The Role of Data in Public Health Equity & Innovation Conference

At the Yale School of Public Health, we believe that the future of public health will be defined by four pillars: inclusivity, innovation and entrepreneurship, communication, and data-driven leadership. It is through this commitment to data-driven leadership that we at YSPH, in conjunction with the Whitney and Betty Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies, will convene a global, diverse, and interdisciplinary group of leaders from academia, government, healthcare, and private industry to engage on the role of data in public health equity and innovation. We will discuss three thematic issues critical to the theme of the conference:

• The depiction of social determinants of health in data
• Community-based models for data
• The effect of artificial intelligence on health equity data

Improving individual and community health requires acknowledgment of, measurement of, and attention to reducing health disparities. However, data limitations get in the way. Every step of the health data life cycle - from data procurement to analysis, to implementation of innovation - experiences equity barriers. The lack of data standardization and interoperability, insufficient partnerships between scientists & citizens for community engagement in data collection, and limited dissemination of information to key stakeholders are particularly glaring problems. The rise of AI may further deepen health inequities, especially if algorithms are created with non-representative or biased datasets. To better achieve health for all, the globe needs collaborators across the data life cycle—​ranging from academics to government to the private sector—to work together to overcome these barriers to health data equity.

Monday, April 8th - 9th 2024 at 8:30 am - 5:30 pm

Conference will be held in person.

Maurice R. Greenberg Conference Center
391 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
United States

Organizers: Yale School of Public Health, Office of the Dean

• Registration, Breakfast, Welcome Remarks

• Keynote speech: Professor Bola Owolabi, Director of the National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme, National Health Service England

SPEAKER:

Professor Bola Owolabi (MRCGP, MFPH Hon, FRSPH) is Director of the National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme at NHS England. She also works as a General Practitioner (family physician) in the Midlands region of the UK. Bola has particular interest in reducing healthcare inequalities through integrated care models, service transformation, and using data insights for quality improvement. She has spearheaded NHS England’s Core20PLUS5 approach to narrowing healthcare inequalities. This approach focuses support on the most deprived ‘Core 20’ percent of the population, ‘plus’ other underserved groups identified through local population health data (such as communities with minority ethnicity), and targets ‘5’ key clinical areas for priority improvement. Versions of the Core20PLUS5 approach are in place for both adults and children & young people. Internationally, Bola was a member of the Danish Ambassador’s Tour De Health – a ten nation healthcare policy leaders’ summit. Additionally, she was the UK representative on the Commonwealth Fund / Academy Health Tour 2023, exploring equity in national health policy across the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. She was previously National Specialty Advisor for Older People and Integrated Person-Centered Care at NHS England, where she led the Anticipatory Care workstream of the National Ageing Well Programme. She collaborated with teams across NHS England and the UK government’s Department of Health and Social Care as part of the Covid-19 pandemic response. Bola is an alumna of Ashridge Executive Education / Hult International Business School and holds a Masters degree with distinction in Leadership (Quality Improvement). She also received an NHS Leadership Academy Award in Executive Healthcare Leadership for Clinicians. Bola is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Applied Health Research, College of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Birmingham. She is also a Vice President of the Royal Society of Public Health (RSPH). Describing what motivates her work, Bola has said: “Even before the pandemic struck, the issue of health inequality had already been identified as a major issue and a clear national priority, but Covid-19 cast a particularly harsh light on the health and wider inequalities that persist in our communities. The virus had a disproportionate effect on certain sections of the population, including ethnic minorities, the most deprived, people with learning disabilities, and those with severe mental illness. “Now that health inequalities have been pushed firmly up the priority list of health leaders and politicians alike, we must take the actions that we know can make a real difference to the life chances of people who have been underserved for a long time. This is a time of great opportunity. I am committed to working with colleagues across NHS England and beyond to generate dialogue where people are included, involved, and inspired to tackle health inequalities. Together, we can make a real difference.”

• Comparative Themes on Data, Health Policy and Health Equity in the U.S. and UK

MODERATOR:

Kaakpema , who goes by “KP,” is a global entrepreneur and public health practitioner with experience working across public and private sectors in the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean. He is a Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and Faculty Director for InnovateHealth Yale. Kaakpema Co-Founded InOn Health in 2018. The company improved access to care in the United States using digital communication channels and consumer insights to better connect multicultural populations to healthcare services. Prior to InOn Health, he founded access.mobile International, a global digital health company that developed solutions to improve health information access and services in African countries. KP served as one of the early employees of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and worked as a management consultant for Dalberg Global Development Advisors. He is a member of the External Equity and Innovation Advisory Board for the American Medical Association and was appointed by Governor Jared Polis to serve on the Colorado eHealth Commission, which he chairs. Kaakpema received a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Brown University and a Master of Public Health from the Yale School of Public Health. He is a 2023 Rock Health Top 50 in Digital Health Luminaries honoree.

