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Interdepartmental Substance Use Disorders Coordinating Committee Biographical Information

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ISUDCC Members Biographies

MEMBERS

Chad Audi, Ph.D.

Dr. Chad Audi is an experienced senior executive with over 23 years of executive management experience and wide recognition as a visionary and dynamic leader in non-profit and for-profit sectors.

Since 2004, he has served as accomplished President and Chief Executive Officer of the 1909-founded Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries (D.R.M.M.), a not-for-profit organization cited by the U.S. News and World Report as the 13th largest substance abuse treatment center in the U.S., and reputed as one of the largest Rescue Missions in the world, giving meaningful help and hope to over 2200 persons daily.

A sought-after high impact trainer and consultant in effective leadership, marketing, communications, corporate governance, conflict resolution, and negotiation, Dr. Audi has delivered well-received lectures and trainings at leading universities, professional associations and business and non-profit events in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other countries.

Caleb J. Banta-Green, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S.W.

Dr. Banta-Green is a principal research scientist at the Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute and an affiliate associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington. He researches substance use disorder treatment and other interventions, including opioid use disorder and overdose. His research focuses on people who are homeless, utilizing public health services such as syringe exchanges, and/or in the criminal legal system. He provides technical assistance and training for health care, addiction treatment, and public health and safety interventions. He is also an epidemiologist and reports drug trends across WA State, has been the Seattle area representative to the National Institute on Drug Abuse's drug epidemiology workgroup since 2001, and partners with state and local agencies on drug epidemiology planning, tracking, and reporting.

Dr. Banta-Green has an M.S.W., an M.P.H., and a Ph.D. in Health Services Research from the School of Public Health, all from the U.W. He serves on local, state, and national workgroups and advisory committees related to epidemiology, policy, and interventions for substance-related problems. He served as a senior science advisor for the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the President in 2012.

Honorable Nancy L. Butts, J.D.

Honorable Nancy L. Butts is currently the President Judge of Lycoming County. Judge Butts graduated from Lehigh University and California Western School of Law. She began her career in Lycoming County, serving as an Assistant Public Defender with the Lycoming County Public Defender's Office. She next served as the Law Clerk for Judge Clinton W. Smith and after her clerkship joined the practice of Charles A. Szybist, Esq. After about a year in private practice, she then became an Assistant District Attorney with the Lycoming County District Attorney's Office.

Judge Butts was elected to her first term as Common Pleas Judge in 1995 and was retained both in 2005 and 2015. She completed with distinction the General Jurisdiction Course at the National Judicial College in 1996. She became President Judge in 2010.

She currently serves as the Lycoming County Drug Court Judge and has continuously since its formation in 1998. Additionally, she currently presides over D.U.I. Court since 2008. She established the County's Juvenile Drug Court and served as its judge from 2004- 2016. She established and worked with the Lycoming County Mental Health Court from 2008 to 2012, 2017, to present. She established and currently presides over the newly formed Veterans Court.

As President Judge, she is the Chairman of the County's Criminal Justice Advisory Board (C.J.A.B.). She also serves on the C.J.A.B.'s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Subcommittees. Through her participation on the Reentry Coalition subcommittee, she assists with programming and policy governing incarcerated individuals returning back to the community. Judge Butts has represented the Courts on the Lycoming County Prison Board since 1999.

In 1998, Judge Butts contributed to the creation of a local American Inn of Court. She was the first President of the Charles F. Greevy, Jr. Chapter of the American Inn of Court and served as its Secretary for many years.

Judge Butts was appointed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to serve on the Criminal Procedural Rules Committee from 2007-2014. In her last year on the Committee, she served as Chairperson.

Meredith Canada, M.S.W., M.P.A., L.C.S.W.

Ms. Canada is the Public Health Analyst for the Indiana High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area's (H.I.D.T.A.) Overdose Response Strategy. The Overdose Response Strategy (O.R.S.) seeks to enhance public health-public safety collaboration and to strengthen and improve efforts to reduce drug overdose deaths. With support from the Office of National Drug Control Policy (O.N.D.C.P.) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.), the O.R.S. initiative supports innovation and research at the local, state, and regional levels. The four strategic directions that shape the boundaries of the O.R.S. are law enforcement, response, treatment, and recovery, and prevention. Through her current and previous positions, she has fostered collaborations across multiple disciplines, including mental health, substance abuse, law enforcement, corrections, and public health practitioners.

