2023 Health Information Technology & Clinical Conference

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 7:00 AM – 8:05 AM

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 8:05 AM – 9:15 AM
Credit Hours: 1.25 CDE
Teaching Method: Live in-person lecture
AGD Subject Code: 770 – Self Improvement

Speaker(s): Peniel Joseph, PhD

Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values; founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy; Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs; Public Policy & International Affairs Program (PPIA) Board Chair; and distinguished service professor and professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. An internationally recognized scholar-activist and author and editor of seven award-winning books, most recently The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century. Additionally in 2022, he was named the grand prize winner of the
2022 Hamilton Book Award, the University of Texas at Austin’s highest research honor for his book, “The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.” He is a frequent national commentator on issues of race, civil rights, and democracy. He is a Life Member of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History and a fellow of the Society of American Historians and a contributing writer for CNN.com, he lives in Austin, Texas.

Course Description

Achieving health equity is a key priority for health care delivery organizations, and has the potential to stimulate personal growth and development. Organizations that successfully support wellness will create a more engaged, motivated, creative, intelligent, satisfied, and healthier workforce. Dr. Joseph will address how the historical policy debates related to citizenship and dignity related to Black and People of Color have evolved over three periods in history. Related to workforce, he will discuss the way in which historical narratives are about the present and future and not just the past and how this can impacts different facets of the workforce. Resiliency and work performance depend on personal behaviors and organizational health, which should include strategies of diversity, equity, and inclusiveness when recruiting and to retain a valued workforce.

Course Objectives:

1. Explore and acknowledge the organization’s role in adopting policies, practices and programs that address the historical legacies of structural inequalities.
2. Understand the ways in which historical policy debates related to citizenship and dignity related to Black and People of Color evolve over three periods of Reconstruction; 1865-1898; the Second Reconstruction, 1954-1968; and The Third Reconstruction, 2008-present.
3. Acknowledge and work to eliminate structural racism and bias to promote health equity and improve employee health and well-being.

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 9:15 AM – 9:30 AM

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 9:30 AM – 10:25 AM
Credit Hours: 1.0 CDE
Teaching Method: Live in-person lecture
AGD Subject Code: 750 – Special Patient Care

Speaker(s): Aliza Norwood, UT Health San Antonio South Central AETC

Course Description

FQHCs are critical venues for HIV prevention access, as they serve marginalized patient communities, including low-income, minoritized, and highly mobile populations that are stigmatized and in urgent need of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) counseling and provision. With experience integrating HIV prevention services into FQHCs, Dr. Aliza Norwood will impart lessons learned from a recent quality improvement program and share tips for setting up a successful PrEP program.

Course Objectives:

1. Understand the importance of and the clinical evidence for PrEP
2. Describe team-based strategies to support implementation or scale-up of PrEP services for underserved communities
3. Apply 1-2 tips for engaging diverse patients in HIV prevention

Aliza Norwood
Aliza Norwood, MD, FACP, AAHIVS is an associate professor in the Departments of Population Health and Internal Medicine at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School where she is the co-director of Dell Medical School’s Primary Care, Family and Community medicine clerkship. She is also the medical director at Vivent Health in Austin, Texas, a patient-centered medical home that provides HIV prevention services including PrEP and PEP, primary care for people living with HIV, and gender-affirming care. She directs an HIV primary care elective for internal medicine residents and precepts medical students in her clinic.
Prior to joining Dell Medical School, Dr. Norwood was the clinical operations director at Bridge HIV in San Francisco, where she managed the day-to-day operations multiple international HIV vaccine and HIV prevention research studies at the San Francisco site. She later worked as a hospitalist and primary care in the U.S. Commonwealth of Saipan. In Saipan, she provided care to all patients living with HIV on the island and was also involved in teaching medical student and residents and the development of a global neurology telemedicine program.
Dr. Norwood attended medical school at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio and trained in primary care and internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is board certified in internal medicine and has an HIV specialist certification from the American Academy of HIV Medicine. She is a graduate of the Op Ed Fellowship and has published in multiple nationally distributed papers. Her interests include HIV primary care, gender-affirming care, medical education, and health policy.

