LEADERSHIP TEAM

• Brenda A. Leath, MHSA, PMP

  Co-Executive Director

   

  Brenda A. Leath, MHSA, PMP, is the Co-Executive Director of the Center for Pathways Community Care Coordination at the Rockville Institute and is a Westat Senior Study Director.   Her diverse career history of more than 20 years includes experience in hospital and ambulatory care administration, nonprofit management, advocacy, public policy, and health, mental health, and substance abuse prevention research.  In the public and private sectors, she has worked on health and behavioral health issues that disproportionately affect communities of color, including people with special needs. She has served in a variety of leadership capacities such as principal investigator (PI) and project director (PD) on various studies as well as content expert, senior advisor and project manager of multi-million dollar, multi-site projects and initiatives. A few examples include her role as Co-PI and PD on an NIH-sponsored research project to develop and test performance measures in community care coordination, PI and PD on an Office of the Secretary, Office of Minority Health sponsored contract to develop and test patient centered outcomes research based interventions and dissemination strategies to facilitate improvements in medication adherence, health service delivery and self management practices among minority patients with selected chronic diseases, as well as managed several SAMHSA contracts focused on knowledge application, delivery of technical assistance and dissemination of tools and information that support the adoption of evidence-based practices.  On the AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange project, she served as the health disparities reduction task lead as well as led the development and management of the  Community Care Coordination Learning Network--a broad-based network representing more than 16 communities with a focus on dissemination and adoption of innovative quality improvement strategies and health disparities reduction efforts.   

• Sarah Redding, MD, MPH

  Co-Executive Director

  Sarah A. Redding, MD, MPH   serves as the Co-Executive Director of the Center for Pathways Community Care Coordination at the Rockville Institute and is the Executive Director of the Community Health Access Project (CHAP).  Dr. Redding is an experienced physician specializing in preventive medicine with a focus on maternal and child health.  She completed her training at Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1997.  Her clinical experience ranges from serving as a physician in remote Alaska for three years to her current work with children and teenagers at the community mental health center.  As a public health physician, Dr. Redding has been actively involved with community health workers (CHWs) for the past 20 years.  She has co-developed an extensive CHW training curriculum and was instrumental in obtaining state certification in Ohio under the Board of Nursing in 2005.  Dr. Redding has helped train over 400 CHWs in the past 12 years.  Through her work with CHWs, Dr. Redding co-designed the Pathways Model – an innovative strategy to identify those most at risk of poor health outcomes in the community, confirm their connection to appropriate services and measure the results.  The model has developed into a payment for outcomes strategy that is used in contracting with Medicaid managed care plans in Ohio.  The model has evolved into the Pathways Community HUB Model, which is the focus of this proposal. 

• Russ Mardon, PhD

  Scientific Research Director

  Russell Mardon, PhD  is the Scientific Research Director of the Center for Pathways Community Care Coordination   as well as a Westat Senior Study Director with more than 20 years of experience in health care research and analysis. He is co-principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health-funded study to develop and test measures of community care coordination, as well as project director of an AHRQ Health IT Domain 2 task order to develop and evaluate tools to help primary care providers achieve meaningful use of electronic health records for care coordination.  In addition, he directs an AHRQ task order to develop a composite monitoring measure of the delivery of preventive services to older adults. In his former role as director of analysis at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), Dr. Mardon produced health plan and medical group comparative reports, conducted quality of care research, and supported NCQA program operations. He also directed studies to develop and test new HEDIS quality measures, refine member survey methodologies, and quantify the economic benefits of high-quality health care. Previously, he worked as an environmental epidemiologist and as director of research for the Florida Department of Health.

• Ernest Carter, MD, PhD

  Health Information & Technology Director

  Ernest Carter, MD, PhD is the Health Information and Technology Director of the Center for Pathways Community Care Coordination and a Senior Physician Informaticist at Westat with more than 25 years of experience managing and delivering pediatric patient care, as well as more than 15 years of experience in the field of health IT. At the Rockville institute’s National Center on Community Care Coordination, he is the Health Information and Technology Director where he provides oversight for HIT implementation efforts of the center .  At Westat, he provides senior-level review and input for the development and implementation of electronic health records, best practices and quality assurance for EHR adoption and patient centered medical home information modeling and design.  In previous work, Dr. Carter created and brought to market an Internet-based chronic disease telehealth self-management portal, in addition to overseeing business operations in the area of HIT enhanced care coordination.  Dr. Carter has developed, implemented, and managed projects in telehealth, care coordination, distance learning, and health IT in multiple US cities.  In private business ventures, he had a key role in designing and operating retail-based clinics in four states, including the implementation of electronic health records and personal health records and he oversaw the development and deployment of telemedicine applications to link Howard University Hospital with facilities in the U.S. Virgin Islands and South Africa. He has managed the operations of neonatal intensive care units and provided direct patient care to critically ill and high-risk infants.  He was an adjunct professor at the Howard University College of Medicine and an assistant professor in the university’s School of Electrical Engineering. He is currently in on the board of the Maryland Health Information Exchange.  He received his AB in Physics from Harvard College, MD from Harvard Medical School and Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

• Veronica Nieva, PhD

  Member, Executive Committee

  Rockville Institute

  Veronica F. Nieva, PhD,   is a member of the Rockville Institute’s Advisory Board and is on the Executive Board of the newly formed Center for Pathways Community Care Coordination, and is a Westat Vice President, whose expertise reflects a unique combination of substantive, methodological and management strengths to this project.  She  is an organizational psychologist whose recent work has focused on Patient Safety Culture, Health Care Delivery Innovations,  dissemination of research findings and products,  and Scale Up and Spread of Health Care Improvement Efforts.  Dr. Nieva is the Project Director and Editor in Chief of the AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange (www.innovations.ahrq.gov),  which supported a four year learning network for the Pathways Community Care Coordination model.    The Innovations Exchange has been actively exploring a variety of approaches to disseminating and promoting the adoption and implementation of evidence-based innovations in settings outside of the originating organization.  Dr. Nieva also has extensive experience conducting evaluations of various procedural and systemic  interventions in a variety of organizational contexts.  She will provide overall management guidance to this complex project,  based on her over 25 years of experience in project direction and management of many large scale and complex projects for various Federal agencies.

• Mark Redding, MD, FAAP

  Member, Executive Committee

  Community Health Access Project

  Mark Redding, MD, FAAP

  Mark has a broad primary care experience in rural and urban settings. Special interest and experience include community care coordination. He has worked directly within at risk communities (Alaska, Baltimore and Ohio) to train and support community based navigators (Community Health Workers) to address social barriers and achieve prevention and early treatment. 

   

  Mark has worked with his wife Dr. Sarah Redding since the late 1980s focusing on health disparities reduction initiatives. This work has involved the development of specific tools, and measures focused on care coordination. The Community HUB Pathways model represents part of this work currently published through the AHRQ Care Coordination Learning Network.