Dr. Anthony Vavasis completed his undergraduate and medical school training at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He completed his residency training in Family Medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, NY in 1994. While in residency, Anthony focused on learning to work in underserved urban communities. During the time of his residency training, the HIV epidemic was at its peak in the Bronx. As a result, he developed skills in providing primary care both to indigent families and to patients infected with HIV.

 

During his third year of residency, Anthony worked with the Health Outreach to Teens (HOTT) Program as his assigned adolescent medicine rotation. HOTT is a grant-funded program that provides free or low-cost healthcare to high-risk adolescents and young adults. Their program operates out of a community health center and has a mobile medical van on which it provides medical care to homeless and other high-risk youth. Having decided that his passion is working with young people, Anthony’s work with HOTT continues and he is now the Program Clinical Director.

 

Anthony’s primary interest in healthcare is in integrating the principles of harm reduction theory into the practice of medicine. He has spoken on this topic extensively and has participated in numerous panels related to HIV testing and prevention for young people.

 

Anthony is a passionate and dedicated advocate of mobile healthcare as a viable means for increasing access to care for disenfranchised populations. As a result of his working with the HOTT mobile medical van, Anthony became interested in working to support mobile healthcare more broadly and in 2005 he joined with other mobile health providers in establishing the Mobile Health Clinics Network (MHCN) and currently serves as Chair of the national Advisory Board. Partnering with Dr. Nancy Oriol of The Family Van at Harvard Medical School, Anthony is engaged in developing an online tool that identifies mobile health programs nationally, strives to measure outcomes, and creates universal benchmarks of operation and efficacy.

 

Anthony lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and six-month old son.

 

 

 

Debra Diaz has been a Registered Dental Assistant since 1976. She has over 25 years experience in dental program management and 15 years of successful marketing experience, community relations, event planning and program design. She has developed and implemented interactive pre-school programs for children’s oral health, which have been widely utilized throughout Monterey and San Benito Counties in California.

 

Influential in the development of Community Oral Health Services of Monterey County in December 2000, Debra established partnerships to expand the efficiency of the CBO and its program projects to further prevention of dental disease. As Executive Director, she manages and oversees the outreach projects and mobile health clinics that have increased access to care to high-risk pregnant women, mothers, caregivers, infants and children residing in rural Monterey County.

 

She has provided consultation for the development of oral health education materials, Easy Steps to Oral Health (ESOH) and on program design for other agencies throughout California. Prior to becoming Executive Director in 2006, Debra served as Program Director, coordinating, supervising and monitoring all aspects of the planning, implementation and evaluation phases of the program. Prior to this, she worked for 13 years in a pediatric dental practice that provides services to a predominately Latino population.

 

Debra serves as Chair of the Monterey County Dental Advisory Board and the Community Fluoridation Task Force. She is active with First 5 Monterey School Readiness Collaborative and the Monterey County Head Start Advisory Board, and is past President of the Salinas Valley Business Women’s Association. Debra is a founding member of the Mobile Health Clinics Network (MHCN) and serves on the national Advisory Board.

 

Debra resides in Salinas, California with her husband of 29 years and their two sons.

 

 

 

Karen Ruderman comes to the field of mobile health with a background in public health and social work, and a focus on women’s health. She obtained her MPH and MSSW degrees from Columbia University in New York City in 1996, with emphases on Maternal Child Health and International Health, and her undergraduate degree in Cultural Anthropology from Haverford College in Pennsylvania. As a public health professional with social work training, she has addressed a broad range of women's health issues over the past 15 years, including domestic violence, reproductive health, teenage pregnancy, mental health, and women's cancers. She has focused largely on health promotion and disease prevention, with a commitment to addressing health disparities and increasing access to care for underserved, low-income, ethnic and other minority populations. Her professional experiences have included community, academic, health center and hospital settings in New York City and Boston.

 

Formerly the Director of Breast Health for the American Cancer Society in New York City, Karen has experience in program design, planning, implementation and evaluation within community and health care settings. She has served as Program Director of Boston’s Mammography Van at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA for the past five years, assuming the role three weeks before the program launched in April 2002. She has been involved in the process of establishing and redesigning the program’s policies and procedures over the years to reach its current configuration. The setting of mobile mammography has proven to be a welcome confluence of her interests in women’s health, community health, and the prevention side of health care, as well as an able forum to address issues of health care access and disparities.

 

In early 2007, Karen launched the Mobile Mammography ListServ, a service that has proven to be a vital communication tool among mobile mammography programs nationwide. Karen serves on the Advisory Board of Mobile Health Clinics Network and as Chair of the MHCN Mobile Mammography SIG (Special Interest Group).

