María E. Fernández, PhD

UTHealth Houston

Dr. María Fernández is Vice President of Population Health and Implementation Science at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) and the founding Co-Director of the UTHealth Houston Institute for Implementation Science. Dr. Fernández is also the Lorne Bain Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Medicine, Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences, and Director of the UTHealth Houston Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research (CHPPR) at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. As a researcher and a leader, Dr. Fernández has spent her career conducting participatory community-engaged research and practice to develop, evaluate, implement, and disseminate interventions to improve health and health equity. Her research focuses on cancer and chronic disease prevention and control among underserved populations in the U.S. and globally. Dr. Fernández is an expert in dissemination and implementation (D&I) research, having served as a member of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health Study Section and as faculty for several national and international D&I training programs. Dr. Fernández has an extensive portfolio of global, federal, and state-funded research developing and improving evidence-based interventions and guidelines for the prevention and control of cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in clinical and public health settings. Dr. Fernández has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and has co-authored several books, including the 4th edition of Planning Health Promotion Programs: An Intervention Mapping Approach (2016) and the Handbook of Community-based Participatory Research (2017). Her awards include the Association for Schools and Programs of Public Health Research Excellence Award and the UTHealth President's Scholar Award for Research Excellence.

Alicia C. Bunger, MSW, PhD

The Ohio State University

Alicia C. Bunger, MSW, PhD is an Associate Professor at the College of Social Work at The Ohio State University. Her research program centers on how health and human service organizations coordinate to implement evidence-based interventions, promote service access across systems, and integrate care for children and families. Bunger’s research engages community partners to examine organizational and system-level strategies by blending implementation and inter-organizational relationships research. This work often focuses on the intersection of child welfare and behavioral health systems. It is designed to inform strategies for closing gaps in care access and quality. She is trained as a mental health services researcher with an emphasis on implementation in organizations and systems. Bunger earned a PhD in social work from Washington University in St. Louis and completed post-doctoral training in mental health services and systems research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and US Children’s Bureau, among others. Bunger's profile at the College of Social Work can be found here: https://csw.osu.edu/about/faculty-staff/faculty-directory/bunger-alicia-ph-d/

Eva Woodward, PhD

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Dr. Eva Woodward is a clinical health psychologist and implementation scientist. In her research, she uses implementation science and practice, community engaged research, and mixed methods to improve equitable health care delivery for groups experiencing disparities and oppression, such as racially minoritized, sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer), low-income, and rural-dwelling individuals. Her work focuses on implementing interventions in hospital settings. She complements her research as a clinician in primary care mental health integration. She is also a trainer for the Implementation Facilitation Learning Hub operated by Behavioral Health Quality Enhancement Research Initiative through the Veterans Health Administration. Dr. Woodward currently works at the VA Center for Mental Healthcare and Outcomes Research (Little Rock, Arkansas) and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Originally from rural Oklahoma, she trained at Suffolk University in Boston (Ph.D.) and Brown University in Providence (internship/residency). Dr. Woodward completed the two-year Advanced Fellowship Program at the VA South Central Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center in Little Rock before becoming faculty. She also graduated from the NIH Health Disparities Research Institute, and the Implementation Research Institute fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. As a trainee, she was awarded the Distinguished Student Contribution from the American Psychological Association’s division on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. Research interests: implementation science, health equity, primary care mental health integration, health psychology, implementation facilitation.

Jereme Wilroy, PhD

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. Wilroy received his B.S. degree in Exercise Science, M.A. in Health Studies, and PhD in Health Education and Promotion from the University of Alabama. He completed two post-doctoral fellowships; one-year at Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham, Alabama, and two years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He began his research career at UA as a master’s student surveying individuals with disabilities about topics of interest for a holistic health website. As a doctoral student, he developed and validated a theory-based instrument to predict physical activity among people with spinal cord injury as part of his dissertation and funded with a fellowship through the graduate school. As a post-doc, he obtained a fellowship from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation and developed an online program for increasing physical activity behavior among people with spinal cord injury. Dr. Wilroy’s research philosophy is to conduct research that centers on the needs of the patient and improves the capacity of clinicians to recommend specific exercise routines. The focus of his research is on the psychosocial aspects of adherence to exercise trials among people with physical disabilities. His current research projects include: a) recruiting PM&R patients into a large randomized controlled trial of a home-based exercise intervention, and b) identifying decisions points for piloting a sequential multiphase assignment randomized trial of an exercise and behavioral coaching intervention for people with physical disabilities.

Gbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH

NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Gbenga Ogedegbe, a physician, is Professor of Population Health & Medicine, Chief Division of Health & Behavior, and Director Center for Healthful Behavior Change at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Gbenga is a leading expert on health disparities research; his work focuses on the implementation of evidence-based interventions for cardiovascular risk reduction in minority populations. He is Principal Investigator on numerous NIH projects and has expanded his work globally to Sub-Saharan Africa where he is funded by the NIH to strengthen research capacity and reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases. He has co-authored over 250 publications and his work has been recognized by receipt of several research and mentoring awards including the prestigious John M. Eisenberg Excellence in Mentorship Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Daniel Savage Science Award. He has served on numerous scientific panels including the NIH, CDC, World Health Organization, and the European Union Research Council. Prior to joining NYU, he was faculty at Cornell Weill Medical School and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Patrick Sullivan, DVM, PhD

Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health

Patrick Sullivan is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, and Co-Director of the Prevention Sciences Core at Emory’s Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). He has worked in HIV prevention for 26 years. Before coming to his current position at Emory, Patrick worked at CDC as an EIS officer and in HIV Surveillance programs.

Dr. Sullivan’s research focuses on HIV among men who have sex with men, including behavioral research, interventions, implementation, and surveillance, and he is a PI in the UNC/Emory Adolescent Trials Network Center and a member of the HPTN SGM Scientific Committee.

Dione King, PhD

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dione King is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at UAB's College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. King’s long-standing commitment to disadvantaged, vulnerable, and marginalized populations is evidenced through her professional and research experiences working with children and families in juvenile justice, child welfare, education, nonprofit, and homeless/transitional housing settings. Her research focuses on health behaviors and health disparities that impact the adolescent and young adult life experience including dating violence, delinquency, substance use, mental health, and sexual risk behaviors while giving attention to social determinants of health and the promotion of health behaviors.

Dr. King lives by the motto, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This quote taken directly from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Letter from a Birmingham jail has resonated with her as a social worker and reflects the impact she seeks to make in the lives of individuals, families, communities, and systems.

Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS

NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Brita Roy, MD, MPH, MHS is Associate Professor of Population Health and Medicine and Director of Community Health and Clinical Outcomes for Beyond Bridges.

Dr. Roy is a clinician-investigator who uses epidemiology, complex systems modeling, and community-engaged approaches to investigate the effect of positive psychosocial factors on health outcomes at the individual, community, and clinic/health system levels. She co-authored an evidence-based, actionable, community-level theoretical framework defining and describing collective well-being and its drivers and outcomes. She works to implement programs and processes to improve health outcomes equitably across our health system and communities that we serve. Finally, Dr. Roy also enjoys teaching health professions students and internal medicine residents in the classroom while taking care of a diverse array of patients on the inpatient general medicine service.

Linda M. Collins, PhD

Kate Guastaferro, PhD, MPH

Drew Sayer, PhD

Rachel Wells, PhD, MSN, RN, CNL