Webinar: How to Systemically Address Social Needs in Healthcare Settings

Here are the panelists for the webinar, which will follow a question-and-answer discussion session format moderated by Dr. Amelie Ramirez.

Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez (moderator) is an internationally recognized researcher in Latino health promotion and behavioral change. She is director of Salud America! and its home base, the Institute for Health Promotion Research in the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio. Ramirez has spent over 30 years directing research on human and organizational communication to reduce chronic disease and cancer health disparities affecting Latinos, including cancer risk factors, clinical trial recruitment, tobacco prevention, obesity prevention, and promotion of health equity. She also is associate director of cancer outreach and engagement at the NCI-designated Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio.

Dr. Carlos Roberto Jaén is professor and chair of family and community medicine at UT Health San Antonio aims to improve preventive care for individuals of all ages and building high-performance primary care offices. He has been selected to the Best Doctors in America yearly since 2002. He was elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly known as the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academies in 2013. He was also co-director of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Center for Research in Family Medicine and Primary Care. Over 20 years, the Center studied almost 500 mostly independent, community-based primary care practices and completed the evaluation of the AAFPs national demonstration project of the patient-centered medical home. He received a Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a Cancer Control Career Development Award for Primary Care Physicians from the American Cancer Society.

Ms. Kelli O. Thompson is director of population health management at Nemours Children’s Health. At Nemours, she is part of a team that began developing an SDoH screening program in 2018, which is now fully implemented or being piloted in multiple Nemours locations, including in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Florida. She has a demonstrated history of working in child-focused industries. She is skilled in leadership, nonprofit organizations, analytical skills, team building, relationship building, Microsoft Office, and more. She is a strong support professional with a Juris Doctor from Widener University School of Law.

Dr. Andrea Caracostis is executive director and CEO of HOPE Clinic, a Federally Qualified Health Center Serving Southwest Houston, Texas. HOPE Clinic is one of many community health centers in the US that has implemented a SDoH screening program with the support of the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), which helped create the PRAPARE® SDoH screening tool. As a physician with a Master’s in Public Health, Caracostis has over 10 years experience working with migrant and community health centers with special, vulnerable populations. She worked as a provider at the 330 funded Migrant Health Center (MHC), and served as a consultant to the Migrant Clinicians Network providing technical assistance to Community Health Centers around the country.