 

 

 

Kathy Ficco has been Executive Director for the St. Joseph Health System, Sonoma County Community Health Clinics and Programs since 1996, and is responsible for administration, management, and supervision of comprehensive access to care programs that she has fostered, developed and matured. These clinics and programs include: St. Joseph Children's Dental Clinic; St. Joseph Mobile Health Clinic; Cultivando la Salud Mobile Dental Clinic; school-based health promotion programs; Promotores de Salud; Children’s Health Insurance Programs; and House Calls (frail elderly) programs. These programs are staffed with dentists, medical directors, family nurse practitioners, registered nurses, dental assistants, medical assistants, paid staff and volunteers from Promotores de Salud, and other support staff who touch the lives of over 19,000 persons annually.

 

For over 16 years, Kathy has worked to increase access to healthcare to medically under-served populations. The House Calls Senior Program received a Best Practice in Community Health award from the Public Health Institute. Kathy received a Community Partnership of the Year Award from Santa Rosa City Schools for her leadership of the Elsie Allen High School Health Center. Her skill and expertise in collaborations have garnered significant resources to serve vulnerable populations in her community. Most notable among these is the Agricultural Worker Health and Housing Initiative funded by the Rural Community Assistance Corporation, which provided Burbank Housing with $1.5 million for affordable housing with a carve-out for farm workers, and SJHS with funds to build and equip a mobile dental clinic and initiate a Promotor(a) de Salud model. This initiative received a Community Innovation Award by the Society for Public Health Education, Northern CA chapter for Outstanding Community Achievement in Public Health Education.

 

Kathy is the honored recipient of the Sonoma County Public Health Department’s 2006 Public Health Champion Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Ensuring the Quality and Accessibility of Health Services for workers and families among the most under-served in the community. In collaboration with the Community Health Resource and Development Center, Kathy helped develop, refine and implement the Mi VIA Program (Visitantes Información Acceso), an electronic personal health record for migratory farm workers and their families that allows healthcare records to travel with each worker from community to community.

 

Kathy has served the healthcare field in a variety of acute care, ambulatory and community-based settings for 34 years. She has 22 years of emergency department nursing and leadership experience, with five of those years as Emergency Department Director. During her tenure as Emergency Director, she was instrumental in the implementation of a Chest Pain Emergency Center, Triage Training Program and Process, Emergency Department Remodel, Fast Track Urgent Care Program within ER, and a Family Practice Residency rotation in Emergency Medicine. In her role, she managed daily operations for the Level II Regional Referral Center Emergency Department with over 24,000 visits annually.

 

Kathy has been nominated annually by her peers for the St. Joseph Health System Values in Action awards for the organization’s core values of Dignity, Service, Excellence and Justice. Kathy was a presenter at the MHCN 2006 Annual Forum and currently serves on the MHCN Advisory Board

 

 

 

Brian Quinn has been involved with the Friends of the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus Foundation since its inception, first as a volunteer fundraiser and PR specialist. He has been employed by the Foundation for the past three years and, among other duties, is responsible for grants and public relations. Brian travels extensively on behalf of the Foundation, both helping to raise funds for its work and instituting new programs nationwide, such as those in Atlanta, Chicago, Norfolk, Omaha, and San Antonio.

 

Brian is a graduate of Lake Forest College, obtained his MA from St. John’s University of New York, and has a post-graduate certificate from the Indiana University School of Philanthropy. In addition to his duties at the Foundation, Brian teaches Grant Writing at Molloy College, where he was also in charge of the Grants Office for three years. He served as Major Gifts Officer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Director of Communications for the Cancer Research Institute; and Director of Communications of the Medical Society of the State of New York. He was contributing editor to the New York State Journal of Medicine, editor of News of New York, and a writer for WYEP-FM radio in Pittsburgh (where he was also PR man for the Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood program) and the Chicago Daily News. Brian has served as a consultant for (among others) the American Lung Association, the Hagedorn Little Village School, the National Hockey League, and the Cancer Research Institute.

 

Brian has taught and lectured extensively within New York on a wide diversity of topics. He is an Adjunct Professor of writing at St. John’s University. He has been widely published, and has written speeches for such diverse personalities as venture capitalist Robert A. Swanson, founder of Genentech; former Congressman Robert Mrazek; and basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal. Brian was a presenter at the MHCN 2006 Annual Forum and currently serves on the MHCN Advisory Board.

 

Brian lives in Rockville Centre, New York. He and his wife, Paula, have three sons, one an award-winning artist and graduate of Yale University, the second a student at Columbia University Law School, and the third a funny, noisy kid with a digital video camera in middle school.