Advocating for Impact: exploring different ways to impact policy in Boston and around the world
In follow-up to last year’s “Introduction to Policy and Advocacy” webinar, the Center for Surgery and Public Health and the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation would like to invite you to “Advocating for Impact: exploring different ways to impact policy in Boston and around the world.”
Clinician and researcher engagement in advocacy is essential to patient-centered care and effecting change in our healthcare system at the local, state, national, and even global level. During this session, a panel of experts will discuss different strategies to engage stakeholders and impact policy across a wide spectrum of topic areas.
Friday, September 29th
11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ET
Webinar
Translating research and expertise into action
Boston
U.S.
International
Moderator and Panelists
Eric Goralnick, MD, MS | Brigham and Women's Hospital
Eric Goralnick, MD, MS is focused on improving patient care in two main areas: ensuring equitable access to healthcare for our most vulnerable patients and supporting collaborations between the civilian and military medical communities. He has served in various operational roles at the departmental, hospital, and system levels within Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Mass General Brigham. He has co-authored over 90 peer-reviewed articles, and his team’s work has been featured in many international, national, and local media outlets. His team is currently focused on the Save a Life initiative which has developed 35 YouTube educational videos viewed more than 2,000,000 times in over 500 Ukrainian cities and was featured at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in 2022. He is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the faculty lead for the Harvard Medical School Civilian Military Collaborative , the emergency medicine lead for the Brigham and Women’s Center For Surgery and Public Health, the Civilian Military Advisor for the Gillian Reny Stepping Strong Center for Trauma Innovation, an Ariadne Labs Associate Faculty Member and a US Navy veteran. He is also currently the Chair of the Disaster Medicine Section at the American College of Emergency Physicians. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy, Tel Aviv University School of Medicine, Yale Emergency Medicine Residency, and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He recently completed the George W. Bush Institute Stand To Veteran Scholar program and is fiercely committed to supporting veterans and military families.
Molly Jarman, PhD, MPH | Brigham and Women's Hospital
Molly Jarman, PhD, MPH, has led advocacy efforts to reduce pedestrian injuries by motor vehicles in Boston as part of a collaborative injury prevention effort between Stepping Strong and WalkMassachusetts, a Massachusetts pedestrian advocacy organization. Dr. Jarman is lead research faculty for Health Informatics and Data Infrastructure and an assistant professor with the Center for Surgery and Public Health in the Department of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She earned a PhD in Health Services Research and Policy from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2017 and completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the CSPH before joining as a faculty member. Her research addresses trauma surgery and emergency medical services, with primary interest in trauma system organization and access to care for underserved populations, as well as development of methodologies for the use of naturally occurring data in health services research. Recent projects include examinations of orthopedic trauma workforce capacity in the US and pre-hospital triage decisions for injured older adults.
Tracey Pérez Koehlmoos, PhD, MHA | USU Center for Health Services Research
Through a long-running collaboration between the Uniformed Services University (USU) - Center for Health Services Research (CHSR) and the Brigham Center for Surgery and Public Health, Dr. Tracey Pérez Koehlmoos has provided evidence-based recommendations to the U.S. Department of Defense on the state of the U.S. Military Health System related to equity, value-based care, women’s health, military readiness, and national security. Dr. Koehlmoos joined the USU faculty in July 2015 in order to lead the development of a robust health services administration and policy research and graduate programs in support of the US Military Health System. She is the Director of the Center for Health Services Research and the Director of Doctoral Programs in Public Health, with core teaching and graduate student advising responsibilities at USUHS and the National Defense University. Previously she served as the Special Assistant to the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. With more than 150 publications and multimedia products, Dr. Koehlmoos is a health systems and policy scientist who specializes in leading complex tasks, program development and capacity building across the spectrum of health systems building blocks. Prior to transitioning to domestic and defense healthcare, she lived and worked in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Indonesia. She cut her teeth in public health leading the Health & Family Planning Systems Programme at International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. Her research areas of interest include health equity, value-based care, women’s health, systematic review, and health and National Security. She serves as the National Secretary of the Gold Star Wives of America and as the Deputy Chair of the Cochrane Library Oversight Committee. A former Army Air Defense Artillery officer, she is the widow of COL Randall “Moose” Koehlmoos and mother of CPT Robert, Michael, and CDT David Koehlmoos.
Gezzer Ortega, MD, MPH | Brigham and Women's Hospital
Gezzer Ortega, MD, MPH, has worked to improve language equity and access to quality health care for non-primary English speakers in Boston. The 2nd Boston Language Equity Symposium, held August 24, 2023 brought together researchers, advocates, innovators, legislators, and local government representatives to discuss the current state of language concordant care and pathways to advocate for change at the health system, local, and state government level. Dr. Ortega is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Lead Faculty for Research and Innovation for Equitable Surgical Care at the Center for Surgery and Public Health in the Department of Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School, and adjunct faculty at the Patient Reported Outcomes, Value & Experience Center. Born in a low-income Brooklyn neighborhood to immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic, Dr. Ortega’s work centers on improving surgical care for low-income and historically underserved populations and promoting language-concordant care for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP). He serves as the Principal Investigator of a National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) K23 and BWH Center for Diversity and Inclusion Minority Faculty Career Development Award focused on improving outcomes for surgical patients with LEP. Dr. Ortega was also the Project Director for the Provider Awareness and Cultural Dexterity Toolkit for Surgeons (PACTS) Trial, a NIMHD R01 project to develop and evaluate a curriculum for surgical residents to improve cross-cultural communication and engagement. Dr. Ortega endeavors to diversify the academic physician workforce and was recognized as Health Provider of the Year (2020) by the Building the Next Generation of Academic Physicians. He co-founded the Latino Surgical Society, which supports the advancement of Latino/a/x surgeons. The National Hispanic Medical Association honored Dr. Ortega as Young Physician of the Year (2020), and he participated in the Emerging Leaders Forum for the National Academy of Medicine. He also received the Syracuse University Chancellor’s Citation Award (2021) and the Harvard Medical School Scholarly Engagement Excellence in Student Mentoring Award (2022). Dr. Ortega earned a Doctor of Medicine from Howard University College of Medicine, a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Bachelor of Science from Syracuse University.
Kee Park, MD, MPH | HMS Program in Global Surgery and Social Change
Kee Park, MD, MPH, serves as the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Harvard Medical School Program in Global Surgery and Social Change, where he leads efforts to advocate for increased resources for and focus on improved access to essential surgical care at international and regional organizations including the United Nations and World Bank. After completing his medical school and neurosurgical residency in the US, Dr. Park spent 10 years teaching neurosurgery in Nepal, Ethiopia, North Korea, and Cambodia. He returned to the US for a global surgery fellowship with Professor John Meara and earned a Master’s in Public Health degree from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. His areas of interest include the unmet need for neurosurgical care, global surgery financing, policy and advocacy, and geopolitical effects of health in North Korea.