DISCUSSANTS:

Professor Bola Owolabi is the Director of the National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme at the National Health Service (NHS) England. Striving to address pervasive health inequalities, Professor Owolabi has worked closely with members of the community to understand and learn from their lived experiences to improve healthcare outcomes for all through such programs as Core20PLUS5.

Professor Owolabi also brings her expertise in equity in national healthcare policy providing leadership at the international level, having been a member of the Danish Ambassador’s Tour De Health and Commonwealth Fund/Academy Health Tour 2023.

Dr. Nunez-Smith’s research focuses on promoting health and healthcare equity for structurally marginalized populations with an emphasis on centering community engagement, supporting healthcare workforce diversity and development, developing patient reported measurements of healthcare quality, and identifying regional strategies to reduce the global burden of non-communicable diseases. Dr. Nunez-Smith has extensive expertise in examining the effects of social and structural determinants of health, systemic influences contributing to health disparities, health equity improvement, and community-academic partnered scholarship. In addition to primary data collection, management, and analysis, ERIC has institutional expertise in qualitative and mixed methods, population health, and medical informatics.

Dr. Nunez-Smith is the principal investigator on many NIH and foundation-funded research projects, including an NIH-funded project to develop a tool to assess patient reported experiences of discrimination in healthcare. She has conducted an investigation of the promotion and retention of diversity in academic medical school faculty and has published numerous articles on the experiences of minority students and faculty. Funded by NIH/NIMHD, she established the Eastern Caribbean Health Outcomes Research Network (ECHORN), a research collaborative across four Eastern Caribbean islands, supporting several chronic disease research projects and enhancing health outcomes research and leadership capacity in the region; the flagship ECHORN Cohort Study recruited and is following a community-dwelling adult cohort (n=3000) to examine novel chronic disease risk and protective factors. She received NIH/NHLBI funding to build upon this work by recruiting children into an expanded intergenerational ECHORN cohort, inclusive of a biorepository. She is also PI on one of five NIH/NIMHD-funded Transdisciplinary Collaborative Centers on Health Disparities focused on Precision Medicine which leverages the ECHORN infrastructure to conduct collaborative research on hypertension and diabetes.

Most recently, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shed national attention on the health and healthcare disparities of marginalized populations, she received NIH funding to leverage ECHORN to improve the COVID-19 testing cascade in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Further, she was called upon to chair the Governor’s ReOpen CT Advisory Group Community Committee and was subsequently named co-chair of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. She served as Senior Advisor to the White House COVID-19 Response and Chair of the Presidential COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Nunez-Smith has mentored dozens of trainees since completing fellowship and has received numerous awards for teaching and mentoring. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Nunez-Smith is board certified in internal medicine, having completed residency training at Harvard University’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and fellowship at the Yale Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, where she also received a Masters in Health Sciences.

Originally from the US Virgin Islands, she attended Jefferson Medical College, where she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society, and she earned a BA in Biological Anthropology and Psychology at Swarthmore College.

• Coffee Break

• The depiction of social determinants of health (SDOH) in data
  

MODERATOR:

Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee is John D. Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professor, Siobán D. Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health, and Chair of Biostatistics; Professor of Epidemiology and Global Public Health, UM School of Public Health. She is Associate Director for Quantitative Data Sciences, University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center as well as Assistant Vice President for Research for Research Data Services Strategy. Bhramar is the founding director of the University of Michigan’s summer institute on Big Data (BDSI). Her research interests include statistical methods for analysis of electronic health records, studies of gene-environment interaction, Bayesian methods, and shrinkage estimation, with strong collaborative areas mainly in cancer, cardiovascular diseases, reproductive health, and exposure science. She has co-authored more than 380 peer-reviewed publications in a variety of prestigious academic journals. She is the recipient of many awards for her scholarship, service, and teaching at the University of Michigan and beyond, including a membership with the National Academy of Medicine. Bhramar and her team took an active role in modeling the SARS-CoV-2 virus trajectory in India during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been covered by major media outlets across the world.

