Board Members

The CCPH Board of Directors is reflective of our diverse constituencies, including communities, educational institutions, faculty, students, community-based organizations, government and philanthropy.

Click here for information on past board members.

CCPH board members and staff at the
September 2005 board meeting in Toronto

 

Elder Atum Minneapolis, MN atum@ppcwc.org	Elder Atum is a teacher and practitioner of African Thought & Spirituality. As executive director of The Cultural Wellness Center, a non-profit community-based organization in Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN she leads the development of cultural approaches for positively impacting health and health care, economic development, and community building. The Center engages people in using culture as a resource for taking responsibility for their own health and well-being. To achieve its mission of unleashing the power of citizens to heal themselves, the Center works with individuals, communities, families, professionals and partners with academic institutions, government agencies, philanthropists, and other non-profits at local, national and international levels. Since 1987, Elder Atum's institution building work has generated over $18 million dollars within the African American Community. Over 1,000 people have received womanhood and manhood training, marriage ceremonies, naming ceremonies; birth labor coaching, mediations, conflict resolution and mediation, dialogue and effective communication and jobs/business development. In ceremonies that were held in 1989-1992, Atum Azzahir received titles of Elder, Shemsu and Mother from the Communities of African People in America, The Caribbean and the African continent, to whom she has dedicated her life's work. She received the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership award and the St Paul Foundation Leadership in neighborhood awards which granted over $140,000.00 for her work at the Cultural Wellness Center. In 2008 Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation acknowledged Atum with their prestigious leadership in Health Award.
Cynthia Barnes-Boyd Chicago, IL cboyd@uic.edu	Dr. Cynthia (Cee) Boyd began her health professional career in 1973 as a diploma prepared registered nurse. She completed her BSN, MSN and finally her Ph.D. in 1990 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Boyd has held a variety of advance practice and administrative roles including those of Critical Care Clinical Specialist, Assistant Director of Nursing and Executive Director of a community health center network. Currently, Dr. Boyd is the Director of the UIC Great Cities Neighborhoods Initiative/Director Community Health Initiatives for the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her responsibilities include developing, directing and monitoring University/community partnerships. She directs numerous community based initiatives including school based clinics, community based education programs, community based research initiatives, home visiting programs for families with special needs and after-school programs to name a few. Dr. Boyd is the Assistant Dean for Community Initiatives for the UIC College of Nursing. She serves as the director, principal investigator or evaluation director for several federally supported programs including REACH 2010, supported by the Centers for Disease Control, the Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion, supported by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Multiethnic Research Core, supported by the National Institute for Health and Healthy Schools/Healthy Communities, supported by the Bureau of Primary Health Care. Dr. Boyd's research has included studies addressing social and cultural contributors to health disparities, service utilization barriers, cultural alienation and health problems of importance to racioethnic groups. She has dedicated her career to improving access to health care by underrepresented groups. She has published, consulted and lectured nationally and internationally on issues related to health, post-neonatal mortality, and management. Dr. Boyd is nationally recognized for her work with organizations in the areas of cultural competency and work force diversity. Dr. Boyd currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Illinois Coalition of School Health Centers, the Campus and Community Partnerships for Health, the Chicago Chapter of the March of Dimes, where she also chairs the Community Grants Committee, the UIC School of Public Health Environmental Justice Committee, the Advisory Committee for the Center for Population Health and Health Disparities, and the Naomi Morris Community Health Research Collaborative. She is also an active Leader for the South Cook County Illinois Girl Scouts and the founder of the 'Girls Read For Life' Reading Program.
