Joyce Balls-Berry, PhD
Bio:
Joyce (Joy) E. Balls-Berry, Ph.D., is a psychiatric epidemiologist and health educator. Her primary research focus is evaluating the application of community-engaged research principles in diverse populations. Secondly, she is interested in how community-engaged research can be applied to increase health equity.
Dr. Balls-Berry has also focused her research on determining the best approaches for the inclusion of diverse populations into health research. This includes evaluating community recruitment approaches and determining the best methods for returning research findings to research participants.
Michele Halyard, MD
Bio:
Dr. Halyard is currently a Vice Chair of the Health Outcomes Committee of the ALLIANCE cooperative group. Prior to that, she served as Vice Chair of the North Central Cancer Treatment Group Patient Reported Outcomes and Quality of Life Committee. She is currently the Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. She served as Principal Investigator of a community based participatory research grant funded by the Susan G. Komen Foundation looking at the lived experience of women with breast cancer in the Gila River Indian Community. Dr. Halyard currently leads the Coalition of Blacks Against Breast Cancer (CBBC) which is a community engagement endeavor started by Mayo Clinic in Arizona and two African American service organizations. The CBBC is designed to provide a support network to Black breast cancer survivors in the Phoenix metropolitan area, and also to educate the Black community about screening, diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. Recently, she was appointed as the founding Dean of Mayo Clinic Arizona Campus School of Medicine
Marion Kelly
Bio:
Marion Kelly serves as Director for the Office of Community & Business Relations within Public Affairs at Mayo Clinic. In this role, Mr. Kelly provides leadership for the organization’s efforts to build solid neighbor, civic and corporate relationships.
Marion’s broad experience is in both the education and political arenas. His experience includes teaching elementary education and working in the United States Senate, the administration of the Indiana University School of Medicine, and in Admissions and Student Affairs at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine. Mr. Kelly was an appointee in the George W. H. Bush White House administration as Special Assistant for At Risk Youth Initiatives at the United States Department of Labor, and as the White House Liaison for the Labor Department.
He serves his local community as
- Founder & Executive Chair of the Diversity Leadership Alliance
- Board Chair, National Multiple Sclerosis Society AZ Affiliate Chapter
- Scottsdale Area Chamber of Commerce Board
- Community Celebrating Diversity Board
Marion is a life member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Incorporated and a member of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, Gamma Mu Boule.
He is married to Francine Ellison Kelly. They have three children, Kristopher, 32, Ericka, 28 and Kyle, 27, and more importantly three grandchildren, 2 months, 3 years and 9 years old.
Dr. Fern Jureidini Webb
Bio:
Dr. Fern Jureidini Webb is an associate professor and research director in the University of Florida (UF) College of Medicine’s Department of Community Health and Family Medicine, Jacksonville, and an active research member at the UF Center for Health Equity and Quality Research. Dr. Webb’s research is grounded in Motivators for Change theory, which posits that sustainable behavior changes result from being genuinely excited about, and engaged in a particular behavior. Dr. Webb’s research also focuses on how Community Health Workers (CHWs) engage individuals identified from community and clinical environments, to improve health behaviors. Dr. Webb also serves or has served on local, regional and national boards, task forces and councils aimed at improving health and reducing health disparities.
Allyson Hall, Ph.D.
Bio:
Allyson Hall, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Health Services Administration, teaches health policy in the Master of Science in Health Administration and Doctoral programs. Hall’s broad research interests emphasize improving healthcare access and systems for vulnerable populations. Current scholarly activity focuses on reducing fragmentation within the delivery system including assessments of patient-centered medical homes and transition to primary care programs for emergency department patients. Hall has a long-standing interest in Medicaid and was an investigator on an 8-year evaluation of changes to Florida’s Medicaid program. Her work has also included studies aimed at improving health care access for individuals living with a disability.
Dr. Olga Idriss Davis
Bio:
Dr. Olga Idriss Davis is Full Professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University and Principal Investigator of Health Literacy and Community Engagement with the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center (SIRC), a NIH/National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities P20 Center of Excellence for the Study of Health Disparities in the Southwest at Arizona State University. Davis’s research area is in the domain of critical cultural studies and health communication. Her work explores the socio- cultural determinants of health and the impact of identity on health of the African Diaspora. Involved in community health issues for the past decade, Davis was appointed in 2008 by former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to serve on the Commission on Women’s and Children’s Health. Davis served as Chair for the Cultural Health Initiative of the American Heart Association Tempe Affiliate (2006-2008); is a founding coalition member of Maricopa Integrated Health System’s Refugee Women’s Health Clinic (2008-present); and is among the advisory team of the Phoenix-based Coalition of Blacks Against Breast Cancer (CBBC) (2009-present). Additionally, Davis is Lead Research Investigator on an NIH/NIMHD health literacy demonstration project—a community based collaborative of African American barbers and SIRC to address cardiovascular disease through culturally-centered health literacy among African American men in partnership with Black barbershops in Phoenix, Arizona. As an alumna of The Juilliard School, she weaves oral history, communication, and storytelling to explore cultural issues of health and well-being. Central to her work in health communication is the study of narrative—how narrative empowers, creates, and fosters cultural awareness to provide a space for social change. Her current health literacy project entitled, The Journey: Living Cancer Out Loud, is a narrative performance based on interviews of the lived experience of African American women and men survivors and caregivers living with breast cancer. She has numerous essays published in interdisciplinary academic journals and is co-editor of Centering Ourselves: African American Feminist and Womanist Studies of Discourse published by Hampton Press. She is President and CEO of Davis Communication Group, LLC, a communication and multimedia consulting company located in Phoenix, Arizona.
Chinenye Anyanwu, PharmD, MPH.
Bio:
Engagement Officer at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). She acts as a liaison between the Engagement and Science teams, helping manage the organization’s research portfolio and assuring engagement of patients and other stakeholders throughout the course of research projects.
Before joining PCORI, Anyanwu completed a fellowship in comparative effectiveness research and patient-centered outcomes research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research. She worked on various CER-PCOR training programs, was instrumental in the launch of the CER Collaborative Certificate Training program, a continuing education program on CER methods for pharmacists and pharmacy students. Anyanwu also spearheaded the first annual CER-PCOR Summer Institute, and served as project manager for the PCORI-funded National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) PCOR training program for rare-disease patients and patient advocates.
Desiree Rivers, Ph.D.
Bio:
Dr. Desiree Rivers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine and faculty in the Cancer Health Equity Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. In 2017, Dr. Rivers was selected as a National Institute on Aging Butler-Williams Scholar. Her research interests include exploring the socio-ecological context of cancer disparities through community-based and patient-centered translational research.
Sharese Terrell Willis, PhD
Bio:
Sharese Terrell Willis, PhD, is a writing scholar who uses her knowledge of professional writing research to help scientific researchers to publish their work. Dr. Willis has a doctorate in professional writing, and her research has focused on stem cell policy communication and graphics communication.