Speakers at Putting Care at the Center 2024

Brandon Wilson

INSPIRE: Building meaningful collaboration with people who have lived experience

Friday, October 18, 2024  |  12:15-1:15 pm

Bio: Dr. Brandon G. Wilson, DrPH, MHA, is a transformative leader in health innovation, public health, and equity. He currently serves as the Senior Director of Health Innovation, Public Health, and Equity at Community Catalyst, where he oversees the organization’s health system innovation and community-first public health work. Furthering his commitment to improving health care access, quality, and equality, Dr. Wilson serves on several boards, including the Primary Care Collaborative, Health Care Payment and Action Learning Network, and the Community Solutions Program Partner Advisory Board.

In his role at Community Catalyst, Dr. Wilson leads the Center for Community Engagement in Health Innovation. This center conducts community-based research to understand how inequities in the U.S. health system drive poor health outcomes for historically excluded communities and drives practice and policy change strategies based on its findings. Dr. Wilson also drives Community Catalyst’s strategic vision for a public health system rooted in community leadership and perspective, which includes Community Catalyst’s Vaccine Equity and Public Health Program (VEAP).

Luis Ortega

Bio: Luis Ortega (he/them) is a multidisciplinary storyteller, narrative strategist, facilitator, and the founder and director of Storytellers for Change.

Over the last fourteen years, Luis has worked to design and facilitate storytelling and narrative strategies to mobilize communities and organizations toward collective healing, justice, and liberation. His research and consulting practice focuses on the intersection of narrative change, racial equity, asset-based storytelling, facilitation, and participatory engagement.

Luis’ projects have been featured at the Harvard DACA Seminar, HBO’s “Where Do You Exist?” podcast, the Kauffman Foundation’s Disruptor Speaker Series, the Seattle Design Festival, and the Gates Foundation Discovery Center. Luis is a W K. Kellogg Foundation’s Community Leadership Network Fellow, the Co-Director of La Cima Bilingual Leadership Camp, and the co-founder of the Expresión Storytelling Fellowship at the Latinx Education Collaborative. Luis has a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington and a Masters in Education Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Pam Dardess

INSPIRE: Building meaningful collaboration with people who have lived experience

Friday, October 18, 2024  |  12:15-1:15 pm

Bio: Pam Dardess is Vice President at Institute for Patient and Family-Centered Care (IPFCC) where her work focuses on creating and sustaining meaningful partnerships between patients, families, and healthcare partners. Pam is a qualitative researcher who believes strongly in the power of words and stories as data. Prior to joining IPFCC, Pam was a Principal Researcher at the American Institutes for Research where she led AIR’s Center for Patient and Consumer Engagement. Pam has an MPH from UNC-Chapel Hill with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health and particularly values the opportunities she has had over the years to learn from people with lived experience.

Father Paul Abernathy

Keynote: The power of ecosystems to meet the collective needs of the community

Thursday, October 17, 2024  |  8:30-9 am

Bio: Father Paul Abernathy is an Orthodox Christian priest and the founding CEO of the Neighborhood Resilience Project. Since 2011, Fr. Paul has labored with his community to address Community Trauma with Trauma Informed Community Development; A framework that facilitates the transformation of trauma affected communities to resilient, healing and healthy communities so that people can be healthy enough to sustain opportunities and realize their potential. Under Fr. Paul’s leadership, innovative trauma-informed grass-roots strategies have been developed and implemented to address acute, historical, transgenerational and complex trauma on a community level.  In addition to programming,  millions of dollars in various kinds of support have also been distributed to the Greater Pittsburgh Area with his direction.  Community groups from across the nation have worked with Fr. Paul to be trained in the Trauma-Informed Community Development framework.

He has a B.A. in International Studies from Wheeling Jesuit University, and holds a Master in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh.  He also holds a Master of Divinity from St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and was selected for Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program. A former Non-Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Army, Father Paul is also a combat veteran of the Iraq War.

Fr. Paul is also an author, and his work has been featured in film as well as local, national, and international media.

In addition to his work with the organization, Fr. Paul is and has been a member of multiple community, state, and national boards and has received numerous community awards.

Fr. Paul is the pastor of St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church, and a husband and father of two children.

Secretary Valerie Arkoosh

Fireside chat with Secretary Valerie Arkoosh

Wednesday, October 16, 2024  |  1:20-1:50 pm

Bio: Valerie A. Arkoosh, MD, MPH, was appointed to lead the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services by Governor Josh Shapiro on January 17, 2023.

Prior to this role, Secretary Arkoosh served on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners for eight years, serving as Commission Chair from November 2016 through January 2023. As a physician and public health professional, Secretary Arkoosh was at the center of Montgomery County’s efforts to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, leading a data- and science-driven approach to the unprecedented challenge. Arkoosh’s leadership was praised during the county’s response, especially her transparency and public communication throughout the pandemic.

Arkoosh is a graduate of the University of Nebraska College of Medicine and received a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She performed her residency at Jefferson Medical College in Anesthesiology with a special focus in Obstetrics. Prior to stepping into public service, Secretary Arkoosh was Professor of Clinical Anesthesiology and Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.

Upon obtaining her Master of Public Health in 2007, Arkoosh became deeply engaged in the national effort to achieve comprehensive health care reform. She led the National Physicians Alliance, a national non-profit organization of physicians, who, putting their patients before profits, joined a broad-based nation-wide coalition for reform. During this time, she developed policy and legislative strategy, and promoted public engagement in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and throughout the country. Dr. Arkoosh maintains comprehensive knowledge of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and its impact on individuals and the health care system.