Modele Ogunniyi, MD
Dr. Modele Ogunniyi is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Master Physician in the Division of Cardiology at Emory University School of Medicine. She is the Associate Medical Director of the Grady Heart Failure Program. She serves as the Co-Chair of the National Hypertension Control Roundtable. After receiving her medical degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, she obtained a Master’s in Public Health and a Health Finance and Management Certificate from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Ogunniyi completed her postgraduate training in preventive medicine and public health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a residency in internal medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine, and a cardiology fellowship at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on examining social determinants of health and eliminating disparities in cardiovascular disease, specifically hypertension and heart failure, diversity in clinical trials, and cardiovascular disease in women. Dr. Ogunniyi is passionate about mentorship and creating equitable pathways to diversify the workforce in Medicine. In recognition of her efforts, she has received several awards, including the Emory University School of Medicine Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award and the Division of Cardiology R. Wayne Alexander Research Mentoring Award. As a cardiovascular epidemiologist, she seeks to forge links between preventive medicine, public policy, quality improvement, and scientific research. She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, American College of Cardiology, and American Heart Association. She is the Vice President of Health Awareness Initiative, Africa, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote healthy lifestyles in African communities by creating health awareness through screening and education.
Debra Houry, MD, MPH
Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science at CDC. In this role, she is responsible for establishing, strengthening, and maintaining collaboration and coordination across CDC’s national centers including infectious diseases, chronic disease, environmental health, injury prevention, and public health infrastructure. She also provides overall direction to, and coordination of, the scientific and medical programs. Dr. Houry is also the Designated Federal Officer for the Advisory Committee to the CDC Director, working directly with private and public sector constituents to prioritize CDC’s activities and address key areas including data modernization and health disparities. As a board-certified emergency physician, she has seen firsthand the impact of infectious diseases, chronic health conditions, and injuries on individuals, families, and communities and strives to address and prevent challenges with implementable, evidence-based practices. Prior to this role, Dr. Houry served for nearly two years (2021-2023) as CDC’s acting Principal Deputy Director, overseeing improvements to lab quality, updating global health strategy and governance, and elevating cross-cutting initiatives across the agency such as social determinants and mental health. She was also a key leader in the CDC Moving Forward 5 reorganization process for the agency. She previously served as vice chair and tenured associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and as associate professor in the Rollins School of Public Health. Dr. Houry also served as an attending physician at Grady Memorial Hospital in the emergency department and in the medication assisted treatment clinic for opioid use disorder. Dr. Houry received her MD and MPH degrees from Tulane University and completed her residency training in emergency medicine at Denver Health Medical Center.
Jerome Adams, MD, MPH, FASA
Dr. Jerome Adams was appointed a Presidential Fellow and the Executive Director of Purdue’s Health Equity Initiatives on October 1, 2021. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Practice in Pharmacy Practice and Public Health departments. As the 20th U.S. Surgeon General and a prior member of the President’s Coronavirus task force, Dr. Adams has been at the forefront of America’s most pressing health challenges. A regular communicator via TV, radio, and in print, Dr. Adams is an expert not just in science, but also in communicating science to the lay public and making it relevant to various audiences. Dr. Adams is a licensed anesthesiologist with a master’s degree in public health and ran the Indiana State Department of Health prior to becoming Surgeon General. In the State Health Commissioner role, he managed a $350 million dollar budget and over 1000 employees, and led Indiana’s response to Ebola, Zika, and HIV crises. Notably, Dr. Adams helped convince the Governor and State Legislature to legalize syringe service programs in the state, and to prioritize $13 million in funding to combat infant mortality. As Surgeon General, Dr. Adams was the operational head of the 6000-person Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and oversaw responses to 3 back-to-back category 5 hurricanes, and to a once-in-a-century pandemic. In addition to his recent COVID-19 work, Dr. Adams has partnered with and assisted organizations as they navigate the opioid epidemic, maternal health, rising rates of chronic disease, the impacts of rising suicide rates in our Nation, and how businesses can become better stewards and stakeholders in promoting community health.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD
Dr. Emanuel is an oncologist and world leader in health policy and bioethics. He is a Special Advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health and held that position until August of 2011. From 2009 to 2011, he served as a Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council. In this role, he was instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Emanuel also served on the Biden-Harris Transition Covid Advisory Board. Dr. Emanuel is the most widely cited bioethicist in history. He has over 350 publications and has authored or edited 15 books. His recent books include the books Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care (2020), Prescription for the Future (2017), Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System (2014) and Brothers Emanuel (2013).
