Hannah Bryant, MPH is the program and compliance office at AIDS United. She supports HRSA funded initiatives that aim to replicate evidence-informed interventions to improve health outcomes along the HIV Care Continuum. In this role, she provides programmatic support, fiscal oversight, and technical assistance.
Prior to joining AIDS United, Hannah worked on issues affecting the health and well-being of women, both at a community-based organization and a university-led research and policy program. Hannah is particularly interested in the intersection between women, violence, and
HIV, as well as best practices to integrally involve people living with HIV in program development and implementation.
Hannah earned her Master of Public Health, focused in Community-oriented Primary Care, from George Washington University. Previously, Hannah graduated from American University with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In her free time, Hannah enjoys yoga and exploring new DC restaurants.
Howard Cabral is Professor of Biostatistics, a co-director of the Biostatistics Graduate Program, and the Director of the Biostatistics and Research Design Program of the Boston University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. He has over 30 years of teaching, consulting, collaborating, and statistical research experience in a variety of biomedical fields. These include public health, epidemiology, behavioral sciences, health services, and basic physical sciences research and practice. His students have included undergraduates, Master's and doctoral level students in biostatistics and other public health disciplines, biomedical post-doctoral and clinical fellows, and faculty seeking additional training in statistical methods. His research spans both observational studies and randomized clinical
trials, including well known studies in cardiovascular health and studies of the effects of substance use on human health across the life span. He has extensive experience in the analysis of longitudinal health data, especially those collected in urban areas with ethnic and socioeconomic diversity. His methodological interests are in the analysis of longitudinal data, the effects of missing data on statistical estimation, and statistical computing. Dr. Cabral’s collaborative research has most recently examined the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on development from birth through age 22, randomized trials of problem solving education in treating parental depression, a randomized trial testing a peer-based model in retaining those infected with HIV in primary care, models to enhance the care of homeless patients living with HIV, differences in child and maternal health in those who did and did not received intervention through assisted reproductive technologies (ART) linking vital statistics, administrative public health and clinical databases in Massachusetts, and the neurobiological changes in the brain among normally aging animals as well as those resulting from stroke, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease among participants in the Framingham Heart Study. He is also a statistical consultant to the department of public health in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Cabral provided his research and statistical methodologic expertise to a review panel of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science that examined the effects of parental depression on parenting practices and child development and published a widely recognized book on its findings. He is also a developer of the BODE Index for patients with COPD, a nationally and internationally employed tool for risk assessment that has been cited in the literature over 1,460 times to-date.
Adan Cajina has almost 30 years of experience in the area of evaluation, research and systems analysis in both the private and public sector. In the past 21 years, he has utilized his skills to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Cajina served as a statistician to the CDC-funded HIV Surveillance program for the Washington, DC EMA, within the District of Columbia’s Department of Health. Since 1999, he has been working for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), first as a Health Statistician for the Office of Science and Epidemiology of the HIV/AIDS Bureau, and as Director of Evaluation for the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth. Since 2006, he has been serving as Chief of the Demonstration and Evaluation Branch, the unit that administers the Part F – Special Projects of National Significance Ryan White program.
His early career in the private sector included work for major consulting companies in the area of management consulting, marketing and pharmaceutical research, and public opinion surveys. Mr. Cajina holds a Master of Science degree in Operations Research and Management Sciences, and a Bachelor of Science in Systems Analysis and Engineering from The George Washington University.
Laura Cheever, MD, ScM, is the associate administrator for the HIV/AIDS Bureau of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
Dr. Cheever previously served as the deputy associate administrator and chief medical officer of the HIV/AIDS Bureau, responsible for leading the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and HRSA's programming for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. She has also provided national leadership for HIV/AIDS care and treatment, including the development of federal guidelines for HIV care. Dr. Cheever joined HRSA in 1999 as the chief of the HIV Education Branch where she was responsible for providing HIV/AIDS clinical education and training for the nation's health care providers.
Before joining HRSA, Dr. Cheever was an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. She is committed to serving the HIV population and volunteers at the Bartlett Clinic for HIV Care at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
Clara Chen is the Assistant Director of Operations at the Boston University School of Public Health's Data Coordinating Center. She has over 15 years of research experience, including project management, data management, and statistical analyses.
Sarah Cook-Raymond is a seasoned communications professional with extensive editorial, production management, accounts management, and marketing campaign development expertise. Her report for the White House received the “Best Custom Publication” award by The Association for Women in Communications, and her research has been featured at conferences across the country, including the National Communications Association Conference.
