Chair, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at University of Massachusetts Memorial Health
Medical Director of Lifeline for Moms
American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Dr. Moore Simas is the Donna M. and Robert J. Manning Chair of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Professor of Ob/Gyn, Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Population & Quantitative Health Sciences at UMass Chan Medical School/UMassMemorial Health.

Dr. Moore Simas is an academic specialist in general Ob/Gyn, physician-scientist, educator, advocate, and leader.  She is the founding Obstetric Engagement Liaison of the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program (MCPAP) for Moms, a first in nation state-wide program that enhances the capacity of obstetric care clinicians to address perinatal mental health and substance use disorders.

MCPAP for Moms has impacted national policy resulting in 22 additional states having similar programs, with current legislation poised to sustain existing programs and to support the development of others. It is anticipated that by the end of 2023, there will be 30 state-based programs in addition to the two national Access Programs via Postpartum Support International and the Veteran’s Administration.

Dr. Moore Simas is obstetric director of Lifeline for Moms, a program founded to provide technical assistance for others developing Perinatal Psychiatry Access Programs, like MCPAP for Moms, and as a research home to further advance innovations in integrating obstetric and mental health care. She is MPI of the Lifeline for Moms National Network of Access Programs, designed to facilitate peer-learning and sharing of resources with partners and collaborators, across the U.S., and to facilitate quality improvement and program evaluation within and across Access Programs. The Lifeline for Moms team and their collaborators have developed perinatal mental health toolkits, e-modules, and implementation guides that are now available through the American College of Ob/Gyn’s (ACOG) website.

Dr. Moore Simas has a long-standing federally funded research portfolio through CDC, NIH, PCORI, ACOG, Perigee and other foundations, and is an author on over 150 peer-reviewed publications. She partners with and advises professional, advocacy, and governmental organizations to advance the equitable care of all pregnant and postpartum individuals. She serves her profession nationally as the Society of Academic Specialists in General Ob/Gyn’s (SASGOG) President Elect, on ACOG’s Maternal Mental Health Expert Work Group (Co-Chair) and Clinical Practice Guidelines OB Committee, and as an American Board of Ob/Gyn (ABOG) oral examiner.  She has served on the Alliance in Innovation in Maternal Health’s (AIM) Perinatal Mental Health Conditions (PMHC) and Postpartum Discharge Transitions (PPDT) Safety Bundle Work Groups, developed the PMHC Change Package with the Institute of Healthcare Innovations (IHI) as lead faculty, and will be leading her state’s perinatal quality collaborative (PQC) in implementing the AIM PMHC bundle.

Dr. Moore Simas is passionate about mentoring and developing the next generation of women leaders in academic medicine, as such, she developed UMass’ Empowering Mid-career PrOfessional Women for Executive Roles (EMPOWER) course which is in its 4^th offering at UMass Chan/UMass Memorial Health.

Professor and Chief, Division Academic Specialists in General Obstetrics and Gynecology
University of Florida College of Medicine

I presently hold joint appointments as Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Psychiatry. I serve as the Division Chief of Academic Specialists in General Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the Medical Director of the Women’s Health Clinic at the Medical Plaza. I am board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, addiction medicine, and psychiatry. In addition to the clinical care of high-risk obstetric patients with co-morbid psychiatric and substance use disorders, I serve on multiple regional and statewide committees, lecture nationally, and conduct research in my areas of interest. 

My goal as an academic physician is to seek out collaborative multidisciplinary approaches to the care of high-risk obstetrical patients and to pursue evidence-based methodologies to their care. My allotted research time is dedicated to the development of innovative methods and approaches to improved health outcomes. I currently serve as chair of the Committee for Underserved Women in District XII of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Additionally, I serve on the Florida Maternal Mortality Review Committee, focusing on the complications and co-morbidities affecting the maternal mortality rates in Florida. I am also the site-PI on a HRSA funded grant offering consultative services related to perinatal psychiatric and substance use disorders for obstetrics clinicians in Florida. I have a strong desire to identify obstacles to healthcare and poor perinatal outcomes in women and neonates who are underserved and disadvantaged, so that improvements in the identification and care of these women and infants can be instituted. Additionally, I have a unique perspective on the barriers and obstacles of underserved women, as both a psychiatrist and OBGYN, and how they relate to mental health and substance use disorders in pregnant and postpartum women.

