Keynote Speakers

Giselle Corbie, MD, MSc (NAM)

Director of the UNC Center for Health Equity Research in the UNC School of Medicine and Associate Provost for UNC Rural Initiatives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ensuring Equity Beyond the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed not only long standing racial and ethnic disparities but also the fault lines in our systems of care. How can we rebuild after this pandemic in a way that ensures equity? How can we think about the relationships between systems of care to ensure the most vulnerable in our society have the opportunity for a healthy life?

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Dr. Corbie is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of the Departments of Social Medicine and Medicine, Director of the UNC Center for Health Equity Research in the UNC School of Medicine and Associate Provost for UNC Rural Initiatives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC. She is nationally recognized for her scholarly work on the inclusion of disparity populations in research, and is accomplished in drawing communities, faculty, and health care providers into working partnerships in clinical and translational research. Her empirical work, using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, has focused on the methodological, ethical, and practical issues of research to address racial disparities in health. Dr. Corbie-Smith has served as the principal investigator of community-based participatory research projects focused on disease risk reduction among rural racial and ethnic minorities. These projects have included funding through the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Institute of Nursing Research, Greenwall Foundation, and the National Human Genome Research Institute. In 2013, Dr. Corbie-Smith established and became Director of the UNC Center for Health Equity Research to bring together collaborative multidisciplinary teams of scholars, trainees, and community members to improve North Carolina communities’ health through shared commitment to innovation, collaboration, and health equity. She is currently the Co-PI for RWJF’s Advancing Change Leadership Clinical Scholars Program. She previously served as the President of the Society of General Internal Medicine, and in 2018, Dr. Corbie was elected to the National Academy of Medicine for her ground-breaking contributions toward achieving community and population health equity. Dr. Corbie currently serves as an MPI on the NIH/NIMHD-funded RADx-Underserved Populations Coordination and Data Collection Center. Dr. Corbie received her M.Sc. degree in Clinical Research from Emory University and her M.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Website

@bruce_y_lee

Bruce Y. Lee, MD MBA

Professor of Health Policy and Management at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health and Executive Director of PHICOR (Public Health Computational and Operations Research)

How Computational Approaches Can Have Helped the Response to COVID-19 and Other Pandemics and Epidemics

Since 2007 our PHICOR Team has developed and used computational models and analytics and systems approach to help with the global, national, state, and local responses for many major infectious disease threats. This has included being embedded in HHS during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic to help with the national response and working with the CDC to control the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Other examples have included the Zika outbreak and the current COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

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Dr. Lee is systems modeler, computational and digital health expert, writer, and health journalist. He has over two decades experience in industry and academia developing mathematical and computational models to assist a wide range of decision makers in health and public health. Currently, he is a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health where he is the Executive Director of PHICOR (Public Health Computational and Operations Research), which he founded in 2007, and a Professor by Courtesy at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Dr. Lee is also the Executive Director of Center for Advanced Technology in Communications in Health (CATCH). Not to forget Dr. Lee is the founder and CEO of Symsilico, which develops and uses computational methods, models, and tools to help decision-making. His previous positions include serving as Associate Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Executive Director of the Global Obesity Prevention Center (GOPC), Director of Operations Research at the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC), Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Senior Manager at Quintiles Transnational, working in biotechnology equity research at Montgomery Securities, and co-founding Integrigen.

He has been the Principal Investigator for projects supported by a variety of organizations and agencies including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UNICEF, the Global Fund and USAID. He also has served as a systems science and modeling expert for numerous advisory boards and committees such as the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine committee to evaluate the Dietary Guidelines of America process.

Dr. Lee has authored over 235 scientific publications (including over 100 first author and over 80 last author) nearly all of which have focused of systems science and using systems methods as well as three books.

Dr. Lee has written extensively for the general media. He is a Senior Contributor for Forbes, covering a wide range of health-related topics including medicine, wellness, digital health and the business of health and having written over 1000 articles. His writing has also appeared in a number of other media outlets including Time, The Guardian, the HuffPost, and the MIT Technology Review. His work and expertise have appeared in leading media outlets such as the New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, CBS News, Businessweek, U.S. News and World Report, Bloomberg News, Reuters, and National Public Radio (NPR). Dr. Lee received his BA from Harvard University, MD from Harvard Medical School, and MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He completed his internal medicine residency training at the University of California, San Diego. His Twitter handle is @bruce_y_lee.

Anne Schuchat, MD (RADM, USPHS, RET)

Principal Deputy Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Vaccination During a Pandemic: When Planning and Scale-up Must Coincide

Pandemics and other emerging infectious diseases involve uncertainty and dynamic circumstances. Responses must be speedy but thoughtful; caring and cultural sensitivity are as important as efficiency. Dr. Schuchat will share her experiences responding to public health emergencies.

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Anne Schuchat, MD, is the Principal Deputy Director of CDC. She has been CDC’s principal deputy director since September 2015. She served as acting CDC director from January-July 2017 and February-March 2018.

Dr. Schuchat also served as director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases from 2006-2015 and Chief of the Respiratory Diseases Branch from 1998-2005. She joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1988.

Dr. Schuchat played key roles in CDC emergency responses including the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza response, the 2003 SARS outbreak in Beijing, and the 2001 bioterrorist anthrax response. Globally, she has worked on meningitis, pneumonia and Ebola vaccine trials in West Africa, and conducted surveillance and prevention projects in South Africa.

Dr. Schuchat graduated from Swarthmore College and Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine and completed her residency and chief residency in internal medicine at NYU’s Manhattan VA Hospital. Upon completing 30 years of service in 2018, Dr. Schuchat retired from the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service at the rank of Rear Admiral.