Innovation is the pursuit of new solutions to challenges. At the summit, we’ll combine traditional business innovation frameworks, with lessons in entrepreneurship, and key principles in implementation science. We approach innovation by breaking down industry silos to draw upon the strengths of each and create more effective approaches.
You’ll learn tools and best practices to quickly work through our proven cross-functional innovation approach:
Identify - Lay the foundation for the innovation process by examining and defining the assumed problem and the target audience.
Develop - Consider the different ways in which we can solve the defined problem. Start broadly and, through feedback and consideration, work toward a refined concept to pilot.
Test - With our assumed solution, we design a strategy to test it and solve for any unseen issues.
Implement - Address any needed changes in the testing phase. Launch the actual, final solution in a real-world environment.
Monitor + Sustain - Evaluate and adjust our solution as it and the environment evolve. Consider the supports needed to sustain the efforts.
By the end of the summit, you’ll leave with a pilot design, implementation strategy and organizational buy-in techniques needed to test a solution to a real-world problem at your organizations.
Rollins Innovation Summit Sessions:
In addition to the curriculum highlighted above, attendees will participate in the following summit sessions:
James W. Curran Dean of Public Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University; Emeritus Co-Director, Emory Center for AIDS Research
Jim Curran joined the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) as Dean and Professor of Epidemiology in 1995, following 25 years of leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He is Emeritus Co-Director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research, and holds faculty appointments in the Emory School of Medicine and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.
In 1981, Jim led a CDC task force charged with determining what was behind the first cases of what we now know as AIDS. While at the CDC, he attained the rank of Assistant Surgeon General.
After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Jim received his MD from the University of Michigan and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from Harvard University. Author or co-author of more than 290 scholarly publications, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1993.
In 2015, Jim was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health. In 2009, the Rollins School of Public Health Dean’s position was named the James W. Curran Dean of Public Health in his honor.
Jim will welcome attendees to the inaugural Rollins Innovation Summit on Day 1.
Jim Curran, James W. Curran Dean of Public Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University; Emeritus Co-Director, Emory Center for AIDS Research; will welcome attendees to the inaugural Rollins Innovation Summit Day 1.
Ben Garrett is the Innovation Programming and Operations Manager of The Hatchery, Emory Center for Innovation. Ben’s passion and experiences have centered on the creation and sustainability of nonprofits and social enterprises. He has been a first hire, facilitator, consultant and coach for dozens of social entrepreneurs. These roles have afforded him the opportunity to do everything from leading strategic planning retreats and raising funds from individuals and institutional grant makers to inventing a cryptocurrency and exploring experimental pedagogies.
Prior to The Hatchery, Ben worked with Acumen as a facilitator for their social enterprise accelerator and as a community animator for their global, online Community of Social Innovators. He also worked with The Civic Accelerator (founded as a Points of Light Program and acquired by Acumen), an early player in the social enterprise accelerator and investment industry. Prior to his time in the social impact space, Ben worked with multiple community development nonprofits and churches in both Atlanta and Chicago.
Ben holds a BA in Philosophy and Religion from Samford University and a Master of Divinity from the University of Chicago.
Ben will guide Rollins Innovation Summit attendees in a session on the why and how of community innovation – enabling them to clearly define the community they are working with and how they can create an environment for genuine co-design with this community.
Ben will guide summit attendees in a session on the why and how of community innovation – enabling them to clearly define the community they are working with and how they can create an environment for genuine co-design with this community.
Shannon Clute’s career has been evenly divided between academia and industry, and, in both sectors, he has worked at the crossroads of innovation, brand strategy, media and instructional design to launch numerous scalable edutainment initiatives that aim to drive broad engagement while serving a greater good. In 2005, he and Dr. Richard Edwards launched Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir—the first film analysis podcast and among the first academic podcasts—which went on to be featured on iTunes, broadcast on Australian Radio National and downloaded 1.5M times. He also created a series of four innovative multimedia edutainment courses at Turner Classic, which enrolled more than 70,000 learners and drove more than 300M organic Twitter impressions.
Shannon has held numerous positions in industry, including Director, Business Development and Strategy at Turner Classic Movies, where he was tasked with building a cross-functional and collaborative culture of innovation to foster creativity and entrepreneurship in response to market disruption. Before his time at Turner, Shannon was Assistant Professor of French and Italian language and literature at Saint Mary’s College of California, and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky, where he taught courses in French and Italian language and literature.