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 9:30 AM – 10:25 AM
Credit Hours: 1.0 CDE
Teaching Method: Live in-person lecture
AGD Subject Code: 750 – Special Patient Care

Speaker(s): Susan P. Fisher-Hoch, MBBS, MSc, FRCPath, MD; Joseph B. McCormick, MD, MS

Course Description

Diseases, variants and increased antimicrobial resistance take center stage. During this session,Dr. Susan Fisher-Hoch and Dr. Joseph McCormick will present most recent information on emerging and current infectious diseases & how lessons learned from the most recent outbreaks will shape future responses. The discussion will also include the latest in the the fight against COVID-19, focusing on topics such as Long COVID and it’s labyrinth of interconnected symptoms, but also discussing emerging variants & how the fight against the virus is shaping up for the near future. An international overview of the notable current state of infectious diseases will also be discussed, highlighting the logistical and cultural challenges, access to resources across the world, the increased antibiotic resistance seen recently and what that means for potential new challenges, while addressing the needs of our communities.

Course Objectives:

1. Identify the latest trend in emerging infectious diseases and their current reach
2. Discuss how lessons learned from current and previous outbreaks will be applied in future responses
3. Increase participant knowledge in early identification and possible remedies to symptoms of Long COVID

Susan P. Fisher-Hoch, MBBS, MSc, FRCPath, MD
I am a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health Regional Campus in Brownsville. I trained in medicine in London at the Royal Free School of Medicine and completed my doctoral degree with a dissertation on Legionnaires Disease and at the same time the British Boards, specializing in virology. I have extensive experience studying the pathophysiology of viral hemorrhagic fevers using primate models and the safety and efficacy of a Lassa Fever vaccine. I ran the CDC Lassa Fever Project in Sierra Leone and worked on a large clinical trial of ribavirin in Lassa fever. I have conducted translational studies in local populations of Pakistan, including investigations of Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever outbreaks in Baluchistan and a study of oral versus injectable polio vaccine in neonates in Karachi. In France, I was responsible for the design and construction of the Biosafety Level 4 laboratory in Lyon, which was used extensively in the 2014 Ebola outbreaks and for which I received the Légion d’Honneur from the President of France.. I am the Director of the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort (CCHC) Study, which is a population-based cohort of disadvantaged Mexican Americans from a community on the Texas-Mexico border with low incomes and poor housing. Our cohort includes over 400 children ages 8-17 years, family and household data, including geocoded addresses, employment of adults and a survey of risk factors for a variety of pediatric issues. This cohort has been the foundation for multiple publications on the health of Mexican Americans, and for NIH grants, including an ongoing clinical trial. Long COVID follow up studies are in hand using gene expression studies.

Joseph B. McCormick, MD, MS
Joseph B. McCormick is a James H. Steele Professor, UT Houston School of Public Health, and was the founding Dean developing the new Brownsville campus. He obtained a scholarship to Florida Southern College from which he graduated in 1964 with a double major in chemistry and mathematics. Though he had been awarded a National Science Foundation grant in physics and accepted for the Peace Corps, he elected instead to attend the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, for a year to acquire sufficient French to enable him to take up a position teaching sciences and mathematics in a secondary school in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo).
He returned to the United States in 1967 and entered Duke Medical School from which he graduated in 1971, having also obtained an MS from Harvard School of Public Health in 1970, and receiving the Upjohn Award for Community Health. In 1974 Dr. McCormick joined the US Public Health Commissioned Corps and became an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer (EIS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta, Ga, with he Special Pathogens Branch, Division of Bacterial Diseases, and became acting chief in his second year. He went to West Africa, to found the CDC Lassa Fever Research Project, Sierra Leone, West Africa. At the same time, he was called to go to the Republic of Congo (then Zaire) to join the team investigating the Ebola epidemic of 1976, the very first epidemic that introduced Ebola virus to the world. On his return to Atlanta in 1982 Dr. McCormick became Chief, Special Pathogens Branch, Division of Viral Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control, and rapidly attained the rank of Medical Director (Navy Captain 06). He was director of the Biosafety level 4 laboratory at CDC for 8 years, and oversaw the design and inaugurated the current BSL 4 facility at CDC. He was also director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers. In 1982 he identified the virus, now called Hantavirus, that causes a worldwide hemorrhagic disease, and causes the Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome in the Americas. During this time, he became involved in AIDS including isolation of the oldest HIV virus from specimens saved from his lab. Dr. McCormick many awards include Exceptional Capability Promotion, Meritorious Service Medal, 3 PHS Citations, a unit commendation and the Foreign Service award of the USPHS, and the Friends of Public Health Award from the Texas Department of Health, and in 2005 University of Texas Chancellor’s Health Fellow in Public Health. He was awarded Humanitarian Awards from his undergraduate Alma Mater, Florida Southern College in 2000, and from his Medical School, Duke University, in 2001. He has lead activities in viral hemorrhagic fevers and major contributions to the science and epidemiology of emerging pathogens has been aired on television, including programs by CNN and BBC, newspapers and periodicals and in several books for the lay reader, has published over 300 scientific publications involving co-authors from over 20 different countries.