Vice Chair of Wellness, Professor and Fellowship Program Director in the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine
University of Colorado School of Medicine
American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Division Director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine
Brown University and Women and Infants Hospital Warren Alpert Medical School

Dr. Miller is an Associate Professor in Obstetrics & Gynecology at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She is the Division Director of Maternal Fetal Medicine at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island. She is committed to improving mental health care for pregnant and postpartum people, with the overarching goal of equitable access to holistic wellness for all new families.

She has led the development of multiple national consensus statements to guide care provision for perinatal mental health. By bringing attention to gaps in health services for perinatal mental health care, she has challenged the paradigm of our current obstetric model of perinatal mental health care and works to transform obstetric care delivery to include behavioral health.

She is currently PI of four NIH-funded studies focused on dissemination of the collaborative care model as a health services intervention to equitably and sustainably integrate mental health care into obstetric settings. Her work focuses on community-engagement to enhance equity in the collaborative care model, digital health tools to scale the collaborative care model to postpartum families, implementation strategies to optimize collaborative care workflow, and prevention of perinatal depression programs with the collaborative care model.

David Cook is Professor of Medicine and Medical Education in the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine; Director of Education Science in the Mayo Office of Applied Scholarship and Education Science; Research Chair for the Mayo Multidisciplinary Simulation Center; a practicing physician specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of complex medicine problems; a Deputy Editor for the journal Medical Education; and an Editorial board member for the journal Simulation in Healthcare. He received a B.S. in chemistry from Utah State University and an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He then came to the Mayo Clinic for residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in General Internal Medicine, and joined the staff in 2004. He also completed a Master degree in Health Professions Education through the University of Illinois at Chicago - Department of Medical Education.

Dr. Cook's research interests include the theory and design of online learning and other educational technologies, the quality of medical education research methods and reporting, clinical reasoning, and assessment of clinical performance. He has developed and studied multiple online courses for residents and medical students, conducted numerous systematic reviews, and published over 230 journal articles and book chapters on medical education topics. His h-index is 85 (meaning he has published 85 papers that have each been cited 85 times).

Honors include the Mayo Clinic "Distinguished Educator Award" (Mayo's highest award in education; 2021) and the Society of Simulation in Healthcare "Researcher of the Year Award" (2023). He serves as executive secretary to regional leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He and his wife Jennifer are the parents of 5 incredibly wonderful children.

Dr. Nana E. Coleman is the System Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs, Physician Enterprise at CommonSpirit Health. She is also a tenured Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and a practicing pediatric intensivist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, TX.  

Immediately prior to joining CommonSpirit Health, Dr. Coleman served as the associate provost for academic affairs and health systems science at Baylor College of Medicine where she oversaw institutional accreditation, academic mission regulatory compliance, enterprise risk management, educational institutional research, outcomes assessment and key health systems science initiatives for the organization. Dr. Coleman served as assistant dean for graduate medical education for five years at Baylor College of Medicine where she provided central administrative and educational oversight for more than 100 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredited programs and an additional 70+ Texas Medical Board approved programs.  

As the chief academic officer for CommonSpirit Health, Dr. Coleman coordinates the health system’s relationships with its national academic partners and provides system oversight for the development of new academic programs and initiatives across the continuum of medical education. She also partners with key leaders in the enterprise to build out national clinical standards and to accelerate research opportunities across the health system.  

She has been appointed by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to lead a team of national experts in the renewal of the AAMC Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (QIPS) Competencies,and has served as an American Medical Association (AMA) Health Systems Science scholar. Dr. Coleman received her medical degree from the Brown University School of Medicine/Dartmouth Medical School combined program and completed her internship and residency in pediatrics at Columbia University Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. She completed her fellowship in pediatric critical care medicine at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC and earned both her master’s in education and undergraduate degrees at Harvard University. 