Shannon holds a BA in Italian from the University of Colorado Boulder, and MA and PhD degrees in Romance Studies from Cornell University.
Summit attendees will be passionate about their public health innovation pilot. They will know the impact it could have and where it might lead. However, how can they transfer that to their colleagues back at their organization? Shannon Clute, Director of The Hatchery, Emory Center for Innovation, will lead attendees in learning how to socialize their pilot so it doesn’t end with just a plan.
Summit attendees will be passionate about their public health innovation pilot. They will know the impact it could have and where it might lead. However, how can they transfer that to their colleagues back at their organization? Shannon will lead attendees in learning how to socialize their pilot so it doesn’t end with just a plan.
Melissa Alperin, more commonly known by her nickname, Moose, has a long history of serving in leadership roles for numerous workforce development and public health practice initiatives. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator and Director of the HRSA-funded Region IV Public Health Training Center and the Director of the Executive MPH program, which is the distance-based MPH program at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University.
Additionally, Moose holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Behavioral, Social and Health Education Sciences at Rollins. Moose has an EdD in Higher Education from the University of Georgia, an MPH degree in Health Promotion and Education from Emory and an AB degree in Judaic Studies from Brown University, and is a Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES). She recently received the 2021 Practice Excellence Award from the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health.
Attendees will kick off early in the summit with Moose’s What is Public Health? session, helping level-set the roles, responsibilities and potential for public health.
Attendees will kick off early in the summit with Moose’s What is Public Health? session, helping level-set the roles, responsibilities and potential for public health.
Jodie Guest is Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Rollins and the School of Medicine at Emory University. She also serves as faculty for the CDC’s Epidemiology Intelligence Service program, is the Associate Program Director for the Emory PA Program and is the Director of the PA/MPH dual degree program. She is the co-founder of the HIV Atlanta VA Cohort Study (HAVACS) and has led more than 40 HIV-related studies. Throughout the pandemic, she has served as an advisor for multiple organizations, including serving as the COVID Czar for the 2021 Iditarod Race, directing all prevention plans, testing and tracing for the 1,100-mile race. She has also led the COVID-19 Outbreak Response Team in Hall County, Georgia and other hard-hit communities, and is the host for Emory’s Facebook Live COVID-19 updates. Additionally, Jodie is the Founder and Executive Director of Teen Corp, a medical and philanthropy organization created to bring experiential learning to youth leaders. She has been the recipient of multiple teaching awards at Emory, most recently the 2020 Rollins School of Public Health Professor of the Year, 2020 Teaching Excellence Award from the Department of Epidemiology, and the Emory School of Medicine Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award. She was also awarded Emory’s 2021 MLK Community Service Award for her work with her Outbreak Response Team.
Jodie will present Epidemiology 101. In addition to getting their footing on basic epidemiology terms, attendees will learn:
The principles of study design:
Designing a study
Issues around bias
Identifying study participants
Pre-test/post-test
How to use data literacy when navigating the media – the critical approach to listening to researchers discuss what they have done during a study and what that actually means
Jodie will present Epidemiology 101. In addition to getting their footing on basic epidemiology terms, attendees will learn the principles of study design and how to use data literacy when navigating the media.
Ken Thorpe is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He has held Professorial positions at Tulane University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Harvard University and Columbia University. Ken has also held Visiting Faculty positions at Pepperdine University and Duke University.
Ken was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 1995, where he coordinated all financial estimates and program impacts of President Clinton’s healthcare reform proposals for the White House. He also directed the administration’s estimation efforts in dealing with Congressional healthcare reform proposals during the 103rd and 104th sessions of Congress. As an academic, he has testified before several committees in the U.S. Senate and House on healthcare reform and insurance issues.
Ken has authored and co-authored more than 120 articles, book chapters and books and is a frequent national presenter on issues of healthcare financing, insurance and healthcare reform. He has worked with several groups (including the American College of Physicians, American Hospital Association, National Coalition on Health Care, Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Service Employees International Union, AHIP and the United Hospital Fund) and policymakers (including Senators Wellstone, Corzine, Bingaman, Snowe, Feinstein, Cassidy, Carper, Clinton, Obama and Kennedy) to develop and evaluate alternative approaches for providing health insurance to the uninsured. He serves as a reviewer on several healthcare journals.
