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Covenant Community Care - Detroit
Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia - Pediatric and Adolescent Ambulatory Center
Tower Health - Children's Health Center
Tower Health - Reading Hospital
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Ellie Alderfer, MSN, RN, CCRP, CNML
University of California San Francisco Health
University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Group (UM-BWMG) - Pediatrics at Glen Burnie
CommUnity Care - East Austin
University of Texas, Dell Medical School, Austin, TX
Michelle Gallas is an assistant professor and outpatient pediatrician who has worked caring for Austin's most under-resourced and disadvantaged since 2006. Her patients are medically and socially complex, and many are recent immigrants or refugees. Gallas is the lead pediatrician for CenteringParenting at CommUnity Care, the safety net clinic system for Central Texas, and has been running groups since 2009. An interesting fact is that all her groups have been in Spanish as there is a large Hispanic population in Austin (we have never had a group with English-speakers only!). Gallas is passionate about resident education and supervises Dell Med’s pediatric residents and medical students at the program’s primary continuity site, East Austin CommunityCare Health Center.
Covenant Community Care, Inc.
Detroit, Michigan
Rachel Campbell has nearly a decade of experience working in maternal child health and is passionate about reducing barriers and improving access to high quality obstetric and gynecologic care. Rachel directed the implementation of CenteringPregnancy group prenatal care at Covenant Community Care and later served as a consultant in the clinic’s CenteringParenting program. She has been instrumental in advocating for fully integrated maternal-infant behavioral health services and in the creation of evidence based clinical protocols across the organization.
Rachel has special clinical interests in family planning, high risk obstetrics, and lactation support. She also regularly precepts midwifery students and is an assistant clinical professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing.
Reading Hospital, Tower Health
Reading, PA
Ellie Alderfer is an experienced nurse, manager, and researcher. She is the liaison for research to the Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network. She is actively involved in research related to the nursing experience during the COVID pandemic, and her goal is to inform on the needs of nurses that will create a sustainable workforce now and in the future. In the GROWBABY Research Network, she provides input and guidance regarding administration for the research activities. Ellie fully supports the advancement of this important care delivery model and the research network, that with attention and direction, will surely grow bigger and stronger – just like the babies.
University of California San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
Ariana Thompson-Lastad is an Assistant Professor at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health and the Department of Family & Community Medicine. She conducts research on group medical visits and integrative healthcare as approaches to advancing health equity. Trained as a medical sociologist, she uses qualitative and mixed-methods approaches and partners with community health centers to use group medical visits as a way to improve wellbeing of both patients and healthcare workers. Her current research focuses on group medical visits for postpartum health, chronic pain, and other chronic conditions, as well as how group visits can be combined with other health services such as acupuncture and produce prescriptions. Dr. Thompson-Lastad is also on the board of Integrative Medicine for the Underserved, a national network that includes many group visit clinicians and researchers.
Tower Health - Children's Health Center
Reading, PA
Cyndi Dimovitz is a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner with her Primary Mental Health Certification and is a Breast Feeding Counselor with a focus on improving healthcare and health, preventing disease and eliminating health disparities among women and children, especially in vulnerable and underserved populations. She has been involved in Centering for over 8 years and has recently become involved in a grant working with mother-infant dyads affected by maternal opioid use disorder (OUD) using the Centering model of care.
Einstein Medical Center
Philadelphia, PA
Susan Leib, MD, MPH is a board-certified pediatrician with over 30 years of experience as a primary care pediatrician. She completed her residency at Yale New Haven Hospital and was in private practice in Connecticut for 20 years. She joined Einstein’s Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine in 2012. Dr. Leib is the medical director of Einstein’s CenteringParentingR group well care program and was a member of the team that initiated Einstein’s CenteringParentingR program in 2013. Her research interests include pediatric residents’ experience with group well child care and the impact of group well child care on social determinants of health and child and family wellbeing.
University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Group (UM-BWMG) - Pediatrics
Glen Burnie, MD
Esther Kim Liu is Chair of Pediatrics and Director of CenteringParenting(r) at the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center where she oversees the pediatric hospitalist program and their award-winning Centering-based pediatric primary care practice.
Dr. Liu is passionate about children’s health and safety. She has extensive media experience including TV, radio, online, and print as she believes that ensuring families have access to reliable and relevant information is an important responsibility of those in the medical field.
Paula Greer served as the Centering Pregnancy Coordinator and Centering Facilitator Trainer for the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center (UM-BWMC) Women's Health Practice. Before retiring, Greer also worked for UM-BWMC Pediatric practice within their Centering Parenting Program, facilitating Group Depression Management sessions for moms with mood disorders, such as post-partum depression and anxiety.
In addition to serving as a volunteer consultant for the CRADLE Lab, Centering Healthcare Institute, and March of Dimes, she has promoted the UM-BWMC practice by writing articles for ShareCare.