Suzanne Cashman	Formally trained in health services research, evaluation and administration, Suzanne Cashman has spent the thirty-five years of her professional career teaching graduate courses in public health, conducting community-based evaluation research, and developing partnerships aimed at helping communities improve their health status.  Currently, Suzanne is Professor and Director of Community Health in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) where she has leadership responsibilities for developing the Department’s community health agenda and functions as faculty for the school’s Preventive Medicine Residency. In addition, she serves as Principal Investigator for the school’s Corporation for National and Community Service Learn and Serve grant, as well as Co-Director of its Clinical and Translational Research Community Engagement Core and core investigator for its recently funded Prevention Research Center. She also founded and currently co-leads the University of Massachusetts Worcester’s Rural Health Scholars Program. Suzanne provides evaluation technical assistance to the state’s Area Health Education Center and teaches public health skills to medical students and family medicine residents, as well as students in the Graduate School of Nursing and the School of Public Health. She co-leads the medical school’s new Determinants of Health course as well as its Community Engagement Committee, and has been instrumental in developing Worcester’s Healthy Communities Initiative. Suzanne joined the UMMS faculty in 1999, after having spent the preceding decade developing and nurturing a community-oriented primary care (COPC) focused, interprofessional preventive medicine fellowship in Boston, MA.  Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation through its urban COPC national demonstration initiative, this project used the preventive medicine training template to launch a multi-professional training program aimed at teaching participants skills that would help them work collaboratively with communities to improve health.   Currently, Suzanne is a Senior Consultant for CCPH, serves as an Associate Editor of CES4Health, and represents CCPH on the Healthy People Curriculum Task Force. In addition, she served as faculty for CCPH’s Service-Learning Institute for several years. Suzanne was a member of the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research’s (APTR) board of directors for eight years. For the past seven years, she has facilitated and taught in APTR’s annual Paul Ambrose Symposium. Suzanne is the winner of several awards, most recently, the American Public Health Association’s Community-Based Public Health Caucus’s Tom Bruce Award for Community Engagement and APTR’s F. Marian Bishop Outstanding Educator of the Year award.
Stephanie Ann Farquhar Portland, OR farquhar@pdx.edu	Stephanie Ann Farquhar is Associate Professor of Community Health at Portland State University (PSU). Dr. Farquhar draws from the principles of community-based participatory research to address issues of social and environmental equity as it relates to health. In partnership with Multnomah County Health Department and several community organizations,  Dr. Farquhar completed a 3-year Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant to examine the role of Community Health Workers and popular education in Latino and African American communities in Portland, Oregon. She is currently a researcher on a National Institutes of Health grant that seeks to reduce pesticides exposure and occupational stressors among indigenous farmworkers in Oregon. Dr. Farquhar is on the Board of Directors of Upstream Public Health, and served as a commissioner on the  city/county Sustainable Development Commission. Prior to arriving at the  PSU School of Community Health, Dr. Farquhar completed a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Health Scholars postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and received her PhD from the  University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Susan Ann Gust Minneapolis, MN sgustsrc@aol.com	Susan Ann Gust is a community activist and small business owner of a thirty-four year old construction management, consulting and community development company.  Her work in construction and economic/environmental justice led her to founding the ReUse Center in Minneapolis.  Through her business, she is a facility manager of a 117-year-old building that houses a family violence prevention program.  She was a University of Minnesota Public Policy Fellow in 2003-2004.  Susan was the co-founder of the Phillips Neighborhood Healthy Housing Collaborative and is a consultant to the Family Sustainability Collaborative, a Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation funded project that grew out of the original collaboration.  She recently completed 9 years of service on the Board of Community University Health Care Center and 6 years as an appointee on the City of Minneapolis Public Health Advisory Committee.  Currently, she is serving on the Board of Community Campus Partnerships for Health and as a member of the Cultural Wellness Center’s Law and Policy Committee.  Additional civic responsibilities includes participating in the following local efforts: Healthy Homes, Healthy Kids; Phillips Environmental Steering Committee Initiative and Allina’s Backyard Initiative.  Susan also eagerly spends time in activities involving her school-aged daughter and her grandchildren.
Jen Kauper-Brown Chicago, IL j-kauper-brown@ northwestern.edu	Jen Kauper-Brown, MPH, is Director of the Alliance for Research in Chicagoland Communities (ARCC), the community-based participatory research (CBPR) program of the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute. The ARCC mission is growing equitable and collaborative partnerships between Chicago area communities and Northwestern University for research that leads to measureable improvement in community health. Jen has extensive experience and training in community health and community-academic partnerships, with an emphasis on program development and management, training design and delivery, institutional change efforts, network building and facilitation, and multi-institutional collaborations. Her most recent position was with the University of Illinois-Chicago Neighborhoods Initiative. Prior to her move back to the Midwest, Jen was the Program Director for Community-Campus Partnerships for Health, where she was responsible for managing the organization's CBPR-related projects and programs. Jen currently serves on the Executive Committees of the Chicago Consortium for Community Engagement (C3), the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children, and the Board of Directors for the Chicago Women’s Health Center.