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Credit Hours: 1.0 CDE
Teaching Method: Live in-person lecture
AGD Subject Code: 130 – Electives

Speaker(s): Augusto César F. De Moraes, PhD, MSc, BS

Course Description

In this session, we will learn about the impact of how technology can better serve patient care through screening and addressing lifestyle related behaviors, food access or lack thereof, and what health centers can continue to do in support of patients, as well as novel approaches in risk-stratification and mitigation of long term health consequences and health inequities.

Course Objectives:

1. Define food insecurity and how behavioral factors affect nutrition and obesity.
2. Describe how food access can be identified and how this is associated with inequity.
3. Consider how technology can help and/or hinder access and equity.

Augusto César F. De Moraes, PhD, MSc, BS
B.Sc. in Kinesiology, Residency in Human Physiology, M.Sc. in Pediatrics, and 2 Ph.D. diplomas: Epidemiology earned from the Medical School, the University of Sao Paulo other in Health Science earned from the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Zaragoza.
Postdoctoral at the Medical School, the University of São Paulo, and Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology.
I’m currently a member of the Scientific Societies: Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER) since 2017 & SER Leadership and Executive Committee and International Subcommittee since 2020; American Society of Nutrition (ASN) since 2016; The Obesity Society (TOS) & World Obesity Federation since 2019, and American Heart Association (AHA) since 2021.
My current research interests include determinants of cardiovascular health, multiple lifestyle-related behaviors, brain cognitive development, diagnostic/predictive methods, and their possible interactions with environmental determinants in young people from low- and high-income countries, including countries in North America, Latin America, and Europe, evidence-based medicine and public health, and the effectiveness of health behaviors promotion (such as healthy diet and physical activity) policies. Financial support РResearch projects are funded by national and international research agencies, such as FAPESP, CNPQ, the European Union, and the University of Ṣo Paulo Research Committee. Finally, I am the host of Podcast Lado B da Ciencia (https://bit.ly/3f3kKRW), a scientific divulgation initiative.

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Credit Hours: 1.0 CDE
Teaching Method: Live in-person lecture
AGD Subject Code: 149 – Multi-disciplinary

Speaker(s): Josefine Ortiz-Wolfe, PhD, MSPH, RDH, CHES; Marcqwon Daywalker, MD; Nick Szubiak, MSW, LSW

Course Description

An integrated and whole-person perspective will always help improve patient care and health outcomes. Although operationalizing new workflows and cross team collaborations can seem complex, best practices and solutions lie in a clear understanding of how roles, communication styles, and opportunities can lead to success for holistic patient care. Practicing clinicians make up this panel to provide insight and expertise on integrated services at community health centers through collaboration of medical, oral, and behavioral health. As peers, this panel offer will guidance in this process. Ultimately, strategic integration of services and the prioritization of a cohesive multidisciplinary approaches will help your team advance towards value-based care.

Course Objectives:

1. Discover the practice-perspectives of 3 clinicians on integrating cross-team patient centered care.
2. Explain why service integration at the health center is important to advancing value-based care (VBC).
3. Determine how clinicians at their particular health center can adopt one (1) provided strategy into current practice.

Josefine Ortiz-Wolfe, PhD, MSPH, RDH, CHES
Dr. Ortiz-Wolfe is an Education Specialist at the CareQuest Institute for Oral Health and a faculty member at the University of Texas in Austin within the Department of Public Health. In addition to her academic and professional work, Dr. Ortiz Wolfe has been recognized for her contributions to dental public health. She received the 2022 ADHA Standout Seven Public Health Award for Public Health Dental Hygienist of the Year. She has been an active member of many professional organizations, including the American Public Health Association’s Oral Health Section, where she has held various leadership roles, including Chair of the section.