Sarah came to Impact in 2005 after working as a Technical Writing Specialist for the Research Foundation of New York State and as an adjunct professor of English and the humanities for
for the State University of New York. At Impact, Sarah’s primary roles are the oversight of day-to-day operations including contracting, clearances, finance, project management, and human resources, and as editor-in-chief.
Sarah’s involved with Impact's project teams, always ensuring they meet the highest quality standards while maintaining adherence to project goals and timeframes. Sarah also assists clients with concept and brand development, writing, research, targeted messaging, and public relations. She serves as a senior account executive on multiple projects, including the communications deliverables related to the $2.35 billion federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program.
Sarah has a B.A. in English writing from St. Lawrence University, where she graduated magna cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and an M.A. in English and communications from the State University of New York, Potsdam where she graduated with distinction.
Antigone Dempsey is the Division Director for Policy and Data at the Health Resources and Services Administration’s HIV/AIDS Bureau, in Rockville, MD. She has dedicated her 29 year career to moving HIV prevention, care, support, and treatment services forward for all vulnerable populations. She began her work soon after her HIV diagnosis at age 22. She is committed to creating systems that help people live healthy, productive, and meaningful lives.
Currently, Ms. Dempsey serves as the Director for the Division of Policy and Data for the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Health Resources and Services Administration’s HIV/AIDS Bureau. Prior to this position, Ms. Dempsey worked closely with many federal partners including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide organizational leadership, expert facilitation, training, technical assistance, strategic planning, policy development and systems change to address HIV, viral hepatitis, and substance abuse issues.
Ms. Dempsey earned her Master’s in Education from The George Washington University in Washington DC. Her focus areas were in organizational and human development.
Alicia Downes, LMSW serves as the senior program manager on the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Special Project of National Significance (SPNS), which focuses on dissemination of four adapted linkage and retention interventions to improve health outcomes along the HIV Care Continuum.
Alicia got hooked on sociology during her first semester of college despite her family hope for a Computer Science degree. She received her Masters of Social Work from University of Kansas (Rock Chalk Jayhawk!) and has almost 10 years of experience in mental health.
Alicia began work in the HIV field almost 20 years ago, when she was hired as a Ryan White Case Manager. Three months later, she was helping her uncle find HIV services, along with educating her family about HIV.
Alicia has experience managing federal grant from SAMHSA, CDC, HRSA, and private foundations. Prior to joining the staff of AIDS United, Alicia worked as a consultant on this project the AIDS United HRSA SPNS project. She also recently served as the Midwest AIDS Education and Training Center of Missouri Site and Peer Program Manager and an instructor, teaching Community Health Worker classes.
Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Alicia can sniff out good West Indian food a mile away. In her spare time, she enjoys going to track and field and swimming events to cheer on her sons and walking her dog.
John Hannay is a public health analyst and project officer in the Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Branch of the HIV AIDS Bureau at HRSA. SPNS initiatives in which John has been involved are the Digital and Social Media (Lead Project Officer), Capacity Building Assistance to RWHAP Jurisdictions (Lead Project Officer), Opioid Systems Coordination, Housing and Employment Services, and Black MSM and Behavioral Health.
John has been involved in HIV work in the private non-profit and public sector since 1983. Before working in SPNS, John was in HAB’s Global HIV Program. Before his time at HAB, John did private consulting work related to HIV and a number of other public health issues and worked on HIV Prevention Issues for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. John is a health educator by profession.
Dr. Corliss D. Heath has nearly 25 years of professional experience in public health and HIV research. She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics and a graduate of Emory University with a Master of Public Health degree in Biostatistics and a Master of Divinity degree, respectively. She also holds PhD in Applied Anthropology specializing in Medical Anthropology from the University of South Florida (USF) (Tampa, FL). She previously worked as a Research Analyst at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention in Atlanta, GA. Currently, Dr. Heath is a Health Scientist in the Division of Policy and Data (DPD) at the Health Resources and
Services Administration (HRSA)/HIV/AIDS Bureau in Rockville, MD. There she leads and coordinates various projects, while providing guidance, evaluation, implementation, and training to assure the provision of high quality HIV intervention, care and treatment services.
Thelma Iheanyichukwu, MHA, HIMS, is a Public Health Analyst/Project Officer in the HRSA’s HIV/AIDS Bureau’s Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program. She began her federal career through HRSA Pathways Recent Graduates Program with the SPNS Program in 2016 and have supported several initiatives. Thelma is a Project Officer for grant recipients funded under the SPNS Black Men who have Sex with Men (BMSM), Housing and Employment, Rapid ART Start, and Black Women Initiatives. Thelma enjoys wine tasting.