Dr. Dolansky is the Sarah C. Hirsh Professor of Nursing, Director of the Quality and Safety Institute for Nurses, and Associate Professor of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. She is also a Senior Faculty Scholar for the Veterans Administration Quality Scholars Program. Dr. Dolansky’s expertise includes quality improvement, interprofessional education, and implementation science. She has taught the interprofessional course “Continual Improvement in Health Care” at Case Western Reserve University for the past 10 years and was Chair of the Quality and Safety Task Force at the school of nursing that integrated quality and safety into the undergraduate and graduate nursing curricula. She is co-director of the Veterans Administration Transforming Primary Care program to implement and evaluate a longitudinal interdisciplinary curriculum for medical residents and nurse practitioner learners and is active in a Josiah H. Macy Foundation Interprofessional Education Grant for pre-licensure students. Extramural funding includes two NIH studies related to heart failure and self-management. Director of the QSEN Institute (Quality and Safety Education for Nurses) an international community of healthcare professionals providing resources for enhancing quality and safety competencies in academia and practice. Her contributions to interprofessional quality improvement education include co-authoring the book “Fundamentals of Healthcare Improvement” and the massive open online course, “Take the Lead on Healthcare Quality”, which has reached over 15,000 interprofessional learners across the world.

Dr. Dolansky earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing as well as her Master of Science in Nursing from Kent State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Nursing from Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Annette Mallory Donawa is the Assistant Provost, Office of Continuing Professional Development at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a Jointly Accredited provider. She is a Senior Consultant on Continuing Professional Development for the AAMC, and an international and national speaker, having presented in China, Canada, West Africa, and throughout the US. Her experience in education and industry spans 30 years. Prior to joining Thomas Jefferson University, she served as the Assistant Dean for the Office of Continuing Medical Education at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for eight years. Her contributions to continuing medication education and accreditation over the past 15 years include serving on the ACCME Board of Directors and the Accreditation Review Committee (ARC) since 2019; steering committee member for ACCME’s annual conference (2020 and 2021); and Chair of the Program Committee for the Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education (SACME) for three years. Dr. Donawa earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mass Communications, with a minor in English from Towson University, a Master’s Degree in Education with a focus on instructional design and curriculum development from Northern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in Higher Education and Administration from Morgan State University. 

Dr. Howley is the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships in Medical Education at the AAMC. She is an Educational Psychologist who has spent over 25 years in the field of medical education supporting learners and faculty, conducting research, and developing curricula. She joined the AAMC in 2016 to advance the continuum of medical education, support experiential learning, and curricular transformation across its member institutions and their clinical partners. Prior to joining the AAMC, she spent eight years as the Associate DIO and AVP of Medical Education and Physician Development for Carolinas HealthCare System, one of the largest independent academic medical centers in the U.S. In that role, she led a number of medical education initiatives across the professional development continuum, including graduate medical education accreditation, as well as physician leadership development for the large integrated healthcare system. She holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She began her career as a member of the medical education faculty at the University of Virginia School of Medicine where she designed and led performance based assessments and simulation-enhanced curricula. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Central Florida, and both her Master of Education and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Nagler is the Assistant Director for Accreditation, Validation and Credentialing at the American College of Surgeons. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of the Practice of Medical Education at Duke University. At the American College of Surgeons Dr. Nagler is responsible for oversight and advancement of several major initiatives including the Continuous Professional Development Accreditation Program for the American College of Surgeons, which approves internal and external educational activities for continuing medical education credit, utilizing best practices in process and promoting educational innovation. Dr. Nagler also oversees the Program for Educational Validation and Credentialing and the ACS Academy of Master Surgeon Educators, advancing the science and implementation of education through innovation and promotion of the highest achievements in lifelong learning.