Ken is chairman of Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD), an international coalition of more than 80 groups focused on highlighting the key role that chronic disease plays in the growth in healthcare spending, and the high rates of morbidity and mortality. In addition, PFCD focuses on identifying best practice prevention and care coordination strategies and scaling them countrywide.
In Policy 101, Ken will lead attendees in understanding the basics and ethics of policies, understanding the major changes taking place right now in governmental policies and how that is spurring innovation, and how using incremental and fast policymaking fosters large change.
In Policy 101, Ken will lead attendees in understanding the basics and ethics of policies, understanding the major changes taking place right now in governmental policies and how that is spurring innovation, and how using incremental and fast policymaking fosters large change.
CAPT, U.S. Public Health Service Chief, Epidemiology Workforce Branch | Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Eric Pevzner is Chief of the Epidemiology Workforce Branch (EWB) and Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) at the CDC. He was an EIS officer with the Global TB Branch from 2005 to 2007. After completing Disease Detective training, he supported scale-up of collaborative TB/HIV activities in Africa and Asia as part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He has had several landmark experiences, including helping establish a Youth Tobacco Surveillance System (YTSS); leading TB outbreak investigations; and deploying for the CDC’s emergency responses to Swine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1) Virus in Mexico, Ebola in West Africa and COVID-19 in the United States.
Eric’s session during the summit will focus on applied epidemiology. Attendees will get an authentic look at epidemiology in action.
Eric, Chief of the Epidemiology Workforce Branch (EWB) and Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) at the CDC, will provide attendees with an authentic look at epidemiology in action. EIS is a long-standing, globally recognized program, renowned for its investigative and emergency response efforts.
Cam Escoffery is a Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education at Rollins. For more than 26 years, she has conducted research on health promotion, cancer prevention and control, health technology, implementation sciences and evaluation. She has served as the Principal Investigator on grants funded by the National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Cancer Society and Healthcare Georgia Foundation. She has published more than 150 articles, books and book chapters. She is the past President of the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE). SOPHE is the international association for professionals working to promote healthy behaviors and communities. Cam enjoys teaching community-engaged and health promotion skills-oriented courses and building capacity around implementation research at Rollins.
Cam will guide attendees in theories for behavior change, focusing on the guiding principles to keep in mind as you investigate and go through a project analysis. The session will lead attendees to understand how to frame the problem and solutions as they work to understand the multiple levels of interventions needed to put real structures in place to support change. This will be supported by an understanding of the interim- and long-term data points available to measure success.
Cam will guide attendees in theories for behavior change, focusing on the guiding principles to keep in mind as you investigate and go through a project analysis. The session will lead attendees to understand how to frame the problem and solutions as they work to understand the multiple levels of interventions needed to put real structures in place to support change. This will be supported by an understanding of the interim- and long-term data points available to measure success.
Mark Conde has dedicated more than 40 years to information technology and the application of technology in science. In the last 20 years, he has focused on public health informatics solutions across federal, commercial and academic domains. He has worked with the Association of Public Health Laboratories as the Chair and a member of the informatics committee, focusing on technology solutions, standards and informatics training in the laboratory. In his time as the CIO of the Rollins School of Public Health, he drove the application of many innovative technologies for classrooms, research and operations. Mark serves as the Associate Director of Applied Public Health Informatics for the Rollins Executive MPH program and developed the architecture for the entire curricula.
During the Public Health Informatics 101 session, Mark Conde and Elizabeth Sprouse will jump into the concept of systems thinking in taking a broader approach against a problem – leading attendees through tools such as information flow modeling to taking a systems perspective to the information/data within an ecosystem. They will also use examples within public health and clinical informatics (e.g., electronic medical records) to discuss system interoperability and harnessing the capability of application programming interfaces (APIs) to make stronger systems and innovate new solutions (e.g., mobile apps).
Elizabeth brings 20-plus years of communications and program development work to her focus in clinical and public health informatics. She is the founder of Double Lantern Informatics, a boutique healthcare informatics firm working in both public health and clinical spaces. A Rollins alum, Elizabeth also teaches informatics in the Rollins Executive MPH program and is currently President of the alumni board. “We’re at an exciting tipping point when it comes to informatics – a field that sits between ‘the business’ and technology,” reflects Elizabeth. “ The world is now seeing the vast power that technology has to improve the health and well-being of individuals and populations as a whole. There’s a real opportunity to do good and myriad opportunities for entrepreneurs.”
