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2025 Scientific Meeting
Speaker Profiles

Steven A. John, PhD, MPHSteven A. John, PhD, MPH

Associate Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine
Medical College of Wisconsin

Profile

Dr. Steven John (he/him) is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Core Faculty member of the Center for AIDS Intervention Research, and Co-Director of the Prevention and Implementation Sciences Training Lab at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He received formalized training in Public Health, Biostatistics, Behavioral Science, and Implementation Science during graduate, postdoc, and fellowship studies. Dr. John oversees a program of NIH-funded research focused on implementation of evidence-based HIV and STI prevention and reducing health disparities among sexual and gender minoritized people.

Title: Improving equitable implementation of evidence-based HIV/STI prevention among sexual and gender minoritized populations

Objectives:

  1. Describe currently available and forthcoming evidence-based mechanisms for biomedical HIV and STI prevention.
  2. Discuss strengths, limitations, and future directions for mHealth strategies to support biomedical HIV prevention.
  3. Apply the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research to describe multi-level barriers to biomedical HIV and STI prevention care engagement.

Nathalie Moise, MD, MSNathalie Moise, MD, MS

Associate Professor of Medicine
Director of Implementation Science Research (The Im_Sci Lab)
Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Profile

Nathalie Moise is an internist, Associate Professor of Medicine, and Director of Implementation Science Research (The Im_Sci Lab) at the Center for Behavioral and Cardiovascular Health with training in epidemiology and implementation science. She has worked in health services research for more than 10 years and is PI/MPI of several federally funded grants (NIH, AHRQ, PCORI) leveraging hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial designs to test implementation and de-implementation strategies for promoting behavioral interventions in primary care and cardio-oncology settings, including MPI of AHRQ EQUIP Learning Health System Center and NIA Roybal Center grants. Dr. Moise has been the implementation science co-investigator/consultant for more than 20 funded grants, including core lead for an NIMHD P50 cardio-oncology center grant and has published extensively in the areas of behavioral health, patient engagement/adherence, implementation science and clinical inertia. She has served as faculty for the UCSF implementation science certificate course and NHLBI Research in Implementation Science for Equity summer program, Co-Director of the CTSA’s Implementation Science Initiative, is Associate Editor of Implementation Research and Practice and founding member of the American Heart Association’s Implementation Science Committee.

Title: Breaking the cycle: Rethinking multi-level strategies for sustaining collaborative care models.

Objectives:

  1. Understand key determinants of sustaining collaborative care models
  2. Understand benefits and harms of multi-level strategies for sustainability
  3. Identify future directions

Speaker Rabin Borsika Rabin, PhD, MPH, PharmD

Associate Professor
Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science
Co-Director, Dissemination and Implementation Science Center
UC San Diego

Profile

Dr. Rabin is an Associate Professor and Founding Faculty at the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, the Co-Director of the UC San Diego Dissemination and Implementation Science Center (DISC), and an Implementation Science (IS) expert on a number of large NIH and VA Center grants and research projects including the VA San Diego Center of Excellence for Stress and Mental Health and the Quadruple Aim QUERI Program (Denver VA). Dr. Rabin has extensive expertise in the selection and operationalization of IS models and she is a national expert in the use of the RE-AIM framework and its contextually expanded counterpart, PRISM. Dr. Rabin has been a member of the national leadership team for RE-AIM for the past close to one decade, developed and refined advanced methodology for the use of RE-AIM and PRISM across diverse topic areas and settings, and developed training and conducted consultations on the operationalization of RE-AIM and PRISM for research proposals and ongoing projects. She serves as the lead RE-AIM expert for the recently funded VA Center for the Evaluation of Enterprise-Wide Initiatives and provides technical assistance, training, consultation for all VA Office of Rural Health funded projects that are mandated to use RE

Rachel Shelton, ScD, MPHRachel Shelton, ScD, MPH

Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Director, Implementation Science Initiative
Mailman School of Public Health, Colombia University

Profile

Rachel Shelton, ScD, MPH is a social and behavioral scientist with expertise in implementation science, sustainability, health equity, and community engagement. She is an Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health where she serves as Deputy Chair for Faculty Development and Research Strategy. Additionally, she serves as Co-Director of the Community Engagement Core Resource at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (CTSA); through the CTSA, she also leads and is Director of an Implementation Science Initiative focused on building research capacity for implementation science across the university. Dr. Shelton developed one of the first courses offered nationally in implementation science in public health; she has taught this course for over 10 years at Columbia and has been an invited speaker and core faculty for numerous implementation science mentoring and training programs globally, including NIH’s Training Institute for Dissemination & Implementation Research in Cancer (TIDIRC), the Institute for Implementation Science Scholars (IS-2), and implementation science programs in Australia, Nigeria, Ireland, Mozambique, Thailand, and South Africa. Dr. Shelton has 15 years of experience leading mixed-methods, community-engaged research on advancing the implementation and sustainability of evidence-based interventions in community and clinical settings to address health inequities, particularly in the context of cancer prevention/control, with over 130 peer-reviewed publications. Her work has made contributions to health equity and sustainability in the field of implementation science and has been supported by numerous NIH institutions and foundations, including NIA, NCI, NIMHD, NCATs, and the American Cancer Society.