Ms. Canada is a licensed Clinical Social Worker in the State of Indiana, with eight years of experience treating mental health and co-morbid substance use conditions. During her full-time clinical direct-practice career, she worked in the community with children, adolescents, adults, and families, providing intensive mental health and addiction services in home-based and office settings. Additionally, she has worked in parole, medium, and maximum-security correctional settings with men and women, providing a variety of services including group and individual therapy and case management services. In addition to the work with the Indiana H.I.D.T.A., she provides consultation to tele-therapists on the effective use of clinical assessments and outcome measures in tele-therapy. She is also a Ph.D. student at the Indiana University School of Social Work.

Jamie Chrisman Low, M.Ed., N.C.C.

Jamie Chrisman Low, M.Ed., N.C.C., is a licensed professional counselor associate and board certified telemental health provider in North Carolina and South Carolina and a certified peer support specialist in South Carolina.

Ms. Chrisman Low is the statewide Recovery community network weaver for Faces and Voices of Recovery South Carolina; Recovery consultant for the Opioid Response Network; Recovery community organization mentor for the Florida Recovery Project; and board secretary for Faces and Voices of Recovery Piedmont. She serves on the board of the South Carolina Peer Recovery Support Credentialing Commission. This year, she received a fellowship to the inaugural class of the Appalachian Leadership Institute to represent the state of South Carolina and the voice of Recovery in Appalachia.

Her professional expertise in existential theory is strength-based, person-centered, recovery-oriented and trauma-informed, and reinforces her personal experience in long term Recovery and unwavering resolve to remove barriers and improve access to recovery and wellness for individuals, families, groups, and communities.

Susan Dawson, Ed.D, PMHNP-BC

Susan Dawson, Ed.D., PMHNP-BC, has served as a trainer for the Targeted Response Team for Opioid Addiction. She prepared Nurse Practitioners throughout Missouri to serve opioid-addicted clients. She is a psychiatric mental health N.P. and has been in practice as a nurse for 45 years, and as an advanced practice nurse for 25 years. Dr. Dawson has served as a Professor, Dean and Director of nursing programs in Missouri, Illinois and Iowa. She has taught all levels of nursing-from L.P.N. to Doctorate degrees, as well as serving as an adult psychiatric preceptor. She was employed at Comtrea, an F.Q.H.C., which enabled her to practice in an integrated medicine setting. Then she was employed by Assisted Recovery Centers of America doing telepsychiatry for dual diagnosed addicted clients in recovery for clients throughout Missouri. She now serves clients at Provident Behavioral Health with psychiatric and co-occurring disorders.

Nicholas D. Estabrook

Mr. Estabrook is the Addictive Diseases Recovery Support Specialist for Georgia's Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities. In this role, he provides contractual and programmatic oversight of the 25 Addiction Recovery Support Centers in Georgia, as well as providing technical assistance to the network of providers in partnership with the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse.

In his previous role as the Recovery Community Organization Development Coordinator at the Georgia Council on Substance Abuse, he assisted many of the R.C.O.s that he now provides contract management to develop into the robust programs they are today. Mr. Estabrook is experienced in facilitating community listening sessions, training on P-BRSS best practices, training facilitation, and planning for the development of local grassroots Recovery Community Organizations: all with the aim of providing and developing creative solutions to stem the flow of the Addiction Epidemic.

Mr. Estabrook is a person in long-term recovery, and for him, that means he has not used any mood- or mind-altering substances in over five years. He is also a Certified Peer Specialist for Addictive Diseases and is currently a full-time senior student at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies.

Mr. Estabrook is looking forward to using his lived experience, work experience, and the collective knowledge of his partners across the state of Georgia to add valuable ideas and solutions to the coordination of the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act.

Judy Goforth Parker, Ph.D., A.P.R.N., F.A.C.H.E.

Dr. Judy Goforth Parker is the Secretary of the Chickasaw Nation Division of Health. She has a doctorate in nursing from Texas Women's University and completed her nurse practitioner degree at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She is a practicing Advanced Practical Registered Nurse in the emergency department and women's clinic of the C.N.D.H. Dr. Goforth Parker served as a Chickasaw Nation tribal legislator for four terms beginning in 1994 and stepped down in 2009 to take the role of administrator for the Chickasaw Nation Department of Health (C.N.D.H.). She was named the department's Secretary in January 2014. Judy has served on the Chickasaw Foundation Board of Trustees since July 2000. She also currently serves as vice-chair for the board of directors of Bank2 in Oklahoma City, as Chairperson of the East Central Oklahoma Blood Institute and the Tribal Technical Advisory Group's Oklahoma representative to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Sarah Goldsby, M.S.W., M.P.H.

In her role as director of the South Carolina Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services (D.A.O.D.A.S.), a cabinet-level agency, Ms. Goldsby, is responsible for planning, implementing, and overseeing the state's publicly funded substance use disorder prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery services system. This work includes interagency collaboration to ensure that services are provided in a collaborative and seamless manner. In so doing, Ms. Goldsby provides leadership in managing federal funds designed to enhance South Carolina's alcohol and other drug programs.