Dr. Emanuel regularly contributes to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and often appears on BBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and other media outlets. He has received numerous awards including election to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the Royal College of Medicine (UK). He received –but refused— a Fulbright Scholarship. Most recently he became a Guggenheim Fellow. He has been named a Dan David Prize Laureate in Bioethics and is a recipient of the AMA-Burroughs Wellcome Leadership Award, the Public Service Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation David E. Rogers Award, President’s Medal for Social Justice Roosevelt University, and the John Mendelsohn Award from the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Emanuel has received honorary degrees from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Union Graduate College, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Macalester College. Dr. Emanuel is a graduate of Amherst College. He holds a M.Sc. from Oxford University in Biochemistry and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University.
Janet Wright, MD
Dr. Wright was appointed director in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention in July 2021, following a two-year detail in the Office of the Surgeon General as Director of Science and Policy and almost eight years as the inaugural executive director of Million Hearts. She received the 2020 Surgeon General’s Award for Exemplary Service. Before federal service, Dr. Wright led Science and Quality Division at ACC and practiced cardiology in Northern California for 23 years.
Dr. Wright received her MD from the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center and completed her internal medicine residency at Children’s Hospital and Adult Medical Center and her fellowship in cardiology at San Francisco General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco.
Kyu Rhee, MD, MPP
Dr. Kyu (“Q”) Rhee is a purpose-driven physician executive and entrepreneur who has served as chief physician executive and Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health, IBM, HRSA, and Community Health Centers. He is a primary care and public health physician who has worked in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors to improve the health system, especially for underserved and health disparity populations. Dr. Rhee serves as the President and CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC). Dr. Rhee leads the organization in advancing health equity and supporting the mission of community health centers, which provide high-quality, affordable, transdisciplinary primary care services to more than 30 million people at over 14,000 sites across the nation.
Dr. Rhee most recently served as Senior Vice President and Aetna Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health. Prior to that, he was Chief Health Officer at IBM for a decade. Before IBM, Dr. Rhee was Chief Public Health Officer at the Health Resources and Services Administration, the primary federal agency for improving access to healthcare services for people who are uninsured, isolated, or medically vulnerable. Dr. Rhee also previously served as director of the Office of Innovation and Program Coordination at the National Institutes of Health, the primary federal agency for medical research. Before his public service, Dr. Rhee was a primary care physician for the National Health Service Corps and served as Chief Medical Officer for Unity Healthcare and Baltimore Medical System.
Jaime Murillo, MD
Dr. Murillo is a Senior VP and Chief Medical Officer at UnitedHealth Group Enterprise Strategy and Innovation. He is focused on the intersectionality of community engagement, chronic disease, technology, and health equity. He recently built a disruptive care delivery solution to improve health in the community using AI-powered technology, social-behavioral determinants of health, and communitybased partnerships. His work also includes advanced analytics to identify gaps in care as well as AI/ML-based phenotyping and multi-omics to advance precision medicine. Prior to his current role at UHG Strategy and Innovation, he was an SVP and Chief CardioMetabolic Health Officer at Optum Labs, the R&D arm of UnitedHealth Group. He started his journey at UHG as UnitedHealthcare’s national lead for cardiovascular and ED services. This work was focused on simple innovation, valuebased transformation, and affordability. He is a cardiologist from Yale University with a background in computer sciences as well as basic science and clinical research at Harvard Medical School and outcomes research at Yale University. He is a former IBM Watson Health collaborator on the clinical implementation of machine learning in the cardiovascular field. He practiced cardiology with a subspecialty in imaging for 20 years at Sentara Health. Within Sentara, he played several executive roles with a focus on leadership development and consumer strategies.
Karen Margolis, MD, MPH
Dr. Margolis is an internal medicine physician and researcher. Throughout her career she has been drawn to topics that arose from unanswered questions in her practice. This has led Dr. Margolis to research a broad range of issues: safety and acceptability of flu shots, screening for breast and cervical cancer, preventing falls and fractures in older women, safety and effectiveness of postmenopausal hormone therapy, and treatments for diabetes. A central theme has been how best to prevent cardiovascular disease, especially through effective treatment of high blood pressure, across the age spectrum in both men and women. The COVID-19 pandemic led Dr. Margolis back to vaccine research, and she is especially proud to be collaborating with researchers across Minnesota to improve health outcomes related to this and other public health threats.