Before joining ACS, Dr. Nagler was the Assistant Dean for Graduate Medical Education at Duke Medicine. She helped build a GME faculty development infrastructure, developed institution-wide educational programs for residents and fellows, and was instrumental in moving medical education research and scholarship forward. Dr. Nagler serves as a leader on national committees such as the Council of Medical Specialty Societies Continuing Professional Development Professional Peer Group, the Academies Collaborative, Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Education Affairs, and has been involved in numerous collaborations across institutions, furthering medical education practice and research.

Dr. Nagler received her Bachelor of Science in Human Services Studies from Cornell University, Juris Doctor from New England School of Law, Master of Arts in Sociology from East Carolina University and Ed.D. from North Carolina State University.

Dr. Ogrinc is the Senior Vice President for Certification Standards and Programs at the American Board of Medical Specialties. In this roll he oversees all aspects of the American Board of Medical Specialties program of certification, including initial certification and continuing certification in addition to providing strategic leadership for the ongoing evolution and implementation of board certification standards and programming.

Dr. Ogrinc previously served as the Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College and as the Associate Chief of Staff for Education and a hospitalist at the White River Junction VA. He was the Senior Scholar for the White River Junction VA Quality Scholars program and is internationally known as a medical education innovator dedicated to improving the quality, safety, and value of care.  He is a hospitalist at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago and a Visiting Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago.

Dr. Ogrinc received his Medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and earned a Master’s degree from Dartmouth Medical School, Center for Evaluative Clinical Sciences.

Dr. Price is a Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine; Senior advisor to the President, American Board of Family Medicine; and an advisor and coach in Health Professions Education, Quality Improvement and Continuing Professional Development.

Dr. Price spent 27 years in the Kaiser Permanente (KP) system in several roles, including Director of Medical Education for the Colorado Region and the (national) Permanente Federation; physician investigator with the KP Colorado Institute of Health Research; Co- director of the Kaiser Colorado Center for Health Education, Dissemination and Implementation research; Clinical Lead for Kaiser National Mental Health Guidelines; member of the Kaiser National Guideline Directors Group, and Chair of Family Medicine for the Colorado Permanente Medical Group.  From 2014-2019 he served as Senior Vice-President, American Board of Medical Specialties Research and Education Foundation, and Executive Director of the ABMS Multi-Specialty Portfolio Approval Program.

Dr. Price served on the ABFM Board of Directors from 2003 – 2008, where he chaired the R&D and Maintenance of Certification committees and was Board Chair from 2007-2008.  He is a past Director of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, a past-president of the Colorado Academy of Family Physicians, past chair of the AAMC Group on Educational Affairs section on Continuing Education and Improvement, and currently serves on the AAMC Integrating Quality Initiative steering committee. He is widely published and has spoken nationally and internationally and published in areas ranging from continuing medical education/professional development, quality and practice improvement, mental health, and evidence-based medicine.

Dr. Price received his M.D. degree from Rutgers Medical School in 1985 and completed his Family Medicine Residency and chief residency at JFK Medical Center, Edison, NJ, in 1988. He is Board Certified by and Maintaining Certification with the American Board of Family Medicine. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions, and the Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education (SACME) and the recipient of the 2018 SACME Distinguished Service in CME Award.

Dr. Webb is the Chief Clinician Educator at the Veterans Health Administration’s National Center for Patient Safety. His work includes integrating national safety metrics to establish interprofessional safety training programs and standards that reach across the VHA enterprise. He is also the program director for two national VHA quality and safety fellowship training programs including the Chief Residents in Quality and Patient Safety which is the largest chief residency training program in quality and safety in the United States.

Dr. Webb’s academic focus is on the integration of High Reliability Organization (HRO) principles in quality and safety curricula to further the goal of achieving Zero Harm for all patients. His curricular efforts were awarded the VHA HeRO award which is highest level of HRO recognition available within VHA reserved to honor those who advance VHA’s safety journey. Aligned to that effort, his mission is to support the cultural fabric necessary for caregivers and systems to deliver safe and effective care without fear of inadvertent harm, and his hope is that all health care delivery systems will achieve the maturity in psychological safety necessary to achieve that end.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Medical degree from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine, and completed his Psychiatry residency at Harvard South Shore.

