Leo Blandford is a clinical social worker at Outer Cape Health Services, a federally qualified community health center, and currently serves as the Director of Health Equity and Community Impact. He has worked in community outreach services through a full range of primary health care, behavioral health, substance use treatment, and community social services with residents and organizations throughout Cape Cod. Prior to living in Massachusetts, Leo worked at the American Red Cross National Headquarters where he supported business operations in the international relief and development programs, which included a three-year field placement in Sri Lanka.

Sacha Agrawal is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and Staff Psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He is passionate about his clinical work supporting the recovery of individuals with severe mental illness as a member of two assertive community treatment teams. Sacha’s academic interest is in health equity and social justice education, including co-produced education. He coordinates the Severe Mental Illness training for the General Adult Psychiatry residency program at the University of Toronto and is Education Lead for the Division of Schizophrenia at CAMH. He is also the Inclusion and Co-Production Advisor at the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare and Education (CACHE) at the University of Toronto. He enjoys spending time with his family, cooking and eating plant-based foods and making music.

Faith Summersett Williams, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She also holds a joint appointment through Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs as a faculty fellow. More specifically, she is trained as a pediatric psychologist, and currently works as an implementation scientist in the Potocsnak Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine (DAYAM) at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital where she leads the research program for DAYAM's Substance Use and Prevention Program and the Implementation Science + Health Equity Advancement Lab (I+HEAL). Her academic and clinical interests are focused on health equity and justice to center the values and needs of historically marginalized communities. She combines this perspective with organizational, implementation, and dissemination science frameworks to examine health inequities in relation to structural disenfranchisement with the goal of reducing inequities in healthcare.

Brianne Smith is a clinical social worker at Outer Cape Health Services and manages their innovative Community Resource Navigator (CHW) program that has served over 1,500 patients in the last 5 years and been recognized by HRSA as a best practice. She earned her B.A. from Providence College and her Master’s in Social Work from Boston University. Brianne has been working in the human service field on Cape Cod for the past 14 years.

Working in community based social work for over a decade, Brianne has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities for residents of rural Cape Cod. She believes in grass roots organizing, collaborations and community connections

Elizabeth Anyaegbu Onugha MD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Renal Services, at Baylor College of Medicine/ Texas Children’s Hospital. She attended medical school at University of Nigeria and completed a pediatric residency at Driscoll Children’s Hospital, Corpus Christi and a pediatric nephrology fellowship at Washington University in St Louis. Through a Genzyme grant during her fellowship training, Elizabeth completed her Masters of Science in Clinical Investigation at Washington University in St Louis.

Elizabeth’s experience traveling to border towns in South Texas to provide much-needed pediatric nephrology care to children of undocumented immigrants in the Rio Grande Valley, separated from major Texas cities by a guarded checkpoint, offered a firsthand encounter of health inequity issues in the United States.

Elizabeth is involved in initiatives to identify patients living in food insecure households and she is working with the Houston Food Bank to set up a food pantry in the Texas Children’s Hospital outpatient dialysis unit. Her research aims to increase access to kidney transplantation and improve food security for children living with kidney disease through community engagement efforts.

I am a Board Certified Internal Medicine physician in Central Valley California. I take pride in providing the best care to my patients and treating my patients how I would like myself or my family to be treated. I received my medical training from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield, Illinois. During medical school I was awarded a Research Fellowship through the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) studying critical decision making to determine the information most critical to make effective care decisions among Anesthesia providers at Duke University School of Medicine. Prior to graduating from medical school, I was a scholar in the inaugural Primary Care Leadership Program (PCLP) through GE-NMF where I participated in the delivery of primary care in one of out nation's largest Patient Center Medical Homes and conducted research on avoidable hospital readmissions. These experiences helped nature my desire to pursue a career in Internal Medicine. I completed my residency training at Danbury Hospital, a community hospital located in Danbury Connecticut and affiliated with Yale University School of Medicine. Since completing residency, I have worked as a Primary Care Provider and currently work in Urgent Care.

It has long been understood that the burning of fossil fuels for energy could, on a large enough scale, alter the composition of the atmosphere and enact a change in global climate. This future understanding is now our current reality as the average temperature of the planet rises to the highest in recent records, environments viable for growth for an unknown number of species shift upwards in latitude, even ceasing to exist, and microscale interactions of humans with their environment introduce disease, increase, or exacerbate long-standing complications. The entirety of such a phenomenon is overwhelming. Any personal attempt to study and understand the implications of this change in every possible location and in every possible system, both organic and human derived, would be simply impossible for one person alone. It is then through collaboration between all of us who recognize the importance of such times to exchange with one another and to aid each other. I aim to bring the greater public of my state of Minnesota into this understanding of the current crisis while pushing for leadership in government to enact solutions that correct long-standing health inequities but also prepare to avoid those which are predicted. If it is in the interest of anyone reading this introduction to collaborate on pathways of success for such an endeavor I would ask that you seek me out at your earliest convenience, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Heather is a leader in the field of public health with over a decade of experience dedicated to addressing health disparities, working with and for marginalized groups, and promoting health equity. With her unwavering commitment to the well-being of underrepresented populations, she has become a creative and progressive figure in healthcare and community advocacy spaces.

Heather has spent time with both the Maryland and Pennsylvania Departments of Health and non-profit organizations in the local Harrisburg area. She has obtained a Master of Public Health with a focus on epidemiology and healthcare management from West Chester University and her passion for addressing social determinants of health and uplifting communities of color is ever evolving. She maintains an optimistic drive to continue honing her skills and knowledge in addressing the complex challenges of public health, particularly at the intersection of healthcare ethics, inequity, and health disparities.

Shireen Cama, MD is an Instructor in Psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA)/Harvard Medical School as well as the Director of the Cambridge Health Alliance Child/Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship. She is trained as a pediatrician as well as an adult and child/adolescent psychiatrist, and is the Team Lead for the Child/Adolescent Mental Health Integration program at CHA. She is a former Bill Emerson Fellow of the Congressional Hunger Center and has worked on a number of projects aimed at increasing access to healthy food in under-resourced communities. Dr. Cama’s current academic and clinical interests center around primary care-mental health integration and access to pediatric mental health care, cultural psychiatry, quality improvement, health equity and medical education.