Title: Advancing the science of sustainability in the field of implementation science.

Objectives:

  1. To define sustainability/sustainment and how it is conceptualized in the field of implementation science.
  2. To identify frameworks, metrics, and tools that can be used to assess and plan for sustainability.
  3. To understand similarities and distinctions in factors and strategies that matter for sustainment and implementation.

Stephanie Staras, Ph.D.Stephanie Staras, Ph.D.

Professor and Associate Chair of Faculty Development
Department of Health Outcomes & Biomedical Informatics

Associate Director, Institute for Child Health Policy
Co-Lead, Cancer Control and Population Science Program
University of Florida

Profile

Dr. Stephanie A. S. Staras is a distinguished researcher specializing in the prevention of human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancers. With a strong emphasis on implementation science, she is dedicated to advancing health equity in cancer prevention. Dr. Staras’ research focuses on enhancing clinical recommendations, fostering parental acceptance, and improving access to HPV vaccinations for adolescents throughout Florida.

As Principal Investigator, she has led multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded projects, securing a total of $8.5 million in federal funding through a series of R21, R37, R37 extension, and R01 grants. These significant, high-enrollment studies have been instrumental in achieving the UF Cancer Center's NCI designation, contributing 40% of UF's clinical trial accruals between 2021 and 2023. Dr. Staras' efforts exemplify a commitment to impactful research that not only advances scientific knowledge but also addresses critical public health challenges.

Title: Implementing Evidence-Based HPV Vaccination Strategies: Uniting Health Behavior and Implementation Science to Make a Real-World Impact

Objectives:

  1. Discuss effective strategies for integrating Behavioral and Implementation Science Theories into the conceptual framework to support a multi-level pragmatic clinical trial.
  2. Identify implementation outcomes that measure intermediate outcomes of an intervention.
  3. Describe the tangible outcomes of implementing evidence-based practices in clinical care, focusing on improvements in clinician practices and patient outcomes.

Cheryl Vamos, PhD.Cheryl Vamos, PhD.

Professor
Director, Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health Education
University of South Florida

Profile

Dr. Cheryl Vamos is an Associate Professor and a Fellow with the Chiles Center for Women, Children and Families. She is also a Core Faculty member of the Collaborative for Research Understanding Sexual Health (CRUSH). The overall goal of Dr. Vamos’ research is to facilitate the translation of maternal and child health (MCH) evidence into practice for patients, providers, and women at-large. Within the broad field of MCH, the majority of projects focus on women’s health, reproductive health and MCH oral health, and employ health literacy, implementation science, and technology approaches to ensure that women (and providers) have the knowledge, skills and resources needed to be empowered and make informed health decisions. Together, this research seeks to (1) identify the system-level factors influencing health behaviors/outcomes and (2) develop and test innovative solutions to improve women’s health.

Title: Leveraging Implementation Science to Advance Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Research and Practice

Objectives:

  1. To highlight the utility of integrating implementation science and health behavior theories, models and frameworks in maternal and child health (MCH) research
  2. To discuss how implementation science can guide health behavior change across system levels (individual/patient, provider, and clinics/hospitals)
  3. To share findings from implementation science research and practice that aim to improve women’s, sexual/reproductive, and perinatal health

Theresa L Walunas, PhDTheresa L Walunas, PhD

Associate Professor
Northwestern University

Profile

Theresa received her PhD in immunology from UChicago and an MS in computer science from DePaul University. She is Associate Director for the Center for Health Information Partnerships, Chair of the Health and Biomedical Informatics Track in the Health Sciences Integrated PhD program and Director of the MS in Health and Biomedical Informatics. She has led studies funded by AHRQ to implement and assess quality improvement interventions in pragmatic clinical settings and by NIAMS, NICHD and Gilead Sciences to develop strategies to identify complex immune disease and cancer in electronic health record data to support population health management.

Title: Does Coaching Really Matter? Intersecting implementation science, informatics and machine learning to assess implementation strategies in primary care.