Dr. Wong is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the University of Toronto. A staff general internist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, Ontario, his academic interests lie at the intersection between medical education and quality improvement. He has worked with several national and international organizations, including the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Choosing Wisely Canada, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and the Association of American Medical Colleges, to establish training programs and standards to build quality improvement and patient safety capacity across the learning continuum.

Dr. Wong has extensive experience leading large scale patient safety and quality improvement curricula targeting trainees across the continuum. He focuses his research at the intersection of patient safety, quality improvement and medical education. His vision for patient safety is one where members from all healthcare sectors and professions including patients, join together to discover, implement and sustain safe, high quality models of care to ensure that avoidable harm is the exception and high quality and high value care are the rule. As an educator, he works to integrate safety and quality in health professions education, such that there is no longer a need for “formal” curricula and “patient safety experts” to impart trainees with core patient safety competencies.

Dr. Wong earned a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacology and a Medical degree from the University of Toronto. He was a past winner of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute Research Competition.

Patricia S. O’Sullivan is a Professor of Medicine and Surgery and Director, Research and Development in Medical Education, at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. She holds the Endowed Chair in Surgical Education. At UCSF she co-directs the Teaching Scholars Program and oversees the advanced degree programs in health professions education as well as leads efforts in facilitating educational research. Her educational research studies have collaborators from medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and health related professions. The UCSF faculty development program that she led received the international ASPIRE for Excellence Award. Dr. O’Sullivan has led the Research in Medical Education Section of the AAMC, the RIME Program Planning Committee and the Division for Professions Education of the American Educational Research Association. She is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and recipient of the Merrill Flair Award from the GEA, of the Outstanding Career Achievements in Medical Education from the Society of General Internal Medicine and the UCSF Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award. In 2022 she received the Harmen Tiddens Medal from University Medical Center Utrecht The Netherland

Dr. Bailey is an Associate Professor and serves as the Associate Dean for Faculty Development at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. She holds a Ph.D. in Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education and a M.A. in College and University Administration from Michigan State University. She has experience serving as an adjunct and full-time faculty member, in dean-level positions including chief academic officer at the community college level, and as director, assistant, and associate dean responsible for faculty development at two medical schools. Her research interests include teaching and learning, medical education scholarship, faculty and gender roles in higher education, reflection and mindfulness, and work/life navigation.

At Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), Christopher Kenneally develops programs covering issues facing scholarly publishing and the research community. Kenneally is host of CCC’s weekly podcast series, Velocity of Content, and produces CCC’s Town Hall series on LinkedIn Live.

As a freelance journalist, Kenneally has reported for The New York Times and The Boston Globe, among many other publications, as well as for WBUR-FM (Boston), National Public Radio, and WGBH-TV (PBS-Boston). He is the author of “Massachusetts 101” (Applewood Books), a history of the state “from Redcoats to Red Sox.”

Co-chair of Advisors, Pieces of Me Foundation
Lawyer, Consensus-builder, Coach, and Columnist

Gary C. Norman is a consultant as well as a public servant.  Mr. Norman infuses his work with the invaluable perspectives gained from lived experience and through legal expertise, particularly in the realm of disability inclusion. With degrees from Washington College of Law at American University, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University, and from Wright State University, Mr. Norman provides clients an erudite approach and a wealth of knowledge, making his counsel a true asset. The handler of a guide dog, he has a passion for infusing considerations related to pets and service animals as part of public policy.

Mr. Norman is a part-time law professor of healthcare law and finance at Cleveland-Marshall. He serves as a member of the Healthcare Law Advisory Council. 

Mr. Norman’s journey in public service began as a Presidential Management Fellow. He presently serves on the Board of the Presidential Management Alumni Association as its Attorney Advisor and Training Committee Co-Chair. He later served as Chair of the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights and as a Visiting Fellow at the Robert J. Dole Institute for Politics, advancing a positive conversation as to disability inclusion. Mr. Norman is a member of the Dean’s Leadership Council at the College of Liberal Arts at Wright State University.