During the Public Health Informatics 101 session, Mark Conde and Elizabeth Sprouse will jump into the concept of systems thinking in taking a broader approach against a problem – leading attendees through tools such as information flow modeling to taking a systems perspective to the information/data within an ecosystem. They will also use examples within public health and clinical informatics (e.g., electronic medical records) to discuss system interoperability and harnessing the capability of application programming interfaces (APIs) to make stronger systems and innovate new solutions (e.g., mobile apps).
Mark and Elizabeth will jump into the concept of systems thinking in taking a broader approach against a problem – leading attendees through tools such as information flow modeling to taking a systems perspective to the information/data within an ecosystem. They will also use examples within public health and clinical informatics (e.g., electronic medical records) to discuss system interoperability and harnessing the capability of APIs to make stronger systems and innovate new solutions (e.g., mobile apps).
Rachel Hall-Clifford is Assistant Professor in the Center for the Study of Human Health and the Department of Sociology at Emory University. She is a medical anthropologist who applies social science approaches to global health research and implementation. Rachel has conducted fieldwork in the central highlands of Guatemala on the delivery of health services for 15 years. Her research areas include accessible healthcare for marginalized populations, health systems strengthening in post-genocide contexts and global health fieldwork ethics. She has held medical anthropology research positions at Oxford University, Harvard University, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Rachel is Director of the NAPA-OT Field School in Guatemala. She is Co-Founder of safe+natal and the Emory Co-Design Lab for Health Equity.
During the summit, Rachel Hall-Clifford and Gari D. Clifford will lead attendees in an applied global health session, focusing on co-design, which is the linchpin to program sustainability in a global setting, and landscape analysis – needs assessments/asset analysis within communities.
Gari Clifford is a tenured Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics (BMI) at Emory. His research applies signal processing and machine learning to medicine to classify, track and predict health and illness. His focus research areas include critical care, digital psychiatry, global health, mHealth, neuroinformatics and perinatal health. After training in Theoretical Physics, he transitioned to AI and engineering for his doctorate at the University of Oxford in the 1990s. He subsequently joined MIT as a postdoctoral fellow, then Principal Research Scientist where he managed the creation of the MIMIC II database, the largest open-access critical care database in the world. He later returned to Oxford as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, where he helped found its Sleep & Circadian Neuroscience Institute and served as Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Healthcare Innovation at the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering. Gari is a strong supporter of commercial translation, working closely with industry as an advisor to multiple companies, co-founding and serving as CTO of an MIT spin-out ‘MindChild Medical’ since 2009, and co-founding and serving as CSO for Lifebell AI in 2000. As Chair of BMI, Gari has established the department as a leading center for critical care and mHealth informatics, and as a champion for open-access data and open-source software in medicine, particularly through his leadership of the PhysioNet/CinC Challenges and contributions to the PhysioNet Resource. He is committed to developing sustainable solutions to healthcare problems in resource poor locations, with much of his work focused in Guatemala. He is Co-Founder of safe+natal and the Emory Co-Design Lab for Health Equity.
During the summit, Rachel Hall-Clifford and Gari D. Clifford will lead attendees in an applied global health session, focusing on co-design, which is the linchpin to program sustainability in a global setting, and landscape analysis – needs assessments/asset analysis within communities.
Rachel and Gari will lead attendees in an applied global health session, focusing on co-design, which is the linchpin to program sustainability in a global setting, and landscape analysis/needs assessments/asset analysis within communities.
Laurie Gaydos is a highly respected researcher and educator in public health, serving as a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and the Deputy Director for the Executive MPH Program at the Rollins School of Public Health. Laurie received her undergraduate degree in Public Policy from Brown University and her PhD in Health Policy and Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Women’s and Children’s Center at Emory before joining the faculty at the Rollins School of Public Health in 2007.
As a leader in public health education, Laurie focuses on innovative methods of instructional and curricular delivery, including the use of distance and hybrid methods to train workforce professionals and those outside of the traditional classroom setting. She also has a focus on developing multiple modes of interaction for students, including remote boot camp sessions for skill building and protocols for student advising via technology.
On the research side, Laurie is a mixed-methods researcher with a focus on women’s, reproductive and maternal/child health issues. She also employs her mixed-methods skillset to evaluate public health interventions around myriad topics, most recently examining the COVID-19 response in Georgia. Laurie has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and commissioned works, and has made dozens of public presentations on her work.