Lynn Lavallee Toronto, ON Canada lavallee@ryerson.ca	Lynn Lavallée is Anishnaabek Métis born in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. Her father (Lavallée) and his many generations (Gauthier, Pepin, Caya, Taylor) were from the Algonquin territory in Temiscaming, Quebec. Her mother, born in Timmins, Ontario had ancestral ties to the Algonquin territory of Maniwaki, Quebec (Labelle, Lafont) and the Objway territory of Swan Lake (Godon/McIvor) in Manitoba. Lynn is an Associate Professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario. She has undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Kinesiology (Bachelor of Arts, honours) from York University, a Master of Science in Community Health from the University of Toronto and a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work. The ultimate goal of her pedagogical, research and service interest is the advancement of Indigenous knowledge in the academy and in research.  She is committed to numerous community and university service activities to further this goal. For instance, since 2005 she has served as a peer reviewer and Chair of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research HIV/AIDS Aboriginal stream grant review programme, served on the research ethics board at her university, and is a Senator at Ryerson University.  Lynn’s research interests include Indigenous health and well-being, mental health and Indigenous identity, Indigenous research ethics and methodologies, and sport, recreation and physical activity. She is involved in several community-based research projects involving recreational and cultural programme evaluation research and diabetes. She has written on the topic of mental health and Indigenous identity and the impact of a holistic approach to well-being.  Lynn is actively involved in her community and currently sits as the Vice-Chair South for the Aboriginal Sport & Wellness Council of Ontario, Active Healthy Kids Canada, Community Advisory Committee for Research with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and the Toronto Urban Aboriginal Health Roundtable.
Creshelle Nash Little Rock, AR Creshelle.Nash@arkansas.gov	Creshelle Nash MD, MPH, is Medical Director, Arkansas Minority Health Commission; Assistant Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management; abd Assistant Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, AR. Dr. Nash's primary interest is in the translation of public health research into viable programs and policies to improve the health of underserved and minority populations. Dr. Nash has assisted in informing health policy decision-makers through research with the Arkansas Minority Health Commission, and work with the state legislature, Arkansas Department of Health and community based organizations on public health  issues facing the state of Arkansas. She has also worked on the development of and is inaugural faculty of both the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health and the Clinton School of Public Service. In addition to addressing health issues on a policy level, Dr. Nash practices clinical medicine. She is currently on faculty in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical  Sciences, where she is involved in patient care, teaching and mentoring students. Dr. Nash received her medical degree from the University of Maryland at Baltimore School of Medicine in 1994, and completed a residency in Primary Care Internal Medicine at George Washington University Hospital, Washington D.C., in 1997. She was a 1997-98 Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellow in Minority Health Policy and received a Master's in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1998.
Ann-Gel S. Palermo New York, NY	Ms. Ann-Gel S. Palermo has worked in the area of community-based public health for the past decade, with a principal focus on issues related to social determinants of health using a community-based participatory research approach. Since 1999, Ms. Palermo has served as the chair of the Harlem Community & Academic Partnership (HCAP), a diverse partnership of representatives from community and academic organizations committed to identifying social determinants of health and implementing community-based interventions in Harlem. HCAP evolved out of the CDC-funded Harlem Urban Research Center, a partnership developed to establish credibility in the Harlem community, demonstrate a true commitment to improving the health of its residents, and create a platform from which to address local health issues. When core funding ceased, Ms. Palermo led a major transition to reinvent the collaboration so that it could continue its important work as HCAP. HCAP is located at the Center for Urban Epidemiologic Studies at the New York Academy of Medicine. Ms. Palermo also serves as a board member of the East Harlem Community Health Committee and is chair of the board of directors for the Manhattan-Staten Island Area Health Education Center. She is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine as well as a member of its Institutional Review Board. Previous community research by Ms. Palermo includes analyses of diabetes care in East Harlem and of coverage for Medicare recipients. In addition to her public health activities, Ms. Palermo is the Associate Director of Operations at the Center for Multicultural and Community Affairs at New York City's Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In this role, she is responsible for overseeing and managing programs in the areas of community relations, medical education and training, and research to improve the health of all populations by diversifying the health care workforce and influencing health policy and research. Ms. Palermo earned a Master of Public Health degree (majoring in health policy) from the University of Michigan in 1999. She is currently a doctoral student in public health at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Peggy M. Shepard New York, NY Peggy@weact.org	Peggy Shepard is executive director and co-founder of WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Founded in 1988, WE ACT was New York’s first environmental justice organization created to improve environmental health and quality of life in communities of color. WE ACT is a nationally recognized organization in the field of community-based participatory research in partnership with the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Ms. Shepard is a co-investigator of the Columbia Children’s Environmental Health Center’s Community Outreach and Translational Research Core and community partner of the NIEHS Center for Environmental Health In Northern Manhattan at Columbia. She is Principal Investigator on an NIEHS grant to foster communications and partnerships between researchers, clinicians and community on environmental health education and outreach. A recipient of the 10th Annual Heinz Award For the Environment and the 2008 Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Achievement, Ms. Shepard is a former Democratic District Leader, who represented West Harlem from 1985 to April 1993, and served as President of the National Women’s Political Caucus-Manhattan from 1993-1997.  A former journalist, she was a reporter for The Indianapolis News, a copy editor for The San Juan Star, and a researcher for Time-Life Books. She has served as an editor at Redbook, Essence, and Black Enterprise magazines. Ms. Shepard began a career in government as a speechwriter for the New York State Division of Housing & Community Renewal and Director of Public Information for Rent Administration. She served as the Women’s Outreach Coordinator for the New York City Comptroller’s Office.  A frequent lecturer at universities and conferences on issues of environmental justice and community-based health research, she is a graduate of Howard University and Solebury and Newtown Friends Schools. She has one daughter, Nicole and lives in the Hamilton Grange Historic District of West Harlem.