Esther Jennings is Senior Research Manager for the Center for Population Health at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She received her Master of Public Health from Tufts University with a concentration in nutrition. She is experienced in public health, minority health and nutritional epidemiology research, with diverse populations and age groups.
Minu Mohan is a Research Assistant for the Black Women First ETAP. She is a public health graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Zuckerberg College of Health Sciences. She has a background in Dentistry and have a keen interest to working in areas of research focused in promoting health for marginalized populations facing socio-economic burden and other health inequities. Having received the Provost's Graduate Fellowship for high achieving Master’s student, she aims to earn her doctorate degree and work further to enhance the health of those who are particularly vulnerable to poor health conditions, status and services and other manifestations of structural inequities. She works closely with Dr Serena Rajabiun and Dr Angela Wangari Walter of University of Massachusetts who are the Principal Investigators for the Black Women First ETAP Project.
Chau Nguyen is a Project Officer in HRSA’s HIV/AIDS Bureau’s Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Program. She has been with HRSA/HAB since 2012 and has worked in the field of HIV/AIDS for over 15 years, including with NIH, CDC, DoD and PEPFAR. Chau has led the development, implementation and evaluation of numerous SPNS Initiatives, and is a Project Officer for grant recipients currently funded under the SPNS Housing & Employment, Black Men who have Sex with Men (BMSM), Opioid, Rapid ART Start, and now Black Women initiatives. In her ‘free’ time, she also helps to manage a full household of 3 kids, 2 cats and a dog (who you may see bomb zoom calls from time to time J).
Erin Nortrup, LCSW is a mission-driven professional with over 20 years of experience in the social services field and 13 years of experience in the HIV field. Erin currently serves as director of program operations at AIDS United, acting as project director on the organization’s Hearth Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Special Projects of National Significance initiative and providing oversight to AIDS United’s CDC-funded capacity-building assistance program, Getting to Zero. She previously served as director of support services at Cascade AIDS Project in Portland, Oregon and director of programs at the Sexual
Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL) in Washington D.C., where she managed all direct service programs, including HIV testing and counseling, prevention interventions, and linkage to care services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning youth ages 13-21. Erin has served in a variety of capacities, from youth and family counselor to coordinator of HIV prevention services to clinical supervisor, with a consistent focus on providing high quality services from a position of cultural humility and centering the involvement and leadership of people accessing services. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and completed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Ladder to Leadership program in 2011. Outside of the office, Erin enjoys exploring all that the DC area has to offer while trying to keep up with her energetic five-year-old.
Serena Rajabiun is the Principal Investigator for the Black Women’s First Evaluation and Technical Center Provider HRSA SPNS project. She has over twenty years of international and domestic public health experience. She has over a decade of leadership experience on multisite projects funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) HIV/AIDS Bureau. She is currently the Co-Principal Investigator for the HRSA/SPNS Improving Health Outcomes through Coordinated Housing & Employment Services and the Dissemination of Evidence-Informed Intervention Dissemination and Evaluation Center, and a Co-Principal Investigator on Improving Access to Care: Using CHWs to Improve Linkage and Retention in HIV Care, She has over 15 years experience designing and leading qualitative and quantitative
studies as part of seven multi-site evaluations and providing evaluation and programmatic technical assistance to HRSA Ryan White demonstration grantees, She has organized several multisite meetings with grantees, and coordinated and collaborated with over 20 grantees on publishing and disseminating the results form multisite initiatives in peer-reviewed journals and at national conferences. Ms. Rajabiun has authored several peer reviewed articles and developed field manuals on engaging and retaining PLWH in care and treatment.
Venita Ray is the deputy director of the Positive Women’s Network-USA, a national membership organization for women living with HIV. Venita served as the public policy manager for Legacy Community Health, a federally qualified health center in Houston, TX, where she monitored HIV related health policy and managed an advocacy training program for people living with HIV. In 2016, Venita led a citywide effort to end the HIV epidemic in Houston and drafted the Roadmap to Ending the HIV Epidemic in Houston. Venita has led anti criminalization efforts in Texas defeating an effort to allow HIV test results to be subpoenaed in criminal
prosecutions and defeated attempts to introduce new HIV criminalization legislation. Venita was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and is deeply committed to equity, racial justice and developing the leadership and meaningful involvement of people living with HIV in all decisions that impact the HIV community.
