Northwest Center for Public Health Practice. She is a distinguished public health systems researcher focused on improving the effectiveness of our prevention systems and related workforce. She has led numerous studies regarding local health department services and their impact on health outcomes and disparities.

Dr. Bekemeier is principal investigator of the Public Health Activities and Services Tracking (PHAST) Study, initiated in 2010 through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Nurse Faculty Scholars Program. PHAST is now a highly regarded, growing database of uniquely detailed and linked data regarding local health department services, which has supported several studies and involves an interdisciplinary research team. Dr. Bekemeier’s studies on change, variation, and outcomes regarding public health systems are conducted in close partnership with public health practice leaders and have been immediately relevant to addressing current policy issues. Her efforts in guiding the generation of evidence and data to support public health practice improvement include development of a dissemination and implementation model aimed at facilitating the uptake and integration of standardized local public health services and financial data into state and local systems.

Dr. Bekemeier is also a national public health nursing leader, having served in significant leadership positions in organizations that include the American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Nursing.

 

Doug Campos-Outcalt M.D., M.P.A.

Doug Campos-Outcalt is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Arizona College of Public Health and a Clinical Professor in the College of Medicine. From 2014 to 2018, he was Medical Director for Mercy Care Plan, a Medicaid health plan in Arizona serving 300,000 members. Previously, he was Chair of the Department of Family, Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix, and Director of the M.D./M.P.H. dual degree program. He has been a medical and public health educator for over 30 years.

Dr. Campos-Outcalt served as a scientific analyst for the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) for 8 years (2006–2014), and during that time served as the AAFP liaison to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. He was a member of the Evaluation of Genomics Applied in Practice and Prevention (EGAPP) Working Group (2008–2015), which assessed the evidence behind genomic diagnostic tests, and was a member of the  Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the CDC for 9 years—5 years as a liaison and 4 as a voting member. He currently serves as a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force, and on the advisory board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Program at the National Academy of Medicine, the advisory board of the Robert Graham Health Policy Center, and the AAFP Science advisory panel.

Dr. Campos-Outcalt has been the Medical Director of the Maricopa County Department of Public Health and Deputy Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services. He has served on the National Advisory Councils of the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and the National Health Service Corps and on the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee. In 2001–2002, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow in the office of the U.S. Senate Public Health Subcommittee. He has been a family physician in the town of Guadalupe, Arizona, and in South Phoenix, and has served on numerous clinical practice guideline panels. Dr. Campos-Outcalt maintains an interest in evidence-based medicine and public health, clinical preventive medicine, and community interventions to improve health and reduce health care disparities.

 

Susan Koch-Weser, Sc.D., M.Sc.

Susan Koch-Weser is in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Her training is in behavioral science and social epidemiology.

Her research focuses on developing methods and processes to improve the accessibility and transparency of health information so that individuals and communities can be empowered to proactively address health issues. Health literacy has been an important component of her research. Her health literacy work has ranged from conceptualizing and measuring health literacy in clinical settings to evaluating strategies to increase population health literacy through science education. Additional projects related to health communication and health behavior have included testing a decision-making tool for kidney patients, examining how consumers choose health care services, a nutrition communication campaign for elementary school children, and product labeling to promote healthy behaviors. Dr. Koch-Weser is an active member of Tufts CTSI’s Stakeholder & Community Engagement Program, Addressing Disparities in Asian Populations through Translational Research (ADAPT), a community-academic partnership based in Boston’s Chinatown. The focus of her work in Chinatown with ADAPT has revolved around the community need for data to develop evidence-based approaches to health issues and to support advocacy.

Dr. Koch-Weser holds a Sc.D. and M.Sc. from the Harvard School of Public Health and a B.A. from Wellesley College.

 

Sandra Millon-Underwood, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN

Sandra Millon-Underwood, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), has engaged in a number of funded research projects that have addressed disparities in cancer education; cancer prevention and control; and hereditary cancer risk, genetics, and genomics that have targeted at-risk populations within and beyond the contiguous United States. Included among the agencies providing funding to support this body of research has been the National Cancer Institute, Susan G. Komen, American Cancer Society, Sigma Theta Tau International, UWM Center on Race and Ethnicity, UWM Urban Research Center, and Wisconsin Genomics Institute.

These efforts, which have been disseminated in the scientific and clinical literature, have expanded the understanding of the cancer experiences, concerns, and needs of diverse groups of medically underserved populations, and have enhanced understanding of the factors associated with the use of traditional cancer screening protocols by men and women of faith. They have also contributed understanding of the impact of culturally-tailored, and community-based programs that aim to enhance cancer awareness, understanding, screening, empowerment of inner-city, urban/rural, minority, and economically challenged populations.

Sandra Millon-Underwood currently serves as Director of the evidence-based breast education and screening initiative, Partners in Pursuit of the Promise, which is designed to increase breast cancer screening among underserved women in southeastern Wisconsin.

 

Steven Teutsch, M.D., M.P.H.

Steven Teutsch is Adjunct Professor at the Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA, and Senior Fellow, Schaeffer Center, University of Southern California. Until 2014, he was Chief Science Officer at Los Angeles County Public Health, where he continued his work on evidence-based public health and policy. He had been in the Outcomes Research and Management program at Merck since 1997, where he was responsible for scientific leadership in developing evidence-based clinical management programs, conducting outcomes research studies, and improving outcomes measurement to enhance quality of care. Prior to joining Merck, he was Director of the Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods (DPRAM) at the CDC, where he was responsible for assessing the effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness of disease and injury prevention strategies.

DPRAM developed comparable methodology for studies of the effectiveness and economic impact of prevention programs, provided training in these methods, developed the CDC’s capacity for conducting necessary studies, and provided technical assistance for conducting economic and decision analysis. The Division also evaluated the impact of interventions in urban areas, provided support for the CDC’s analytic methods, and developed the Guide to Community Preventive Services. Dr. Teutsch has served as a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which develops the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, as well as on American Health Information Community Personalized Health Care Workgroup and the Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Practice and Prevention (EGAPP) Workgroup. He chaired the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetics Health and Society and has served on and chaired several Institute of Medicine panels, Medicare’s Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, and several subcommittees of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020 and Healthy People 2030. Dr. Teutsch received his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences at Harvard University, an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, and his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine.

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