Associate Professor, Family Medicine
Associate Professor, Information, School of Information
Editor-in-Chief, JMIR mHealth and uHealth, Michigan Medicine

Dr. Buis is an expert in the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of digital health tools for chronic disease self-management. She has worked in both consumer-facing and clinical informatics, with an emphasis on behavior change interventions for uncontrolled hypertension, diabetes, and cancer prevention. Much of her work is rooted in understanding and reducing health and healthcare-related disparities through a health equity lens. Dr. Buis is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan (UM) and she also holds an appointment in the UM School of Information. She serves as the Faculty Lead for the Telehealth Research Initiative in the UM Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation (IHPI) and is a fellow of the Society for Behavioral Medicine. Dr. Buis also serves as the Editor-in-Chief for JMIR mHealth and uHealth, one of the leading journals in health informatics (Impact Factor = 5.0), with a specific focus on mobile health.

Associate Professor, Systems and Information Engineering
Associate Professor, Public Health Sciences
University of Virginia

Dr. Rupa Valdez is an associate professor at the University of Virginia with joint appointments in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the School of Medicine. She is also a core faculty member of Global Studies and the Disability Studies Initiative. Dr. Valdez merges the disciplines of human factors engineering, health informatics, and cultural anthropology to understand and support the ways in which people manage health at home and in the community. Her research and teaching focus on underserved populations, including populations that are racial/ethnic minorities, are of low socioeconomic status or are living with physical, sensory, or cognitive disabilities. Her work draws heavily on community engagement and has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), among others. She has testified before Congress on the topic of health equity for the disability community and received the Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) for her pioneering work in creating and developing the subdiscipline of patient ergonomics.   

Among other appointments, she serves on the Board of Directors for the American Association of People with Disabilities, on PCORI’s Patient Engagement Advisory Panel, and as a member of the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) Health Equity Expert Work Group. Dr. Valdez also currently serves as an Associate Editor for Ergonomics, the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) Open, and Human Factors in Healthcare. She has previously served on the AHRQ Director’s Roundtable on Patient Safety, as Chair of HFES Internal Affairs Division, and in multiple advisory roles for the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. She is the founder and president of Blue Trunk Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to making it easier for people with chronic health conditions, disabilities, and age-related conditions to travel. Dr. Valdez herself lives with multiple chronic health conditions and disabilities, which have and continue to influence her research, teaching, and advocacy. She has been quoted in publications ranging from Politico to Teen Vogue.

Assistant Professor, Law
Co-Director, Center for Health Law and Policy
Cleveland State University College of Law

Dr. Laura C. Hoffman is an Assistant Professor of Law at Cleveland State University College of Law (CSU Law), Co-Director of the CSU Law Center for Health Law and Policy and Inaugural Fellow for the American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics (ASLME) 2022-23 Expanding Perspectives Fellowship Program.  Prior, Dr. Hoffman served as a Senior Research Fellow with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School where she contributed to the development of projects and events involving palliative care policy, Elder Law, brain injury, and Disability Law and Assistant Professor of Law/Faculty Researcher for Seton Hall University School of Law’s Center for Health and Pharmaceutical Law and Policy where her work focused on making policy changes to improve healthcare access for people with disabilities and children. Previously, Dr. Hoffman worked for Data Federal Corporation as a contract Attorney Advisor for the U.S. Department of HHS - Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals in Cleveland, OH. She drafted appellate decisions for Administrative Law Judges involving legal disputes over Medicare payments. Dr. Hoffman’s legal scholarship has been published in numerous law reviews and journals including the Notre Dame Journal on Legislation, the Pittsburgh Journal of Environmental and Public Health Law, the Iowa Journal of Gender, Race, & Justice, and the American Journal of Law and Medicine. Her legal scholarship has been cited by the National Council on Disability and the RAND Corporation.