Marcqwon Daywalker, MD
Dr. Marc Daywalker is an integrated family medicine physician and lifestyle medicine specialist who currently serves as the Chief Health Equity and Wellness Officer at AccessHealth Community Health Center. As their Director of Health and Well-Being, his primary focus was to promote overall wellness and decrease burnout of the health center staff as well as spearhead the trauma-informed transformation within his organization. As an executive leader he is working to implement lifestyle medicine to address the health system quadruple aims (reduce costs, improve outcomes, improve healthcare quality, enhance worker wellbeing /patient experience) for a sustainable value-based care model .
Dr. Daywalker is also a National Health Service Corps alumnus and was selected to be a member of the 2022 national H.E.A.L. (Health Equity Achieved through Lifestyle Medicine) cohort through the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. He has been a speaker for numerous state, national, and international presentations on self-care and coping strategies at various annual conferences; including conferences at the Texas Association of Community Health Centers (TACHC), the Association for Clinicians for the Underserved (ACU), and the American Occupational Health Conference. He also serves on the TACHC clinical committee and the ACU : Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee.

Nick Szubiak, MSW, LSW
Nick Szubiak brings more than 20 years of experience in direct service, administration, and clinical experience to the healthcare field. He is the Founder of NSI Strategies, an organization that provides support to integrated healthcare environments and currently serves as an Advanced Implementation Specialist for SAMHSA’s Opioid Response Network. Nick is the former Assistant Vice-President of Addiction and Recovery at the National Council for Behavioral Health and Director at the SAMHSA-HRSA Center for Integrated Health Solutions. Prior, he served as the Director of Behavioral Health for a rural FQHC. Nick provides technical assistance,
consultation and training toward bi-directional integration of behavioral health and primary care, substance use disorders, medication assisted treatment (MAT), SBIRT, measurement-based care, population health management and utilizing implementation science to maximize clinical pathways to better care. His experience includes MAT implementation, FQHC integration models and partnerships, trauma informed care, recovery-oriented systems of care, health homes, and developing high functioning teams to provide integrated care to the communities they serve. His expertise also involves systems change management, leadership development and supervisory skills. Nick is known for his heartfelt presentations, keynote speeches, and has sat on various expert panels, partnering with many organizations as a behavioral health subject matter expert. He earned his master’s degree in Social Work from Rutgers University.

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM

** CDE Not offered for this session **

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 12:30 PM – 1:25 PM

** CDE Not offered for this session **

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 12:30 PM – 1:25 PM

** CDE Not offered for this session **

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM
Credit Hours: 1.0 CDE
Teaching Method: Live in-person lecture
AGD Subject Code: 157 – Substance abuse

Speaker(s): John Weems, MD

John serves vulnerable communities at CommunityCare Health Centers in Austin as a primary care and addiction medicine physician. Additionally, in his capacity as Associate Director of Addiction Medicine, he is responsible for increasing access to high-quality addiction medicine services. At UT Dell Medical School, John trains medical students and residents and works with the SHOUT Texas program to expand opioid use disorder treatment across hospitals in Texas. He is board certified in Addiction Medicine and Internal Medicine and is a Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he completed Internal Medicine-Primary Care residency followed by Addiction Medicine fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Charlestown Community Health Center.

Course Description

This session will empower clinicians (medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy) with current practices and allowances for appropriate use of OUD and overdose prevention as well as best practices and strategies for multidisciplinary and patient-centered approaches.

Course Objectives:

1. Describe how expanding access to medication for opioid use disorder (OUD) can help reduce overdose deaths and improve community health.
2. Discuss one (1) state-wide and one (1) national policy change that impacts patient care regarding OUD.
3. Create a plan for your health to adopt one (1) provided strategy into current practice.

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 2:30 PM – 3:00 PM

Date: April 26, 2023
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Credit Hours: 1.5 CDE
Teaching Method: Live in-person lecture
AGD Subject Code: 130 – Electives

Speaker(s): Irene A. Stafford, MD, MS; Shital Mahendra Patel, MD; Funlola Are, PhD; Jen Biundo, MPAff, CPH; Julie Gutiérrez, MD

Course Description

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that youth ages 15-24 make up just over one quarter of the sexually active population, but account for half of the 20 million new sexually transmitted infections that occur in the U.S. each year. Among Texas youth (15-24 yo), from 2008-2018, diagnoses of HIV (by 4%) and chlamydia and gonorrhea (each by 25%) have increased. Understanding how best to deliver adolescent friendly care is crucial. Teens around the globe utilize social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for engagement, entertainment, and even education. The reality is that information varies in its accuracy #fakenews, particularly around sexual health. Research consistently shows that teens seek out peers and influencers for information and often do not ask medical providers or other authority figures about health, safety, and sex. Unfortunately, misconceptions and misinformation thrive, and teens are left without accurate information to make truly informed decisions. This dynamic session will help health center providers (medical, dental, behavioral health, pharmacy) to learn how best to engage and empower teens through the use of social media and in-person encounters. This session will also include a panel discussion, from the teen perspective and the professionals they trust.

