LAGHC 2023
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr. Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis, MD, MPH
Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis, MD, MPH, is the Director of Health for the City of St. Louis. Dr. Hlatshwayo Davis received her medical degree from Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and a Master’s in Public Health Degree from Case Western Reserve University. She completed her internal medicine residency at University Hospitals Case Medical Center. She went on to complete her Infectious Diseases fellowship at the Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM), also completing a one-year dedicated non-ACGME HIV fellowship and a two-year dedicated Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) fellowship.
She was a Clinical Instructor, Associate Program Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases fellowship program and in the leadership of the Office of Inclusion and Diversity at the Washington University School of Medicine. She was also an Infectious Diseases physician at the John Cochran VA Medical Center where she was the Lead HIV Clinician, Graduate Medical Education Coordinator, and Outpatient Parenteral Antibiotic Therapy, supervisor. Her passion for community engagement, health equity, and patients living with HIV (PLWH), culminated in her becoming the co-chair of the Fast Track Cities initiative in St. Louis, and later appointed to the City of St. Louis Board of Health.
Dr. Hlatshwayo Davis is now a national and international medical contributor on COVID-19 with a particular focus on marginalized populations and has been featured in outlets such as CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, and Newsweek, among others. She is also an Associate Editor for Disparities and Competent Care for the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
Dr. Patricia Gordon, MD
Patricia Gordon MD (Harvard ’78, UCLA School of Medicine ’ 82, Cedars-Sinai Internship ’84) worked as a radiation oncologist in Los Angeles for 28 years. Her commitment to saving women’s lives in low and middle-income countries brought her to an additional career as a non-profit leader and international women’s health advocate.
Using the “See and Treat” method, she founded CureCervicalCancer in 2014, training local healthcare professionals to screen and treat women for cervical precancer. The organization has established 106 sustainable and ongoing CureCervicalCancer clinics in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Haiti, Guatemala, Vietnam, and training programs in rural China – where help is needed most. In 2021, she was nominated as a Top 10 CNN Hero of the year for her efforts to fight the global epidemic of cervical cancer.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, CureCervicalCancer pivoted to an innovative & COVID conscious Mobile HPV (Human Papillomavirus) Testing & Treatment model. The HPV Testing & Treatment Mobile Clinic is the first of its kind to bring the most advanced cervical cancer prevention technology out of the healthcare facility and directly into the community, increasing access to care for women & reducing needless cervical cancer deaths in underresourced settings.
SOCIAL JUSTICE SPEAKERS
Eric Reinhart, MD is a political anthropologist of public health and law, psychoanalyst, and physician at Northwestern University. His published work has appeared in medical, health policy, law, and humanities journals and in various popular media venues. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he has focused on policy-oriented public health research to address 'carceral-community epidemiology' – that is, how the health and welfare of incarcerated people are always intertwined with that of broader communities. This work examines systemic prejudice in healthcare and legal systems, the uses of confinement and punishment in the US and internationally, and large-scale decarceration policies in relation to public health and safety, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity. Putting research into practice, he collaborates with public agencies on the design and implementation of non-police community safety and violence-prevention systems, with a focus on building accompaniment-based community health worker and reentry programs to support individuals following release from jails and prisons and to repair communities harmed by decades of mass incarceration.
Adriann Begay, MD Raised on the Navajo reservation, Adriann Begay is Tábaahi (Edge of the Water clan) and born for Bít’ahnii (Folded Arms People clan). Her maternal grandparents are Ta’néészahnii (Badlands People clan) and paternal grandparents are Tl’aashchí’í (Red Cheek People clan). Dr. Begay completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Arizona and received her medical degree from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences through the Indians into Medicine program. She completed residency in Family Medicine at the University of Arizona and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Family Practice. Dr. Begay spent over 21 years working for the Indian Health Service both as a clinician and healthcare administrator.
Her career is dedicated to elevating healthcare for American Indians/Alaska Natives and increasing the educational pathway for students who will come home and care for their Native people. Dr. Begay's service has included board member & president of the Association of American Indian Physicians, member on the American Medical Association (AMA) Minority Affairs Section, member on the AMA Foundation for Minority Scholars Award Selection Committee; and member of the Indigenous Health Education and Resource Taskforce (IHEART).
In 2019-21 Dr. Begay completed the UCSF HEAL (Health, Equity, Action, and Leadership) Global Health Fellowship. Dr. Begay is currently employed as the Navajo Nation Senior Advisor with HEAL to assist in developing programs to increase the Native health care workforce; to assist in building relationships withorganizations in the transformation of Native frontline healthcare workers; as well as, continuing direct clinical care to Native populations as a contract physician. She is the wife of an artist, mother of three and grandmother of ten.
Joseph Shin, MD is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Cornell Center for Health Equity.
Dr. Shin is an educator, researcher and advocate with over 15 years of experience advancing health equity and human rights through medical-legal partnerships. He has worked with survivors of human trafficking and torture, refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, justice-involved and incarcerated populations and other vulnerable groups to document the health-harming impact of systemic violence and marginalization while advocating for relief and accountability alongside legal-advocacy and human rights groups. He has worked to develop collaborations between medical and law schools, and also works closely with organizations like Physicians for Human Rights, ACLU, Legal Aid Society, NY Lawyers for the Public Interest and RFK Human Rights on individual advocacy, strategic civil litigation, and policy reform.