Laurie has received numerous awards for her work, including the Noah Krieger Memorial Prize for Excellence in Public Policy, the Delta Omega Professional Development Award, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, the McMahon Young Investigator’s Award from the Center for Women’s Health Research and a STAR (Science Translated to Action and Results) award.
For the summit’s program evaluation session, Laurie will guide attendees in understanding more about program evaluation – focusing on the components of program evaluation, why planning evaluation prior to program implementation is important, examples of program evaluation in action and an applied exercise to support attendees in learning Program Evaluation 101.
Laurie will guide attendees in understanding more about program evaluation – focusing on the components of program evaluation, why planning evaluation prior to program implementation is important, examples of program evaluation in action and an applied exercise to support attendees in learning Program Evaluation 101.
Juan Leon is a member of the Center for Global Safe Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene, and his primary appointment is in the Hubert Department of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He was born in Peru, grew up in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Brazil and Bolivia before continuing his training in the United States. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology from Dartmouth College. He received both his PhD in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis and Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from Northwestern University. Juan’s area of research focuses on developing effective interventions to parasitic and enteric viral pathogens, especially those involved in foodborne and waterborne disease. He is interested in four main areas:
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). Reducing morbidity and death from NTDs (e.g., Chagas disease) among Latin Americans and immigrants by improving access to care of vulnerable groups and training of their health providers.
Fresh Produce Safety. Preventing outbreaks and illness from fresh produce by improving grower health and the microbial safety of fresh produce and worldwide. He is particularly interested in the U.S.-Mexico border.
Norovirus. Reducing outbreaks, illness and death from norovirus, the most common cause of gastroenteritis worldwide, through applied immunology and epidemiology research.
Enteric vaccines. Reducing the morbidity and mortality from diarrhea worldwide, especially in children, by increasing the benefits of enteric vaccines (e.g., rotavirus vaccine).
He has received Rollins School of Public Health, Emory and national awards for his teaching and mentoring.
During the Rollins Innovation Summit, Juan will lead a session on how to make decisions in global health – considering the appropriate framework, evidence, environmental context, resources and population characteristics. He will also guide attendees in gaining insights into their cultural worlds, navigating who they are, who others are and the bridge between the two.
Juan will lead a session on how to make decisions in global health – considering the appropriate framework, evidence, environmental context, resources and population characteristics. He will also guide attendees in gaining insights into their cultural worlds, navigating who they are, who others are and the bridge between the two.
Jeremy A. Sarnat is currently an Associate Professor of Environmental Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. He holds an Sc.D. in Environmental Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Jeremy’s research focuses primarily on measuring exposures and acute health response to urban air pollution in various populations, in particular, panels of sensitive cohorts, such as children, older adults and individuals with cardiorespiratory disease. Much of his recent work examines molecular-level changes in humans following exposure to traffic related air pollution.
Currently, Jeremy is the Principal Investigator of several studies investigating exposures to primary traffic pollution in cohorts of healthy and asthmatic subjects and corresponding acute cardiorespiratory response. In 2011, he was awarded the Joan M. Daisey Outstanding Young Scientist Award by the International Society of Exposure Science. Prior to entering academia, Jeremy worked as staff scientist for four years at the Israel Union for Environmental Defense in Tel Aviv, a nonprofit organization of scientists and lawyers promoting sustainable development and pollution prevention.
Jeremy will provide summit attendees with an introduction on environmental exposures and public health, focusing on emerging environmental challenges as well as methods for examining these critical relationships in our communities, homes and workplaces.
Jeremy will provide summit attendees with an introduction on environmental exposures and public health, focusing on emerging environmental challenges as well as methods for examining these critical relationships in our communities, homes and workplaces.
Natasha DeJarnett is an assistant professor in the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at the University of Louisville Division of Environmental Medicine, researching the health impacts of extreme heat exposure and environmental health disparities. She has been a leader in environmental health research for more than 10 years. Her positions in national environmental and public health associations, as well as academia, have advanced research agendas for the environmental health workforce, established successful national climate change and health initiatives, and inspired the next generation of environmental health professionals. In addition, she serves on the EPA's Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee and on the Boards of Citizens’ Climate Education and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Natasha will be speaking on applied environmental health, particularly her work with the Green Heart Louisville project, which is a first-of-its-kind scientific experiment testing if increasing green space in neighborhoods improves air quality and human health. Within the project, she is investigating how the stress of discrimination may modify the relationship between environmental exposures and health risks.
