天美传媒

Meshell Johnson, MD, is a professor of medicine at UCSF, and her clinical home is the San Francisco VA, where she attends mostly in the ICU, teaching and leading multidisciplinary teams in the care of critically ill veterans. Dr. Johnson has a lab that studies the alveolar epithelium in lung injury, focusing on alveolar type I cells. She is also the Associate Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Department of Medicine, a member of the Latinx Center of Excellence, and a Faculty Equity Advisor for the School of Medicine, positions which reflect her passion for and commitment to social justice and inclusive excellence at UCSF and beyond.

Antonia M. Villarruel, Ph.D., RN, FAAN is the Margaret Bond Simon Dean of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and Director of the School鈥檚 WHO Collaborating Center for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership.

As a bilingual and bicultural nurse researcher, Dr. Villarruel has extensive research and practice experience with diverse Latino and Mexican populations and communities, and health promotion and health disparities research and practice both here and abroad. She incorporates a community-based participatory approach to her research. Specifically, her research focuses on the development and testing of interventions to reduce sexual risk behaviors among Mexican and Latino youth. As part of this program of research, she developed an efficacious program to reduce sexual risk behavior among Latino youth 鈥� entitled Cu铆date! which was disseminated nationally.

Dr. Villarruel serves in such national leadership roles as chair of the IOM Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and co-chair of the Strategic Advisory Council of the AARP/RWJ Center for Health Policy Future of Nursing Campaign for Action. She is an invited member of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the Aspen Health Strategy Group as well as an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the National Academy of Medicine. She is the recipient of the President鈥檚 Award for Health Behavior Intervention Research from the Friends of the National Institute of Nursing Research; an inducted member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame; was named one of NBC鈥檚 Latino20; and received the Al Dia News Media鈥檚 Hispanic Heritage Award for leadership in Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth "Liz" Budd is a nationally recognized scholar of public health, health promotion and health equity. She holds leadership roles in the Physical Activity Section of the American Public Health Association. The goal of her research is to prevent the onset of chronic diseases, especially among groups with heightened risk, in order to achieve population-level health equity. Specifically, she examines the policies and environmental factors (social and physical) that influence physical activity and healthy eating. She has a particular interest in youth, adolescent girls, and Latino/a/x community members. Budd also works to implement, evaluate, and foster the sustainability of evidence-based interventions to promote healthy behaviors in community settings. 

She鈥檚 part of a team of researchers that designed a program that used culturally informed outreach with well-located community testing sites to triple turnout for COVID-19 testing in Latinx communities around Oregon. The researchers are hopeful their findings can help shape future public health and other outreach campaigns to Latinx communities across the country.

Budd is an Evergreen Assistant Professor situated within the College of Education, Counseling Psychology and Human Services Department, and affiliated with the Family and Human Services and Prevention Science programs. She鈥檚 also a member of the Health Promotion Initiative and Prevention Science Institute.

Dr. Silber is the Associate CEHE Director for Clinical Research. As a medical oncologist who serves as the Medical Director and Physician Champion of the Centers for Disease Control/Connecticut Department of Public Health's 5-year provider supported grant at Yale New Haven Hospital entitled, The Connecticut Cancer Screening Program (CCSP), she designed the Comprehensive Breast Cancer Outreach and Support Program for Underserved Women, which is a culturally competent program supported by the Breast Cancer Alliance of Greenwich. She has supervised Community Health Educators dating back to 1996, when she received a national Komen award for the Sister to Sister Program, and has been recognized for expertise in breast cancer among African American women. She has directed a cancer clinic for the uninsured and underinsured for two decades and have formed community relationships, which require many years to nurture and demonstrate constancy. This year, she became the principal investigator of the Avon-Pfizer Metastatic Breast Cancer Grants Program: Identify-Amplify-Unify. This program assists organizations that provide information and services to help patients in navigating the medical and emotional challenges associated with their disease. Dr. Silber was awarded this grant from a highly competitive pool of 23 non-profit organizations nationally. Also, this year, CT Health and Educational Facilities Authority (CHEFA) awarded a grant to fund a novel program called 鈥淏reast Cancer S.W.A.T. Team- We鈥檝e got your back!鈥�.
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As a principal investigator, she assists economically disadvantaged breast cancer patients to adhere to treatment using medical legal partnership. This year, she was selected to participate as a leadership fellow of the Connecticut Health Foundation. The fellowship was established in 2005, and brings together diverse individuals from multiple sectors who are dedicated to achieving health equity. Each year, the foundation selects up to 20 participants into this competitive ten-month program. Throughout this program, her project has been to increase clinical trial participation among ethnic minorities and capitalize on opportunities created by the Affordable Care Act.
On May 1, 2015, she was named Assistant Clinical Director for Diversity and Health Equity at Yale Cancer Center and focuses on engagement with community partners in improving education for prevention and screening and access to cancer care for diverse populations within the local community as well as Greater New Haven area. 

Violeta J. Rodriguez’s research is focused on understanding the mechanisms that contribute to, maintain and/or exacerbate health disparities among minoritized youth and their families.  By focusing on both youth and their parents, she explores how the intricate association between parenting and health inequities can either mitigate or exacerbate these disparities, particularly in understudied and underserved populations (e.g., Global South countries, racially and ethnically minoritized people, immigrant families, Spanish-speaking caregivers and youth, LGBTQIA+ families, families disproportionately affected by chronic illness). 
She is committed to improving assessment methods used to evaluate health outcomes and predictors (e.g., parenting) in parents and youth, ensuring their validity across different cultural (cross-cultural and multicultural), research, and clinical contexts. Through the development of culturally sensitive and contextually appropriate assessment tools, she aims to improve the accuracy of how we assess various factors (e.g., parenting) in research and interventions. She is interested in the translation of evidence-based health promotion strategies and interventions into underserved settings to promote health equity using community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles, and informed by implementation science frameworks (e.g., MOST, CFIR).
Education
PhD, Clinical Psychology, University of Georgia
MS, Psychology, University of Georgia
MSEd, Research, Measurement and Evaluation, University of Miami
BA, Psychology, Florida International University
Website

 

Yvens Laborde, MD, leads Ochsner’s community health programs and promotes the organization’s outreach programs to improve health outcomes for at-risk populations. He was a founding member of the Ochsner Health Disparities Task Force.
Since joining Ochsner in 1995, Dr. Laborde has served in a number of leadership positions while maintaining a clinical practice. He led efforts in establishing the first inpatient hospital medicine service in New Orleans’ Westbank area, where he also served as medical director for Ochsner nursing home patients. He was an early adopter of incorporating advanced practice providers into his practice.
A native of Port au Prince, Haiti, Dr. Laborde was instrumental in Ochsner’s relief efforts in Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake. He served as a co-leader of Ochsner’s on-the-ground relief efforts in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian in 2019.
Dr. Laborde completed his undergraduate studies in New Orleans then earned a medical degree from the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport. He completed an internship in internal medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans and a residency in internal medicine at Ochsner Health System. He is board certified in internal medicine.
He is the first Black physician elected to the Ochsner Health System board of directors and served two terms from 2006-2013. Among his numerous professional honors, he was a finalist for the 2017 U.S. Cooperative for International Patient Programs International Humanitarian and Global Health Leader Award.