Speakers

Invited Speakers

We invite speakers with unique perspectives on health care policy and practice in Houston to join us at our quarterly general meetings. Please let us know if you have suggestions for future speakers!

November 17, 2008 Rep. Garnet Coleman  Texas State House of Representatives, District 147
Garnet Coleman has served the people of District 147 in the Texas House of Representatives continuously since 1991. Rep. Coleman http://www.garnetcoleman.com/Garnet/Biography.html
has earned a reputation as a diligent leader who focuses his work in the areas of health care, economic development and education. He is a member of the House Committee on Public Health and the House Committee on County Affairs.

August 18, 2008 Nuria Homedes, M.D., D.P.H
Is access to pharmaceuticals contributing to increased health disparities? 
Dr. Nuria Homedes is Associate Professor of Management, Policy, and Community Health Sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and El Paso School of Public Health. She directs the UTHSC-SPH Global Health Program. She has extensive international health experience and has worked and written on public health policy in Guyana, Bolivia, Honduras, Columbia, Zambia, Chad, Mozambique, New Guinea, Mexico, and Peru. She is the editor of FARMACOS, a bulletin of the Latin American Network for the Promotion of the Appropriate Use of Pharmaceuticals in Latin America and has published extensively on the topic of the pharmaceutical industry and its impact on health.

May 19, 2008  
The May session was dedicated to a forum on access to cancer care in the Houston community. It was a great success with many ideas generated.

April 21, 2008 David S. Lopez  President and CEO
Harris County Hospital District
David S. Lopez has been president and CEO of the Harris County Hospital District since April 2005. He previously was COO of the HCHD. Mr. Lopez will discuss “Operational and Strategic Priorities” of the District, the main source of medical care for the uninsured and underinsured citizens of Harris County. For further information about the time and date of the meeting, please click on the Meetings page.

February 25, 2008 Jay H. Stein, MD  Executive Vice-President, Executive Dean
Baylor College of Medicine
Jay Stein was previously senior vice president and vice provost for health affairs at the University of Rochester Medical Center, New York, as well as the CEO of the Medical Center and Strong Health System. Prior to Rochester, Stein was senior vice president and provost at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. He has also served as chairman of the department of medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, where he was also chief of the division of renal diseases, and prior to that was professor of medicine at Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus.

Stein has served on many national committees including as president of the American Society of Nephrology. His many honors include as a member of Alpha Omega Alpha and a Master of the American College of Physicians. Stein was also the 1999 recipient of the very prestigious Robert H. Williams Distinguished Chair of Medicine Award from the Association of Professors of Medicine.

November 19, 2007 Elena Marks, JD MPH  Director of Health and Environmental Policy
Mayor’s Office, City of Houston
Elena M. Marks earned a J.D. with honors, 1981, from The University of Texas School of Law and an M.P.H. with a concentration in public policy, 2001, from The University of Texas School of Public Health. She is currently the Director of Health and Environmental Policy, and leads this effort on behalf of Mayor Bill White. She is responsible for development of policies and implementation of strategic actions relating to public health, health care, and environmental matters. Ms. Marks oversees the Director of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Director of Environmental Programming.

August 20, 2007 John W. Burruss, MD
Chief of Psychiatry, Ben Taub Hospital
Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine Director, Affiliated Medical Services
John Burruss earned an M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine and completed his training as chief resident in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at BCM. He has been a clinical attending at the Ben Taub General Hospital since joining the faculty in 1999, working in the emergency room, the inpatient unit, and the outpatient clinic. He is currently Chief of Psychiatry for Ben Taub. Additionally, Dr. Burruss is the medical director of the Trauma & Grief Program at Baylor, a coordinated response to those who have experienced the catastrophic loss of a loved one. The title of his talk will be: “HCHD: Inadequate by Design?”

May 21, 2007 Pauline Rosenau, PhD Professor of Management, Policy, and Public Health
UT Houston School of Public Health
Pauline Rosenau was previously a Professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal for two decades. Her Ph.D. was granted by the University of California at Berkeley in 1972, and she received her Masters in Public Health in 1992 from UCLA. She is citizen of both Canada and the United States, is fluent in English and French, and speaks some Spanish. Dr. Rosenau authored The Competition Paradigm: America’s Romance with Conflict, Contest, and Commerce (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). She edited Public/Private Policy Partnerships (MIT University Press, 2000) and Health Reform in the Nineties (SAGE Publications, 1994).

March 19,2007 Sanjiv Harpavat, MD PhD
Resident, Department of Pediatrics
Baylor College of Medicine
Sanjiv Harpavat earned a Ph.D in Neuroscience and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is currently a first year resident in the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, with research interests in developmental genetics. He will be speaking on the topic of childhood obesity: “McDonald’s and Childhood Obesity: Doing something about it!” He is also author, with Sahar Nissim, of Microcards.