Natasha will be speaking on applied environmental health, particularly her work with the Green Heart Louisville project, which is a first-of-its-kind scientific experiment testing if increasing green space in neighborhoods improves air quality and human health. Within the project, she is investigating how the stress of discrimination may modify the relationship between environmental exposures and health risks.
Joanne McGriff is the Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at the Rollins School of Public Health. She also serves as Assistant Research Professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health at Rollins and as a core member of the Center for Global Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) at Emory University.
Joanne earned her MD degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry (NY). After completing medical school, she gained expertise in clinical and community-based research by completing a National Research Service Award post-doctoral research fellowship in geriatric psychiatry. While working with a team of researchers and clinicians in the Laboratory of Personality and Development at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Joanne gained instruction and experience in research design, data analysis and managing study logistics.
Early on in her training, she also received an International Medicine Summer Fellowship to conduct medical development work in northern Haiti. As a descendent of Haitian parents and fluent in Haitian Creole, for Joanne, this fellowship served as a catalyst to her interest in rural community development and the social and environmental factors in developing countries that impact health. Joanne went on to complete her MPH from the University of Rochester Department of Community and Preventive Medicine and has since been active in several community, medical and WASH-related development projects in Haiti. From 2008-2012, Joanne worked as Executive Director of a nonprofit working in rural Haiti. Her work included providing leadership for more than 50 clinical and program staff members and management for several U.S.-based programmatic and resource development committees. She was also responsible for overseeing Haitian staff implementing a four-year USAID-PEPFAR grant in HIV prevention in rural Haiti.
Joanne has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications on infection prevention, WASH and maternal health issues in healthcare facilities.
As the inaugural Assistant Dean for DEI at Rollins, Joanne is responsible for ensuring that attention is paid to diversity in the selection of faculty, staff and students; encouraging attention to equity as key decisions are made with relevance to faculty, staff and students; and supporting the creation of a culture of inclusivity at RSPH. Within her capacity she leads the work of the Community and Diversity Committee, develops and executes the RSPH DEI plan, and serves as a liaison to the central university on issues related to DEI.
During Joanne’s DEI session, she will cover DEI terminology to level-set knowledge for attendees and discuss how to co-design with stakeholders and work with teams in a way that is fair and equitable (e.g., equity in having a voice, considering cultural history and team composition).
During Joanne’s DEI session, she will cover DEI terminology to level-set knowledge for attendees and discuss how to co-design with stakeholders and work with teams in a way that is fair and equitable (e.g., equity in having a voice, considering cultural history and team composition).
Sheri Tejedor is Associate Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at Emory University School of Medicine. She also serves as a Medical Informatics Advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she advises the Surveillance Branch on informatics and quality measurement at the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, focusing on electronic quality measures for public health use.
A practicing internist/hospitalist for 20 years, Sheri is an informatics and analytics IT leader with operational experience in complex health systems. She served as Chief Research Information Officer at Emory University School of Medicine and Medical Director of Analytics and Emory Healthcare’s Clinical Data Warehouse.
Sheri was the first hospitalist/clinical informaticist voting member of the CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC), the federal advisory committee that sets the national guidelines for infection prevention. She lectures nationally and has authored multiple peer-reviewed publications on healthcare-acquired infections, over-use of invasive devices and clinical informatics for public reporting.
During Sheri and Bruce’s Healthcare Analytics 101 talk, attendees will learn about traditional data sources and then where leading-edge organizations are going, tools for managing unstructured data, data governance and issues both in equity and ethics of healthcare data, and the good and bad of data visualization.
Bruce Douglas is Program Director for the Healthcare Data and Analytics Association (HDAA), a professional group with 4,500 members representing nearly 1,000 organizations across North America and beyond. He has been active in HDAA for more than a decade, serving on the board, including a three-year term as board President.
Bruce retired in February 2021 after 22 years at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was Director of Data Analytics and Integration. For much of that time, he was the lead designer for Emory’s Clinical Data Warehouse, a platform integrating both clinical and financial information.
He has nearly 40 years of experience in IT in a variety of roles, from resource and project management to data modeling, ETL (extract, transform and load) design, business intelligence architecture and end-user training.
Prior to his time at Emory, Bruce was a software developer with BellSouth, where he helped design a financial data warehouse and the company’s activity-based costing application. He also spent two years as a journalist with United Press International.