PANELISTS:

Stephanie Pugliese is a seasoned public health leader with a focus on innovation in government, whose journey in the professional landscape has been marked by a relentless pursuit of excellence and a commitment to driving impactful results. Located in the Office of Lieutenant Governor Dianne Primavera, the Office of eHealth Innovation (OeHI) serves as the coordinator and leader of health information technology (IT) policy, and catalyzes innovation in the health sphere throughout Colorado. As the Director of OeHI, Stephanie leads the strategic planning, partnerships, and funding for the Office in collaboration with the governor-appointed eHealth Commission. In this role, Stephanie also consults with the Governor’s Office regarding health IT policy and health privacy regulations. A key leader in development of the 2021 Colorado Health IT Roadmap, Stephanie has led the nimble and effective OeHI team through successful implementation, and is now planning the refresh of this crucial state strategy. With a passion for pioneering advancements in government practices, Stephanie has spearheaded innovative strategies that foster efficiency, transparency, and community engagement. Through leveraging cutting-edge technologies and leveraging key partnerships, she has successfully navigated complex bureaucratic landscapes to envision and implement streamlined and Coloradan-centric solutions.

Ines Maria Vigil , Healthcare Transformation Expert, Leader, Author, & Speaker, is passionate about creating a more effective and sustainable healthcare system; Dr. Vigil is dedicated to empowering healthcare professionals and consumers with data and insights that facilitate informed decisions and improved outcomes. Her commitment to advancing healthcare technology, population health, and data science with a health equity mindset further exemplifies her dedication to shaping a more progressive and inclusive healthcare landscape. As a physician of the American College of Preventative Medicine, co-author of the first of its kind textbook, "Population Health Analytics," published in 2021, and contributor to published works like “Both/And: Medicine & Public Health Together”, Dr. Vigil has significantly contributed to shaping the landscape of healthcare. With over 18 years of leadership experience, Dr. Vigil has held pivotal roles across healthcare sectors. She successfully led the application of Clarify Health’s technology and data-driven solutions, improving health outcomes and reducing cost across payer, provider, and life sciences customers in her role as Senior Vice President of Transformation. In the role of Senior Vice President and General Manager, Provider, she made their provider business vertical their most profitable to date. As Vice President of Advanced Analytics at Priority Health, Dr. Vigil led provider organizations into successful full-risk VBC arrangements within an integrated delivery system. Additionally, she spearheaded primary care practice and workflow transformation as Vice President of Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. Educationally, Dr. Vigil holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Sarah Lawrence College.

• Lunch

PANELISTS:

Mark Abraham is the Executive Director of Data Haven, a non-profit organization that partners with local and state government agencies, academic and health care institutions, foundations, and community organizations to collect, share, and interpret public information about Connecticut. In his role at Data Haven, Mark has produced cross-sector reports including the Greater New Haven, Fairfield County, and Greater Hartford Community Wellbeing Indexes. He established the Data Haven Community Wellbeing Survey program that has created an unprecedented source of statewide- and neighborhood-level information about community life, public health, economic security, and other topics through live, in-depth interviews with over 45,000 randomly-selected adults. From 2014 to 2017, Mark served as a Fellow of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, as part of a national cohort focused on Racial Equity. Mark has received an "Impact Award" from the Community Indicators Consortium and a national "40 under 40 in public health" award from the de Beaumont Foundation, and was elected to the Executive Committee of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (Washington, DC). Mark received his MPH in Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiology from the Yale School of Public Health, and his BA from Yale College.

Oliver J. Bear Don't Walk IV is a citizen of the Apsáalooke Nation, and a Postdoctoral Scholar at The University of Washington. Oliver’s research is at the intersection of clinical natural language processing, fairness, and ethics. Their thesis focused on the technical and ethical aspects of extracting socio-demographic information from clinical notes. Oliver’s research focuses on applying intersectionality to fairness audits of machine learning used to support the care of patients with HIV and working with Indigenous communities to identify Indigenous social determinants of health and extract this information from the electronic health record.