Sacoby Wilson Columbia, SC wilsons2@mailbox.sc.edu	Dr. Sacoby Wilson is a Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Families in Society, University of South Carolina with joint appointments in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the College of Social Work.  Dr. Wilson is an environmental health scientist with over ten years of experience working in community-university partnerships on environmental health and justice issues.   He has been working with the West End Revitalization Association (WERA), a community-based environmental justice  organization, on infrastructure disparities, planning inequities, the lack of basic amenities, and environmental health disparities in African-American neighborhoods in Mebane, NC since 2000.  As part of his collaboration with WERA, he has been instrumental in helping the organization receive funding from NIH, EPA, and foundations to fund WERA's community-owned and managed research and efforts using the collaborative problem-solving model.  He has also worked with WERA to help local residents receive first time installation of public  regulated sewer and water services and other basic amenities.  This work has been presented at the annual American Public Health Association (APHA) conference, CCPH, UNC-Chapel Hill Minority Health Conference, and other events and published collaboratively in Environmental Justice, Progress in Community Health Partnerships, and Social Justice in Context.  This collaboration has had a positive impact on national  environmental justice policy with the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC). Dr. Wilson also has worked with the Low Country Alliance for Model Communities (LAMC), a community-based organization, working on environmental justice and revitalization issues in North Charleston, SC.  He recently received a $1.2 million dollar NIEHS research grant in partnership with LAMC to examine pollution and health issues in  North Charleston, SC, and build community capacity to address these issues.   Dr. Wilson and other members of the collaborative partnership between LAMC,  City of North Charleston, the SC State Ports Authority, and other stakeholders received a 2009 Environmental Justice Achievement Award from the Environmental Protection Agency.  In addition, Dr. Wilson has worked  with other groups including REACH in Duplin County, NC, the Rogers Road-Eubanks Neighborhood Association located in Chapel Hill, NC; and Our Kitchen Table located in Michigan on environmental justice and health issues.  Due to his passion for environmental justice and community engagement and positive contributions to help community-based organizations solve environmental justice and health problems during his career, Dr.  Wilson received the 2008 Steve Wing Environmental Justice Award from the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network.  His research interests include: environmental justice science and research,  environmental health disparities, community-driven and community-based  participatory research, spatiotemporal exposure assessment, air pollution, built environment, environmental and social epidemiology, climate change, industrial hog farming, and sustainability. Dr. Wilson was a 2005 Robert  Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan's Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health where he did research on social and environmental determinants of health and health disparities. He has published his work in Atmospheric Environment, Environmental Health Perspectives, Progress in Community Health Partnerships, and Environmental  Justice. Dr. Wilson is currently Chair of the Environment Section of the American Public Health Association, a senior fellow in the Environmental Leadership  Program, and Acting Chair of the Alpha Goes Green Initiative, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.  He received both his MS and PhD in Environmental Health from UNC-Chapel Hill and his BS degree from Alabama Agricultural and  Mechanical University.  Dr. Wilson is a two-time EPA STAR fellow, two-time NASA Space Scholar, and former Udall and Thurgood Marshall Scholar. He is married to Natasha Blakeney, MPH, Program Director, Education Network to Advance Cancer Clinical Trials (ENACCT). They recently celebrated the  birth of their first child, Ariana Simone Wilson, a beautiful bundle of joy!