He received his medical degree from New York University, where he also completed his residency in primary care/internal medicine and served as senior chief resident at Bellevue Hospital. Before coming to Cornell, he served as attending physician and clinical instructor at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. He is the recipient of the Legal Aid Society’s Pro Bono Publico Award and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest’s Felix A. Fishman Award for his work advancing health and justice.
MENTAL HEALTH SPEAKERS
Evan Rusoja, MD is an Emergency Medicine Attending Physician at Highland Hospital, Alameda Hospital, and San Leandro Hospital and is Medical Director of Acute Care Health Outcomes, a systemwide quality position, at Alameda Health System.
A graduate of Brown University, Dr Rusoja received his MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, PhD in Health Systems from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and graduated from Highland Emergency Medicine Residency where he was a Chief Resident and then Quality and Safety Innovations Fellow.
He also was a Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholar in the office of then Senator Barack Obama and co-founded the non-profit Empowerment Health which continues to support maternal and child health in Afghanistan. His prior projects include health system strengthening in Afghanistan, Chile, and Uganda and he maintains an active interest in Systems Thinking/Complex Adaptive Systems, technology implementation in low-resource settings, community based healthcare, and data analytics.
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Diana (Berrent) Güthe, JD was one of the first people in her area to test positive for COVID-19. While scrambling to get medical information and testing, she became an advocate and activist for herself and others. As a self-described “Canary in the COVID Coalmine,” she vowed to amplify her voice as she navigated through this virus odyssey.
She documented both her illness and recovery through her Coronavirus Diary, giving the world a glimpse of her struggles and process. While in isolation, Diana launched Survivor Corps, a grassroots solution-based movement to mobilize the sharply increasing number of people affected by COVID-19 to come together, support and participate in the medical and scientific research community efforts and take a more active role in trying to mitigate this pandemic.
Three weeks after the resolution of her symptoms, she was Participant #0001 in Columbia University’s clinical trial to recruit survivors to donate their blood and plasma. Diana tested negative for the virus and positive for the antibodies. As an added bonus, she is a Universal Donor, able to give her blood and plasma to those COVID-19 patients less fortunate - who either cannot create their own antibodies or who have rarer blood types that are more difficult to match.
Diana’s goal now is to activate and enroll as many others to join Survivor Corps, the Peace Corps of the COVID Generation. We, as a community, can save lives. Our collective power could truly help stem the tide of this pandemic and assist in the national recovery.
Jessi Gold, MD, MS is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Wellness, Engagement, and Outreach in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. She is a nationally recognized expert on healthcare worker mental health and burnout (particularly during the pandemic), college mental health, using social media and media for mental health advocacy, and the overlap between pop culture and mental health, including celebrity self-disclosure. She works clinically as an outpatient psychiatrist and sees faculty, staff, hospital employees, and their dependents, particularly their college aged kids. Dr. Gold also writes for the popular press and has been featured in, among others, The New York Times, The Atlantic, InStyle, The Washington Post, TIME, and Self. Dr. Gold is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. and M.S in Anthropology, the Yale School of Medicine, and completed her residency training in Adult Psychiatry at Stanford University where she served as chief resident.
HEALTH INNOVATION SPEAKERS
Kristian R. Olson MD, MPH, DTM&H is an Internist and Pediatrician and serves as the Vice President of Design Impact at the Mass General Brigham Integrated Health System where he leads the MGB Springboard Studio. He is a member of the Core Educator Faculty and the Chief Innovation Officer in the Department of Medicine’s Residency Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He is also the Director of the Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies (CAMTech) through the MGH Center for Global Health and is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. He has worked extensively in low and middle-income countries as well as the US to develop innovative solutions to healthcare challenges utilizing design-thinking. Kris is a serial innovator, has several patents, a licensed technology, and has started both non-profit and for-profit ventures to accelerate ideas to implementation.
Rhonda BeLue, PhD, CQM/OE is a Professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Her work focuses on improving health care access and promoting healthy behaviors in families and organizations in black/BIPoC communities in the US and global south. She has dedicated her career the elimination of health inequities and advocating for social justice. She takes a holistic approach to advocating for social justice, including community-based participatory research approaches to addressing health disparities and participating and supporting for black, indigenous and diverse cultural arts activities and serving local organizations that serve African American and BIPoC communities. She has also worked as a local public health practitioner in Nashville, TN where she served as the director of the research and evaluation unit and the liaison between the Nashville Metro Public Health Department and local community and academic institutions. She has extensive experience in procuring funding for academic and community-based organizations and has expertise in evaluating community based programs and interventions and organizations development in community-based organizations. She holds a master of statistics and a PhD in Policy Analysis & Management from Cornell University and Graduate Certificates in Organizational Leadership and Development from St. Louis University.
Rashmi Mullur, MD is an Associate Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine, the Chief of Telehealth for the VA Greater Los Angeles, as well as the Education director for the UCLA Integrative Medicine Collaborative. She is a board-certified internist, endocrinologist, integrative medicine practitioner, and certified yoga instructor. She serves on the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM) BIPOC committee to promote health equity in integrative medicine and whole health. Dr. Mullur has been practicing yoga since childhood and has been incorporating yoga into clinical care as a physician. Her clinical practice is focused on the use of mind-body techniques, integrative approaches, and remote monitoring tools in the management of chronic disease. She is inspired by the opportunity to leverage digital health technology to advance healthcare. As a medical educator, she has published several curricula in integrative medicine and is bringing integrative medicine into the curriculum at DGSOM.