Ms. Goldsby has also taken a leadership role in addressing the state's challenges with opioid use disorders. In particular, she serves as Co-Chair of the South Carolina Opioid Emergency Response Team, an interagency collaboration established by Governor Henry McMaster in 2017. Ms. Goldsby leads this group with Mark Keel, Chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. This public health-law enforcement partnership is critical as South Carolina navigates innovative solutions to save lives. For example, Ms. Goldsby championed the training of more than 7,000 law enforcement officers in the use of Narcan®, an opioid overdose-reversal medication. This work has also led to the successful execution of contracts with 21 opioid treatment programs, including programming to expand access to medication-assisted treatment for pregnant and postpartum women.

Erik P. Hess, M.D., MS.c.

Dr. Erik P. Hess is a graduate of the U.A.B. School of Medicine. He completed a residency in Emergency Medicine and a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine at the Mayo Clinic as well as a Clinical Research fellowship at the University of Ottawa. Boarded in Emergency Medicine, Dr. Hess is currently a tenured physician scientist, Professor, and Interim Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine.

Dr. Hess' research interests are focused on shared decision making, decision science, and ameliorating disparities in public health. The overall goal of Dr. Hess' research is to investigate and implement ways clinicians, and systems can consistently treat patients seeking emergency care with dignity and respect, anyone, anytime, anywhere, regardless of the circumstances. This research agenda focuses on improving the patient experience of care, addressing disparities in health outcomes in the Deep South, and learning to see the emergency care experience from the patient's perspective.

Dr. Hess has authored or co-authored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications, co-authored American Heart Association guidelines, reviewed grants for the N.I.H., P.C.O.R.I., and the Emergency Medicine Foundation, is a member of the editorial board and Associate Editor for Academic Emergency Medicine, and has served as peer reviewer for a number of medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, B.M.J., Health Affairs, Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Annals of Emergency Medicine, among others. Dr. Hess has successfully competed for funding as P.I. from both foundations and government agencies to support his research and mentored more than 30 clinicians and scientists, with mentee outcomes ranging from presentations at national and international academic meetings to publications in the peer-reviewed literature to successful attainment of academic positions to submitting successful applications for extramural funding.

Steven M. Jenkusky, M.D., M.A., F.A.P.A.

Dr. Steven Jenkusky is a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in addiction medicine, with thirty years of experience in treating patients with substance use disorders. He serves as a vice president medical director with Magellan Healthcare, where his primary responsibilities include managing behavioral health and SUD services for the largest Medicaid provider in New Mexico. In this role, he has broad responsibility for care coordination, integration, utilization management, quality management, fraud investigations, and network issues related to behavioral health. He also serves as a subject matter expert for addiction medicine for Magellan nationally. Prior to this work, he was the medical director for behavioral health for an integrated health care system in New Mexico and was a member of the inaugural ECHO telemedicine programs for Hepatitis C, substance use disorders, and pain management through the University of New Mexico.

As Chairman of the New Mexico Medical Board (N.M.M.B.), Dr. Jenkusky also is a noted clinical leader within the state of New Mexico, and long has led efforts to promote care coordination and integration between physical and behavioral healthcare, as well as prevention, screening, and referral for SUD treatment and services within the primary care setting. This important work was echoed in Dr. Jenkusky' s chairing of the N.M.M.B. Pain Management Rule Revision Taskforce and member of the governor's Overdose Prevention and Pain Management Advisory Council since 2013.

Sheryl Ryan, M.D., F.A.A.P.

Sheryl Ryan, M.D., F.A.A.P., is a pediatrician and adolescent medicine subspecialist at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. She currently serves as a Professor of pediatrics and chief of the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Eating Disorders and is Associate Director of the Interdisciplinary Fellowship in Addiction Medicine at Penn State. Her research and expertise are focused on adolescent substance use, including the use of the screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (S.B.I.R.T.) tool for the identification of problematic substance use and the use of M.A.T. for SUD.

Dr. Ryan has served as the chair of the A.A.P. Committee on Substance Use and Prevention since 2015.

Amanda S.

Amanda S. is a person in sustained recovery from polysubstance use disorder. She receives medicated assisted treatment for chronic pain, advocates against stigma, and is a voice for people with addiction and mental health.

Cynthia Seivwright, M.A., L.C.M.H.C., CQIA

In her role as State alcohol and drug agency director, Ms. Seivwright is responsible for planning, implementing, and overseeing Vermont's publicly funded substance use disorder prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery services. This work includes interagency collaboration to ensure services are provided in a collaborative and seamless manner. In so doing, she manages all federal funds received by Vermont's Department of Health dedicated to alcohol and drug programs and services.