Valerie L. Rochester, provides programmatic, administrative, and technical support services in the public health field. In June 2017, Valerie became Vice President for Program Strategy for AIDS United, a leading national HIV advocacy, policy and educational organization in Washington, DC. There she guides the organizations expansive program portfolio, including its capacity building and its grantmaking efforts investing in communities affected by the HIV epidemic. Prior to joining AIDS United, Valerie was Director of Programs & Training with the Black Women’s Health Imperative, where she led the organization’s national
programmatic responses to address racially and gender-based health inequities; managing health initiatives focuses on addressing the priority health issues of diabetes, breast and cervical cancers, HIV/STIs, obesity, and chronic disease prevention. She has designed and led a statewide study in California to assess and address the HIV prevention, care and treatment needs of women of color; as well as designing and executing the first national PrEP education initiative focused on Black Women. She also designed, received CDC funding for, and led the development of what has become a signature pro-gram for diabetes prevention among African Americans – Change Your Lifestyle. Change Your Life., based on the National Diabetes Prevention Program.
Dr. Denese Shervington, psychiatrist, professor, and President and CEO of The Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies (IWES), Dr. Shervington, draws from her intersectional career in public health clinical and academic psychiatry. A nationally esteemed mental health advocate and programmer, in 2018 Dr. Shervington received the Award for Excellence in Service and Advocacy from the American Psychiatric Association. In 2012, she received the Jeanne Spurlock Minority Fellowship Achievement Award from the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Shervington is a member of the American College of Psychiatrists. She has authored several papers in peer-reviewed journals addressing health disparities, the social determinants of health, and resilience in underserved communities.
Linda Sprague Martinez is the Co-Principal Investigator is an Associate Professor and Department Chair for Macro Practice at the Boston University School of Social Work. She holds faculty affiliations with the Center of Innovation in Social Work and Health as well as the Center for Health Systems Improvement and Policy. Having worked for a State Office of Minority Health and in municipal government and as a mental health provider she has a keen sense of the barriers communities of color face in accessing services. Beyond having a decade of practice experience, she has over decade of research experience having led a number of participatory pro-jects funded by NIH as well as by nation and local foundations.
Melinda Tinsley, MA is a Senior Advisor within the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) HIV/AIDS Bureau (HAB) in the Division of Policy and Data (DPD). In this role, she serves as lead on overall budget tracking and management, operations, and advising on contract and cooperative agreement development and administration. She has over 20 years’ professional experience in public health innovation, implementation and evaluation to assess outcomes, processes and costs of innovative service delivery models targeting vulnerable and underserved populations living with or affected by HIV/AIDS. In 2017, she was selected to serve as an Executive Co-Chair of the National Ryan White Conference on HIV Care and Treatment planning committee. Ms. Tinsley holds a Master of Arts in Legal and Ethical Studies.
Throughout her career, she has led several key SPNS initiatives. Most notably, her primary areas of expertise are the interlinked epidemics of HIV and incarceration and integrated models of care for individuals with mental health and substance use issues experiencing homelessness. As such, she served as the lead project officer for federal grants and cooperative agreements funded to implement and evaluate innovate models of care to address the unmet needs and improve the health outcomes for these populations. These include the Enhancing Linkages to HIV Care for People with HIV in Jail Settings, the HRSA/CDC joint Corrections Demonstration Project and the Building a Medical Home for Multiply-Diagnosed HIV-positive Homeless Populations initiatives.
Dr. Angela Wangari Walter is a health services researcher and an implementation scientist whose work focuses on: 1) the prevention and treatment of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use disorders and co-occurring diagnoses; and 2) addressing racial and ethnic inequities in the access to and quality of health care. She has conducted federally (NIH, SAMHSA, HRSA, AHRQ), state and foundation funded research using qualitative and quantitative methods. Dr. Walter’s research on alcohol and other drug use disorders (AUDs) has examined the association between alcohol use and HIV transmission among women;
and the effects of culturally relevant and integrated care for adults with co-occurring AUDs and mental illness. Dr. Walter has also conducted research on access to and quality of care for underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, and other socially/economically disadvantaged populations. Her research has contributed to knowledge about the utilization of mental health services among children and barriers faced by parents/caregivers in accessing care for children. Other research has examined disparities in access to care and health services utilization patterns among children with medical complexity.
Dr. Walter has research and practice experience in developing, implementing, and evaluating systems of care for diverse populations. She is currently conducting AHRQ and HRSA funded research to improve health outcomes for Black and African American women receiving care in community-based settings. Dr. Walter is actively engaged in community efforts addressing racial and social injustices serving as an advocate, educator, volunteer, board and advisory member.