Jenny Bogard, MPH
Jenny Bogard has over twenty years of experience in health behavior change, strategy development, and program design across the managed care, nonprofit, and public arenas. She has held leadership roles in health insurance at Humana, worksite wellness at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and community health as the Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s Healthcare Access and Equity Strategy director. Through her work to expand obesity prevention and treatment healthcare coverage, she has partnered with over 40 private payers, public payers, self-insured employers, and healthcare provider associations. Ms. Bogard has a BA in Health Administration from Florida Atlantic University and an MPH from the University of Miami. She also serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Payer Advisory Board, is a member of two Roundtable on Obesity working groups, and the Prescription for Activity Taskforce Advisory Board.
Scott Flinn, MD
Dr. Flinn is a Regional Medical Director at Blue Shield of California where he focuses on improving the value of care delivered to Blue Shield members. Previously, Dr. Flinn was the Chief Medical Officer at Arch Health Partners, an award-winning medical group in San Diego. Prior to joining Arch, he served 22 years in the US Navy including two tours with the Navy SEALs, a tour as Medical Director for primary care at Naval Hospital San Diego, and a tour as Force Surgeon for Naval Surface Forces in charge of the health care for all Navy ships worldwide. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Dr. Flinn is a member of the American Academy of Family Practice and the American College of Physician Executives, becoming a Certified Physician Executive in 2013. He is board certified in Family Practice with a CAQ in Sports Medicine.
Dorothy Fink, MD
Dr. Fink is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women’s Health and Director of the Office on Women’s Health in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Fink brings to OASH extensive experience treating women’s health issues. She is board-certified in endocrinology, internal medicine, and pediatrics, and is recognized as a physician leader on topics such as diabetes, nutrition, and bone health. Previously, her clinical practice focused on women from adolescence through menopause and beyond. She is a nationally certified menopause practitioner and an expert on estrogen. Dr. Fink has done extensive research on women’s health, including evaluation of blood markers to assist in diagnosing hypothalamic amenorrhea and investigating the role of diabetes in women’s skeletal health. Dr. Fink has presented at national meetings on polycystic ovary syndrome, the female athlete triad, and other bonerelated conditions. Most recently, Dr. Fink practiced at the Hospital for Special Surgery and New York Presbyterian Hospital, Cornell University.
Keiva Nelson
Keiva Nelson serves as a Team Lead Public Health Advisor, with over 13 years of Federal Service, for the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Office on Women’s Health (OWH), Division of Policy and Performance Management. In this capacity, she has managed and overseen several projects, working towards achieving the vision and mission of OWH. Keiva represents OWH on several collaborations and workgroups, such as the Million Hearts Partnership with CDC, HRSA’s National Hypertension Control Initiative (NHCI), and the Federal Hypertension Control Leadership Council. Keiva is also the Project Lead for the design, building, and implementation of the new Performance Management Data Collection System, a data collection and analysis system to capture OWH’s performance measure reporting requirements, providing program data that generates trends and status updates for strategic planning accomplishments. Her leadership and oversight on this project led to Keiva being a recipient of the 2022 HHS Unsung Hero Award, from the HHS Assistant Secretary for Health.
Eduardo Sanchez, MD, MPH
Dr. Sanchez serves as Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for Prevention for the American Heart Association (AHA). He is the Principal Investigator of the National Hypertension Control Initiative with the federal Office of Minority Health and the Health Resources and Services Administration. He is the AHA clinical lead on Target: BP (a joint blood pressure control initiative with the American Medical Association) and Know Diabetes by Heart (a joint cardiovascular risk factor control initiative with the American Diabetes Association). Before joining AHA, he served as Vice President and CMO for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, and he served as director of the Institute for Health Policy at the University of Texas School of Public Health. Dr. Sanchez served as Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services from 2004 to 2006 and Commissioner of the Texas Department of Health. Dr. Sanchez obtained his MD from the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, an MPH from the UT Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health, and an MS in biomedical engineering from Duke University. Dr. Sanchez is board certified in family medicine.
