Advocacy Grand Rounds

Alison Case, MD is a Family Medicine physician in Indianapolis, Indiana where she practices full spectrum family medicine at a Federally Qualified Health Center. She also works as an abortion provider with Whole Woman’s Health. She credits her time as an advocate and fellow with the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) with radicalizing her and introducing her to drug affordability work. Alison currently serves on the Drug Affordability Steering Committee with Doctors for America.

Priti Krishtel is a health justice lawyer and co-founder of I-MAK, a non-profit building a more just and equitable medicines system. She has spent nearly two decades exposing structural inequities affecting access to medicines and vaccines across the Global South and in the United States. That includes advocating for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines across the globe to ensuring that the Biden-Harris administration is prioritizing equity in the Patent and Trademark Office. I-MAK’s work on the patent system has been cited repeatedly in Congressional testimony on prescription drug costs, most recently in hearings by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Priti is a recent TED speaker, Presidential Leadership Scholar, and Ashoka Fellow.

Peter Maybarduk directs Public Citizen’s access to medicines group, which helps partners worldwide make medicine available and affordable for all. Peter has provided technical assistance to public agencies and civil society organizations in several dozen countries. His work has supported major medicine price reductions and new state access to medicine policies, as well as helped defeat harmful proposals in legislation and trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and NAFTA. Peter and his colleagues have helped organize the global movement for COVID vaccine access and rallied support for new vaccine manufacturing funding and technology transfer. Peter recently joined the governance board of the Medicines Patent Pool. Peter studied technology law at Berkeley Law School (University of California) and anthropology at The College of William & Mary in Virginia. He is an affiliate fellow with the Information Society Program at Yale Law School. Peter founded International Professional Partnerships for Sierra Leone, a non-profit dedicated to supporting public sector development in one of the world’s least developed countries.

Cedric Dark, MD, MPH, is on DFA’s National Board of Directors and Founder and Executive Editor of Policy Prescriptions. A graduate of Morehouse College, he earned his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, holds a master’s degree from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and completed his residency training at George Washington University where he served as Chief Resident. Currently, Dr. Dark is an Assistant Professor in the Henry J. N. Taub Department of Emergency Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He currently participates as a columnist for the monthly publication ACEP Now. His policy experience includes work for the United States House of Representatives and the Kaiser Family Foundation. His policy interests include the study of health reform at the intersection with international health systems.

Dorothy Novick, MD, is a Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and an Attending Physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Her advocacy and clinical work center around violence prevention, trauma-informed care and the social determinants of health. She serves as a Practice-Based Scholar with CHOP’s Center for Violence Prevention, a board member of the Education Law Center PA, and an Alumni Ambassador for The OpEd Project. Dr. Novick has written extensively about gun violence and childhood trauma, as well as a range of issues affecting the health and safety of families in her care. She received her MD from Yale University and completed her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Alex Strauss, MA, is a published author and an award-winning healthcare journalist with more than three decades of experience in various types of media. She is the co-founder and owner of MED, LLC, which has been disseminating medical community news for healthcare providers in the upper Midwest since 2010. A former television healthcare news reporter and anchor, Strauss has also written for national and international news outlets including Newslink, MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, and the Guardian. She is the Managing Editor of Cancer Monthly, the daughter of a pediatrician, and is a frequent speaker on the intersection of medicine and media. Strauss holds an MA in Broadcast Journalism and Public Affairs from American University.

Dr. Arkaprava ‘Arka’ Deb, MD, MPH, MPA, isa Co-Chair of DFA’s National Steering Committee on Gun Violence Prevention and will be moderating the conversation. He is Director of Public Psychiatry Education at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and Director of Psychiatric Services at The Door: Adolescent Health Center in New York City.

Dr. Stephanie Kang, DrPH, MS, currently serves as the Health Policy Director for Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and completed her Doctor of Public Health degree at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As Health Policy Director, she assisted in crafting the Medicare for All legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives and executes legislative actions and political strategy in coalition with several organizations to promote Medicare for All, drug-pricing, and other health policy priorities inside and outside of Congress. Her professional background includes founding and scaling several health equity-centered organizations, conducting quality improvement in health care settings, and working in community-based global health projects.

Matthew Wellington is the Public Health Campaigns Director for U.S. PIRG, a non-profit advocacy group. Wellington has appeared on NBC Nightly News, MSNBC and numerous local TV stations around the country and has been quoted by just about every major U.S. news outlet on health issues. Wellington, who has worked for U.S. PIRG or its state groups for eight years, runs PIRG’s COVID-19 response efforts, as well as campaigns to keep children from getting hooked on tobacco and to end the overuse of antibiotics in meat production, which leads to the growth of deadly antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.”

Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH currently serves as the Chief Health Equity Officer and Senior Vice President for the American Medical Association (AMA) where she focuses on embedding health equity across all the work of the AMA and leading the Center for Health Equity. She joined the AMA in April 2019 as their inaugural Chief Health Equity Officer. Dr. Maybank previously served as Founding Director for the Center for Health Equity at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (2014) and the Office of Minority Health in the Suffolk County Department of Health Services (2006). She is a nationally recognized speaker, writer, and advisor on issues related to health equity, the future of medicine, and public health impact.

This event will be moderated by Kelley Butler, MPH, a 4th year student and soon-to-be graduate of the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. Hailing from Los Angeles, Kelley has committed herself to serving marginalized communities. She is an active member in various causes dedicated to students and professionals of color, people suffering from substance use disorder and addiction, people experiencing houselessness, and others. On her medical campus, Kelley is known for her work in social justice, health advocacy and initiatives targeted for minoritized students. Kelley completed her Masters of Public Health in Health Policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Justin Mendoza, MPH is the Advocacy Manager for U.S. Health Care at Partners In Health. Previously, Justin worked on health care priorities with Families USA and Public Citizen to advance health policy priorities, mainly lowering drug prices, expanding health care coverage, and lowering underlying health care costs. He has experience advancing legislation and administrative action at the state and federal level, as well as coalition management and policy analysis. Justin holds a MPH in Health Policy from Yale University and a B.S. in biomedical sciences and neuroscience from Central Michigan University. He also serves as the President of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines.

Reshma Ramachandran, MD, MPP is a National Clinician Scholars Program fellow at the Yale School of Medicine. Prior to this role, Reshma worked as research faculty as part of the Innovation + Design Enabling Access (IDEA) Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she focused on antimicrobial resistance and access to medicines including state drug pricing proposals. Reshma trained in both medicine at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University and in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She completed her family medicine residency at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. Previously, she served as the first PharmFree Fellow with the American Medical Student Association focused on removing the undue influence of pharmaceutical companies on prescribing behavior and medical education. She also currently serves as co-Chair of the National Steering Committee for the Doctors for America Drug Affordability Action Team and as a board member of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) North America.

Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein is Professor of the Practice in Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he also serves as Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement and as Director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. He is a former health commissioner of Baltimore, Principal Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. FDA, and health secretary of Maryland. Dr. Sharfstein teaches a class called “Crisis and Response in Public Health Policy and Practice” and is the author of the Public Health Crisis Survival Guide: Leadership and Management in Trying Times (2018) and co-author of The Opioid Epidemic: What Everyone Needs to Know (2019).