During Sheri and Bruce’s Healthcare Analytics 101 talk, attendees will learn about traditional data sources and then where leading-edge organizations are going, tools for managing unstructured data, data governance and issues both in equity and ethics of healthcare data, and the good and bad of data visualization.
Sheri and Bruce will guide attendees in learning about traditional data sources and then where leading-edge organizations are going, tools for managing unstructured data, data governance and issues both in equity and ethics of healthcare data, and the good and bad of data visualization.
Cities of Today and the Future - A Collaboration of Industry and Public Health Jim Durrett, MS
Bio: Jim Durrett, MS
Jim Durret, an Atlanta native and Executive Director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID), directs all activities of the CID and was recently named the President of the Buckhead Coalition. He has been promoting smart growth development and livable communities since 1996, when he left his hydrogeology practice and went to work at the Georgia Conservancy. From there, his career took him to the Metro Atlanta Chamber, where he was VP of Environmental Affairs; to the Urban Land Institute (ULI), where he was Founding Executive Director of ULI Atlanta; and to the Livable Communities Coalition, where he was Founding Executive Director. Jim serves on several boards, including MARTA, the HUB404 Conservancy and the Biophilic Institute, and is the current Chair of ULI’s Responsible Product Investment Council and a member of ULI’s Health Leaders Network.
Jim will share with summit attendees the application of smart growth principles and concepts of livable communities to advance public health and how none of this is possible without the collaboration of both industry and public health.
Jim Durrett, Executive Director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District, will share with summit attendees the application of smart growth principles and concepts of livable communities to advance public health and how none of this is possible without the collaboration of both industry and public health.
Mission-driven organizations should have access to actionable insights to inform their decisions – our communities depend on it. As Executive Director of Neighborhood Nexus, Tommy Pearce is working to do just that. By continuously deepening its understanding of how leaders make decisions, maintaining relationships with state data sources and delivering accessible data tools to the public, the Nexus team is building a culture of data-informed decision-making among Georgia’s social sector.
With a background in social work and human services – teaching ESL at a refugee resettlement agency, conducting shelter intake and street outreach at a homeless services agency – Tommy gained insights into the lived experience of our most vulnerable community members and the structural barriers they face. To address these issues at a systemic level, he shifted his focus to organizational capacity building to strengthen the organizations serving our communities. Prior to joining Neighborhood Nexus, Tommy was a strategic planning and market research consultant for the Georgia Center for Nonprofits, working with hundreds of nonprofits and boards across the state to maximize their impact with data.
Neighborhood Nexus is achieving its mission with three main programs: Creating open-access data infrastructure like Data Nexus for anyone to find and visualize community data for free, capacity building and training programs for nonprofit professionals, and consulting for organizations in need of custom tools and data partners.
Tommy has a Master of Social Work from University of Pittsburgh and a History degree from Georgia Southern University. He’s a lifelong Gwinnetian, where he currently resides with his wife, two daughters and stacks of books he will never finish.
Tommy will present on Neighborhood Nexus’ collaborative efforts to pull data for real-time insights.
Neighborhood Nexus Executive Director Tommy Pierce will present on the work of Neighborhood Nexus in building a culture of data-driven decision-making among Georgia’s social sector and its collaborative efforts to pull data for real-time insights.
Kimberly Jacob Arriola is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Behavioral, Social and Health Education Sciences in the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) at Emory University. She also serves as Executive Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at RSPH. After graduating from Spelman College in 1994, she earned an MA in 1996 and PhD in 1998, both in Social Psychology, from Northeastern University. She earned an MPH in Epidemiology in 2001 from RSPH.
As the Executive Associate Dean, she serves to steward the academic mission of the school, including ensuring the integrity of the curriculum, helping to lead the re-accreditation process, supporting faculty professional development and overseeing faculty governance processes. For the past 20 years, Kimberly’s research has focused on social and behavioral factors that impact the health of African Americans. She has led the development, implementation and evaluation of culturally sensitive interventions to improve public commitment to organ and tissue donation among African Americans as well as multi-level interventions that address racial disparities in access to renal transplantation. In addition, she conducts research to study the role of race-related stress in chronic kidney disease progression among African Americans.
Kimberly will share closing remarks with the attendees of the inaugural Rollins Innovation Summit on Day 10.
Kimberly will share closing remarks with the attendees of the inaugural Rollins Innovation Summit on Day 10.