Michele Bildner, MPH, MCHES
Michele Bildner, MPH, MCHES® is a Project Manager for Non-Infectious Disease Programs at the CDC Foundation, where she is responsible for creating public-private partnerships for chronic disease health promotion. She has worked in public health for over a decade, focusing mostly on urban community health assessment and policy, system, and environmental changes. Michele began her DrPH in Leadership at the University of Illinois Chicago in 2019 and has a deep interest in identifying, diagnosing, and addressing adaptive public health and organizational challenges and thrives on their complexity and messiness. She received the National Society for Public Health Education’s 2022 Karen Denard Goldman Health Education Mentor Award which recognizes her significant contribution to the preparation and performance of Health Education Specialists.
Meg Guerin Calvert, MPA
Margaret (Meg) Guerin-Calvert is a Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting in Washington, D.C. and founding President of its Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy. She has over 30 years of experience as an economist in public and private sectors, in competition and regulatory policy, mergers, damages, class certification and intellectual property in healthcare and other industries. She leads FTI’s Center initiatives on health, health equity, and economic impact, which provide multi-sector collaboratives and stakeholders with actionable data and advanced analytics on drivers of medical and productivity costs of chronic conditions and their economic impact for innovative strategies and measurable benefit in their communities. Her projects include FTI’s Center selection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation along with the National Forum for Heart Diseases and Stroke Prevention, to build and disseminate the business case for hypertension prevention and control for employer engagement.
Diane Kolack, MPH
Diane Kolack, MPH, is a program officer at the CDC Foundation. In her role, Diane works on programs and initiatives to improve public health outcomes related to non-infectious diseases, including the National Hypertension Control Roundtable and CDC PLACES: Local Data for Better Health. She is a seasoned public health professional with more than a decade of experience in the field. Diane brings an interdisciplinary lens to her work in public health, drawing from a rich background that includes arts administration, campaign finance, and community organizing. She holds a Master of Public Health degree in Community Health from the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy and a Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College.
Meg Meador, MPH, C-PHI, CPHQ
Meg Meador serves at the National Association of Community Health Centers as Director of Clinical Integration and Education, where she designs, implements, and evaluates integrated strategies and quality improvement initiatives with health centers. Most recently, she has been involved in leading national Million Hearts initiatives to prevent heart attacks and strokes, including addressing undiagnosed hypertension and accelerating use of self-measured blood pressure monitoring. Meg earned her BA in Human Biology from Stanford University, her MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education from UNCChapel Hill and completed a graduate certificate in Public Health Informatics from Johns Hopkins University.
Miriam Patanian, MPH
Miriam Patanian has more than 20 years of public health experience focused on chronic disease prevention and control at both the state and national levels. She is a senior public health consultant at NACDD, leading health system initiatives addressing hypertension, Million Hearts®, and cardiovascular health. Before working as a consultant, Ms. Patanian served as the Director of the Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Program at the Washington State Department of Health. During this time, she coordinated local and statewide implementation of evidence-based initiatives to increase hypertension control and reduce the burden of heart disease and stroke in the state. Ms. Patanian began her public health career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Cardiovascular Health Branch (before it became the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention), where she helped to develop the Public Health Action Plan to Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke. She received her MPH from the University of Washington.
Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, PhD, MHS, RN
Dr. Commodore-Mensah is an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Nursing, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. As a nurse scientist and cardiovascular disease epidemiologist, her program of research seeks to advance cardiovascular health among African-descent populations locally (United States) and globally (sub-Saharan Africa) through implementation science and community-engaged methods. She is the Principal Investigator of the LINKED-BP Program and co-PI of the LINKED-HEARTS Program, two cluster-randomized controlled trials, which are testing the implementation of multi-level interventions to improve hypertension control and the management of multiple chronic conditions in primary care. She is the co-PI of the Addressing Hypertension Care in Africa (ADHINCRA) Study, a cluster-randomized control trial which tested the effectiveness of a nurse-led, mobile health intervention to improve hypertension control in Ghana. She is a National Hypertension Control Roundtable Steering Committee member and serves on the Advisory Boards of the National Hypertension Control Initiative and Target: BP. She is a Board member for the American Heart Association Baltimore and Greater Maryland area and the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association.
Nar Ramkissoon
Nar Ramkissoon, MA leads collaborations, programs, and policy efforts to engage a broad set of ecosystem stakeholders to remove barriers for physicians, care teams, and patients and prevent cardiovascular disease prevention. His areas of expertise are in remote monitoring, medical devices and emerging technology, public and private insurance coverage, and payment. Key areas of focus for his team are increasing access to validated blood pressure devices and enabling physicians and patients to adopt self-measured blood pressure monitoring. Nar has a background in healthcare consulting and holds a Master of Public Health from DePaul University.