Course Objectives:

1. Describe 2 evidence-based practices regarding teen sexual health management.
2. Express how teens and health center providers can leverage one another’s knowledge and experience to improve sexual health outcomes. 
3. Implement 1 new strategy within the health center to engage with teen patients.

Irene A. Stafford, MD, MS
My initial career goals involved basic science with a Master’s of Science degree in Microbiology and Molecular Medicine at Clemson University in South Carolina. After I matriculated into medical school, I found success in the field of Obstetrics and Gynecology with a continued interest in research during my residency at The Louisiana State University in New Orleans and a Maternal Fetal Medicine fellowship at UT Southwestern in Dallas, TX, I was able to explore and publish in the field of clinical STI research. I continued to work on projects surrounding STI with a focus on syphilis in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Texas McGovern Medical School where I have created a new bridge between the basic and clinical science departments that continues to benefit the school of medicine, fellows, residents and medical students at the university. Several publications and oral presentations, along with an institutional grant surrounding STI and perinatal syphilis have resulted from my work and dedication to this field.

Shital Mahendra Patel, MD
Dr. Patel is an Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases. She is an Infectious Diseases specialist and has a Master’s of Science in Clinical Investigation. Her expertise includes more than 14 years of vaccine clinical trials research experience, as well education and clinical efforts dedicated to improving the health of underserved and diverse communities. Dr. Patel has provided care for patients with HIV at the Thomas Street Health Center and Ben Taub Hospital, Harris Health, Houston, Texas since 2003 and serves on the Houston Area Ryan White Planning Council. She is also the Clinical Director for the BCM -Houston AETC (South Central AIDS Education and Training Center Region). Since 2013, she has strengthened the AETC program with local partnerships and collaborations to help health professionals improve the health and quality of life of patients living with HIV.
Recently, she developed a community of practice in Houston with the 5 Ryan White Part A clinics – the EHE Rapid StART Community of Practice to help establish best practices and ensure equity as people enter or reenter care for HIV. Through this work she enjoys meeting new people, building partnerships to work together to improve health outcomes. She and her team have help develop and launch ECHO programs related to COVID-19 ECHO, Rapid StART ECHO (BE FASTER) with 5 Ryan White Part A clinics that care for 75% of people with HIV in Houston/Harris County, HIV Testing and Prevention ECHO for FQHCs across the nation (Bureau of Primary Care), and Texas Teen Sexual Health ECHO.

Funlola Are, PhD
Funlola Are, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Georgia and completed a Clinical Psychology Doctoral Internship and Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina. She is the PI and Program Director of the Nurturing Resielience Initiative, the TCHATT Training Director and the Co-Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Her program of research focuses innovative methods to identify children at risk for traumatic stress and ways to expand the reach of evidence-based prevention and intervention initiatives to underserved populations. Pursuant to this, she has led and collaborated on investigations related to examining physical and biological factors related to socioemotional functioning in mother-child dyads, novel approaches to maltreatment identification in primary care settings, dissemination and implementation of evidence-based trauma interventions, and the evaluation of an evidence-based kinship caregiver case management and maltreatment prevention program. She is a NIMH Child Health Intervention, Prevention, and Services Training Fellow and NICHD Researchers in Child Abuse and Neglect Training Fellow. She serves on the Editorial Board for the journal Research on Child And Adolesecnt Psychopathology and is an ad-hoc reviewer for several journals in her field. Here at UTHealth she is actively involved in research training and mentorship of psychology interns, medical students and postdoctoral fellows. She also serves on the Medical School Research Committee.

Jen Biundo, MPAff, CPH
Jen Biundo is the Senior Director of Policy and Research for Healthy Futures of Texas. She earned her master’s degree in Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and holds a Certification in Public Health. She loves a good data visualization, evidence-based public health priorities, and analyzing ballot returns by precinct. She’s the proud mother of two kids who are enrolled in Texas schools, including a high schooler who kind of wishes his mom had a normal job that didn’t involve sex education.

Julie Gutiérrez, MD
Dr. Gutiérrez trained at Albert Einstein in Bronx, NY and moved to Houston 5 years ago. She is passionate about family planning and caring for the underserved women of Houston. She works at LBJ, teaching residents gynecologic surgery and is in charge of their family planning curriculum. She has won multiple teaching awards for her work at McGovern Medical School. She went into OB/gyn because of the ability to provide care to women across their lifetime. Dr Gutierrez has 3 children under the age of 6 and her most memorable moments are enjoying the outdoors with them.