Objectives:

  1. Discuss the development and use of pragmatic data collection strategies to document implementation strategies
  2. Apply the Implementation Research Logic Model to create a framework for feature selection for modeling
  3. Explore the use of machine learning strategies to build models for understanding relationships between practice environments and implementation strategies

Nicole Werner, PhDNicole Werner, PhD

Associate Professor
Dean's Eminent Scholar
School of Public Health-Bloomington
Indiana University

Profile

Dr. Werner is a psychologist, systems thinker, and human-centered design evangelist committed to transforming the health journey through human-centered sociotechnical system design to improve the health and well-being of older and vulnerable populations and their care partners. Her research program applies systems engineering principles to conduct research aimed at the human-centered discovery, design, evaluation, and implementation of translation-ready technology interventions. This work has included developing innovative approaches to user-centered design in community settings; employing novel concepts of care distribution; and engaging end-user representatives such as older adults, care partners, and community resource providers as active members of the design team. Her research spans clinical and community settings to improve health for older adults and their care partners and children with medical complexity and their families, with a particular focus on people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias and their care partners.

Title: Co-design for implementation across the patient and care partner journey.

Objectives:

  1. Describe a co-design approach to transforming the patient and care partner journey.
  2. Discuss novel methods for co-designing the patient and care partner journey.
  3. Discuss implications for co-designing the patient and care partner journey on implementation.

Community Engaged Pannel
Speaker Profiles

Nicole Howard Nicole Howard, MPH

Executive Vice President
Health Quality Partners of Southern California

Email: nhoward@hqpsocal.org

Website: hqpsocal.org

Nicole Howard is the Executive Vice President of Health Quality Partners of Southern California (HQP) and Chief Advancement Officer of Health Center Partners of Southern California (HCP). She has been employed by the Health Center Partners Family of Companies since 2007. Nicole has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry. She has experience developing, implementing, and evaluating programs. She has secured funding for and managed collaborative state, federal, county, and private foundation-funded grants and research programs. Her focus areas have been cancer screening (colorectal, breast cancer), oral health, behavioral health, enrollment, and quality management programs. She has a wealth of experience working with leadership from Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs, tribal programs, and Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest) on a variety of topics and facilitates the HCP Chief Medical Officers Leadership Network, consisting of CMOs representing 17 community health center organizations.

Linda Salgin Linda Salgin, MPH

Senior Program Manager
San Ysidro Health
linda.salgin@syhealth.org

San Ysidro Health

Mrs. Linda Salgin received her Master of Public Health with an emphasis in Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences from San Diego State University (SDSU) and earned the Certified in Public Health credential in 2015. Since then, she has worked with San Ysidro Health, the second largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in San Diego, developing, implementing, and evaluating various research and service-oriented programs. Over the past decade, Mrs. Salgin has dedicated her career to working closely with underrepresented communities, providing essential resources to improve health outcomes and address health disparities.

In her current role as Senior Program Manager within the Research & Health Promotion Department, she oversees several significant projects including the NIH-funded All of Us Research Program which aims to advance precision medicine; an NIH-funded proposal under the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics for Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) initiative to expand equitable access to COVID-19 testing resources; and a CDC-funded project focused on respiratory epidemiology and surveillance within the southern San Diego community.

Mrs. Salgin is also a doctoral candidate in the Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego, with a specific emphasis on Health Behavior. Her doctoral research uses a combination of quantitative, qualitative, and implementation science methodologies to evaluate disparities in receipt of tobacco cessation counseling among underserved communities and to elucidate multilevel determinants for the equitable implementation of tobacco cessation services. As an emerging implementation scientist, her long-term goal is to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world applications, particularly in the context of FQHCs, to ensure the success and sustainability of interventions.

Paul Watson Paul Watson, MPA

President/CEO
Global Action Research Center

Paul Watson is the President/CEO of the Global Action Research Center, a social change organization that provides training, technical support, facilitation, and serves as an intermediary between universities and underserved communities. Paul has over 35 years of experience in non-profit administration, management, and delivery of human services by non-profit organizations. He is an experienced administrator, trainer, and facilitator. Internationally, Paul produced a youth development strategy for two countries in Central Asia (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) and in Jamaica. In the Netherlands, he provided training in community development, micro-enterprise, and strategic planning methods for participants to use in their local communities and has conducted a Community Youth Development training in Egypt. In South Africa, Paul organized and facilitated community forums that were designed to bring police and youth together to create and implement strategies to reduce crime in their neighborhoods. Paul currently serves as a Co-Principal Investigator on several research studies at UC San Diego, UCLA, and UC San Francisco.

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