Michelle D. Wilson has over 30 years professional experience in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors building systems that center community, health justice, innovation, and equitable practices. Michelle currently serves as the Chief of the Health Equity Institute (HEI) at the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) where she leads several cross-cutting initiatives at the intersection of race, policy, and the social determinants of health. Within HEI, Michelle oversees the work of several programs including the Office of Minority Health and State Refugee Health Program. The HEI also provides training and technical assistance to RIDOH internal programs, other state agencies, and external stakeholders on compliance with Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services Standards, the American with Disabilities Act, and other frameworks intended to advance health equity. Over the past two years, Michelle has worked in partnership with the Brown University School of Public Health People, Place, and Health Collective (PPHC) to investigate the systemic and structural drivers that exacerbated the burden of COVID-19 transmission in low-income, urban communities. Examining different social contexts, this work aims to support the development of actionable policies and strategies to help mitigate the future risk of COVID morbidity and mortality among certain racial and ethnic populations. This engagement also led to creating with PPHC data academies designed to help community-based organizations increase their data literacy skills and confidence in working with public health data. In addition to collaborating with PPHC, Michelle serves as a mentor for the school's Health Equity Scholars Program and serves on the Community Action Advisory Board for the university's Advance Clinical and Translational Research Program. Before her current position, Michelle worked for six years in RIDOH's Center for Emergency Preparedness and Response supporting the planning for natural, biological, and human-caused disasters. She partnered closely with many local, state, federal, and national organizations to enhance community capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from both acute and long-term emergency events. She has presented her work at several National Association of County and City Health Preparedness Conferences as well as the 2023 Preparedness Conference hosted by the Rhode Island Association of Emergency Managers. In November of 2023, Michelle received the Individual Award for Leadership in Diversity and Inclusion from Diversity and Inclusion Professional for her lifetime work dedicated to championing the values of diversity and equity. She was noted for her ability to promote meaningful community engagement by bringing people to the table to identify opportunities and foster resolution. Michelle is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, DC where she received a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Committed to lifelong learning, she has participated in professional development trainings sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the Racial Equity Institute, and the Institute for Nonprofit Practice, to name a few. Michelle is the proud mother of two young men who both have dedicated their professional careers to the service of humanity. In her spare time, Michelle likes to explore different cultures by way of travel and ethnic cooking and has found a new passion for paint-by-number kits.

• Keynote speech: Professor Munmun De Choudhury, Associate Professor at the School of Interactive Computing in Georgia Institute of Technology

• Coffee Break

• The effect of artificial intelligence on health data equity
  

MODERATOR:

Chris Gibbons , is the founder and CEO of The Greystone Group, a digital health transformation firm. Greystone focuses on health sector visioning & design, innovation, Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and new health care revenue models. Dr. Gibbons is also the chief health innovation adviser at the Federal Communications Commission’s Connect2Health Task Force.

Previously, he was the associate director at the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. He is a published author with over 75 peer reviewed manuscripts, books, book chapters, monographs and federal reports. His work focuses on the role of digital technologies in improving health among underserved and disadvantaged populations.

He is a frequent keynote speaker and visionary digital health entrepreneur and innovator in the health sector. He is a start-up advisor at Microsoft for Start-Ups and a faculty member at Reach Thought Leadership. Dr. Gibbons is also an assistant professor (adj) at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a visiting professor at Duke University School of Medicine.

PANELISTS:

Andrew Taylor , is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science, Emergency Medicine, and Biostatistics at Yale, where he founded and leads the Yale Interdisciplinary AI & Medicine Lab (Y-IAML). Y-IAML is a pioneering collaborative research group dedicated to advancing the field of AI in Medicine through a unique cross-disciplinary approach focused on harmoniously blending AI with healthcare delivery. Y-IAML brings together experts in design, cognitive science, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, implementation science, ethics/philosophy, and decision theory to develop innovative AI solutions that are not only technically robust but also ethically informed and practically implementable. By bridging the gap between diverse fields of study, Dr. Taylor and his team aim to create AI technologies that are deeply attuned to the complexities of healthcare, focusing on patient-centered outcomes and transformative healthcare solutions. Dr. Taylor's goal is to lead the way in interdisciplinary AI research, fostering a new era of healthcare innovation that is inclusive, effective, and profoundly impactful. Dr. Taylor's work is generously supported by a diverse group of funding agencies including multiple NIH Institutes (NIDA, NIA, NIMDH, NLM), AHRQ, SIDM, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as well as industry partnerships. Dr. Taylor earned his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Mississippi. He completed medical school at Emory University School of Medicine and Emergency Medicine residency at the University of Connecticut. He lives in Durham with his wife and four kids.

Asif Dhar is vice chair and US Life Sciences and Health Care (LSHC) Industry Leader for Deloitte LLP leading the overall strategic direction for the life sciences and health care practices, including audit, consulting, tax, and advisory services. He helps Governments, Life Sciences and Health Care clients reinvent wellness, address disease, respond to pandemics and tackle health inequities. Dr. Dhar's teams have developed powerful view of the Future of Health which explains how health will leverage disruptive technologies to transform the industry to make it consumer focused, personalized, preventative, equitable and sustainable. He has a deep passion for climate, sustainability and equity and is an executive sponsor for Deloitte’s Health Equity Institute. Dr. Dhar has a deep interest in cancer that goes well beyond his day to day business responsibilities at Deloitte. He is a board member of the American Cancer Society and works with numerous organizations to end cancer as we know it.

• Speaker Reception

• Closed-door roundtable discussions. Invite only.