Ms. Seivwright also provides oversight of Vermont's Hub and Spoke system of care for opioid use disorders. This system has been recognized as an innovative model to expand access to clinically appropriate services to those with opioid use disorders. Specifically, the Hub and Spoke system has been shown to help increase access to medication-assisted treatment (M.A.T.), decreases in injection drug use, decreases in emergency department visits, reductions in illegal activity, and other positive outcomes. The model also seeks to increase access to physical health, housing, employment, and recovery supports.

During her career, Ms. Seivwright worked at the Department of Vermont Health Access (D.V.H.A.) where she directed the planning, development, implementation, and administration of quality improvement and substance use and mental health disorder program for the State's Medicaid program. She also managed key operational elements of a multi-State, multi-year quality demonstration grant authorized under the Child Health Improvement Program Reauthorization Act (C.H.I.P.R.A.) and under a grant designed to address adult quality measures.

Ms. Seivwright has over twenty years of clinical experience in a variety of settings. This includes work as an Emergency Services Clinician, where she provided emergency intervention services. Ms. Seivwright also has experience as a Quality Improvement Coordinator, where she developed quality improvement projects in managed care settings. She also has worked in the State's Department of Mental Health and provided services in a private practice setting.

Daniel Sledge, B.A., LP

Daniel Sledge works as a community paramedic with the Williamson County Mobile Outreach Team (M.O.T.). Dispatched through the 911 system, M.O.T. responds to behavioral health crisis calls in the field. Daniel also conducts follow up visits for patients who received E.M.S. treatment for opioid overdose. During the follow-up visits, he provides naloxone kits, trains patients, and their loved ones on its administration, and helps connect them to treatments and resources that reduce harm and promote any positive change.

Mr. Sledge has worked 10+ years in E.M.S. both as a field paramedic and an E.M.S. educator. Before his current position, he helped in developing the Williamson County E.M.S. Community Health Paramedic Program (C.H.P.). There he worked with frequent utilizers of E.M.S. and individuals who were at high risk of readmission following a hospital discharge. Goals were to conserve E.M.S. resources and to manage subacute medical patients in the outpatient setting. His areas of interest include cardiology, pharmacology, substance use disorders, and harm reduction.

Daniel earned his paramedic certification from Temple College. Before venturing into the medical field, Daniel was a working musician. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of North Texas. Daniel lives with his wife and son in Austin, Texas.

Richard Spoth, Ph.D.

Richard Spoth, Ph.D., is the F. Wendell Miller Senior Prevention Scientist and the Director of the Partnerships in Prevention Science Institute (P.P.S.I.) at Iowa State University. He also has served as the director of the Coordinating Center for the Universal Prevention Curriculum in the North American region. He provides oversight for an interrelated set of projects addressing a range of research questions on prevention program engagement, program effectiveness, culturally-competent programming, and dissemination of universal evidence-based programs through community-university partnerships. This work included receipt of a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for a longitudinal study called the Capable Families and Youth Project. Work on the Project Family and PROSPER longitudinal prevention trials also has been recognized through awards from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the National 4H Council, and others.

Dr. Spoth has served on numerous federally-sponsored expert and technical review panels addressing issues in prevention research and research-practice integration. He has been invited to testify and brief Congress, to present to the Advisory Group for the White House's National Prevention Council, and to serve on a Surgeon General universal prevention-focused Expert Panel. He also has represented the prevention field on panels sponsored by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. With this work, Dr. Spoth received the Prevention Science Award from the Society for Prevention Research for outstanding contributions to advancing the field of prevention science, as well as the Service to the Society for Prevention Research Award, the Translation Science Award, and the Presidential Award for lifetime scientific achievement.

Luis R. Torres, Ph.D.

Dr. Luis R. Torres is an Associate Professor, Director of the Center for Drug and Social Policy Research, and Humana Endowed Chair in the Social Determinants of Health, in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. His research focuses on co-occurring mental health, substance use, and medical disorders, and community and family strengthening efforts, with a particular focus on Hispanics and other minority communities. An accomplished researcher, his funding portfolio includes grants from SAMHSA to deliver HIV/HCV, mental health, and substance use prevention interventions to Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, and other minorities ages 18 to 24; from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (N.I.D.A.) to study the effectiveness of Recovery High Schools in three states, and to explore the use of Virtual Reality Cue Exposure Therapy to target opioid cravings in injection and non-injection users; and from the Administration for Children and Families (A.C.F.) to conduct rigorous evaluations of Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education Programs that target primarily Hispanics and African Americans. Furthermore, Dr. Torres has several ongoing research collaborations in Mexico, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico focused on health and behavioral health (mental health and substance use).

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