Keynote Speakers

Lanetta Bronte-Hall, MD, MPH - Dr. Bronte-Hall is a public health administrator, psychiatrist and medical parasitologist. For the past 30 years, she has identified, created and evaluated innovative strategies that have led to accessible, high quality and cost-effective care for individuals with sickle cell disease. She created the first sickle cell disease (SCD) outpatient program for the 3rd largest safety net hospital in the nation, where she implemented evidence-based standards of care. In addition, Dr. Bronte-Hall created a quality improvement and monitoring system for SCD. The program was certified by the Joint Commission for Disease Specific Certification three consecutive times. After the successful implementation of a SCD program in a hospital outpatient setting, she created a standalone dedicated center for SCD in the community, the Foundation for Sickle Cell Disease Research (FSCDR). The FSCDR is centrally located between the three county metropolitan area in the southern district of Florida. It is comprised of a multispecialty clinic, which has a hematologist-oncologist, family nurse practitioner, registered nurses, medical assistants and a network of multi-specialty providers. Since 2016 through a contract with the Florida Department of Health of Health, Office of Minority Health, FSCDR has provided care coordination for 1087 individuals with sickle cell disease. The FSCDR also serves as a medical home to more than 600 individuals with SCD. They have six satellite sites throughout the state of Florida.

Dr. Bronte-Hall has served in several sickle cell disease leadership positions including the Chief Medical Officer of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, Senior Medical Advisor to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, a member of the National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung and Blood Advisory Council, and a member of the 2014 Expert Panel for the evidence-based management of sickle cell disease for the National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. We have had unprecedented success recruiting, enrolling and retaining patients in clinical trials.

Ron Brown, PhD, ABPP - Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D., ABPP is the Dean of the School of Integrated Health Sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has served as the Executive Vice-President of Academic Affairs at Wayne State University and the President at the University of North Texas at Dallas. He has been the dean at two universities including Temple University and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he currently serves. In these positions, Dr. Brown has raised a total of $30,000,000. in philanthropy support. He is a board certified clinical health psychologist of the American Board of Professional Psychology. Dr. Brown’s clinical and research interests include attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, pediatric psychopharmacology, cancer and sickle cell disease. Dr. Brown served as the editors of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, Professional Psychology: Research and Practice and the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings. He was an inaugural member of the Behavioral Medicine and Intervention Outcomes study section of the National Institutes of Health and served on this study section for 8 years. Dr. Brown’s research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Office of Education, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He is the past President of the Society of Pediatric Psychology and the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers. He is the recipient of the Martin P. Levin Mentorship Award, the Logan Wright Distinguished Research Award of the Society of Pediatric Psychology of the American Psychological Association and the Joseph D. Matarazzo Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in Academic Health Centers. Currently, Dr. Brown serves as the Chair of the Fellows Committee of the American Psychological Association.

Stephen Gillaspy, PhD - Dr. Stephen R. Gillaspy is a licensed psychologist and since August of 2019 has served as the Senior Director for the Office of Health & Health Care Finance within the Practice Directorate at the American Psychological Association APA). Prior to joining APA, Dr. Gillaspy was a Professor of Pediatrics within the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center since 2005. Within the Section of General & Community Pediatrics he served as the Associate Section Chief and Director of Clinical Psychology. Dr. Gillaspy also served as the Director of the Oklahoma Tobacco Helpline. He completed his graduate training in Clinical Psychology at Oklahoma State University and completed his Clinical Internship and a Post-doctoral fellowship in Primary Care and Health Psychology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. At the state level Dr. Gillaspy has served on the Board of the Oklahoma Psychological Association and served as President. Nationally, Dr. Gillaspy has served as the American Psychological Associations Advisor for the Health Care Professional Advisory Committee to the American Medical Association’s Relative Value Update Committee (RUC).

Atul Grover, MD, PhD - Atul Grover, MD, PhD, is the inaugural executive director of the AAMC Research and Action Institute. The institute convenes national experts to examine the most critical issues affecting the missions and institutions of academic medicine; develop policy and programmatic solutions; and harness member medical schools, teaching hospitals and academic health systems, and academic societies to test, validate, and scale effective change. Dr. Grover is an internal medicine physician, health services researcher, and nationally recognized expert in health policy. Dr. Grover joined the AAMC as the associate director for the Center for Workforce Studies in 2005, where he managed research activity and directed externally funded workforce studies. He became a director of government relations and health care affairs in 2007 and served as the association’s chief public policy officer from 2011 to 2016. From 2016 to 2020, he served as executive vice president, where he provided strategic leadership in the areas of medical education, academic affairs, health care affairs, scientific affairs, learning and leadership programming, diversity and inclusion, public policy, and communications. Previously, Dr. Grover held positions in health care finance and applied economics consulting and worked with the U.S. Public Health Service, Health Resources and Service Administration National Center for Health Workforce Analysis. Dr. Grover earned his medical degree from the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (GW SMHS) and his doctorate in health and public policy from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Grover holds faculty appointments at GW SHMS and JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Katherine McGuire, MS - Katherine B. McGuire is APA’s first chief advocacy officer, responsible for implementing a unified, strategic vision for the association’s government relations efforts and coordinating APA’s broader advocacy initiatives in nongovernmental sectors. Her mandate will include working with APA and its companion APA Services, Inc. to merge the approximately 24 government relations staff into a single department and ensuring that APA speaks with one voice before Congress, federal agencies and the White House. She will also be responsible for growing psychology’s political action committee, Psychology PAC. With more than 25 years of senior-level policy experience in Congress, the executive branch and the private sector, McGuire was most recently assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor. In that post, she focused on appropriations, budget priorities and regulatory matters. She was responsible for all external communications to Congress, governors and interdepartmental stakeholders and for providing technical assistance on issues ranging from workplace rules and regulations to prison re-entry programs. She has also been actively engaged in federal policy solutions to address the opioid epidemic since initiating the first congressional public health model opioid roundtable in the Chicago region in 2015. Before joining the Department of Labor in January 2018, McGuire served five years in the House of Representatives advising on science and technology issues. Prior to that, she spent five years as vice president for government affairs at the Business Software Alliance, a trade group comprising the world’s leading software companies, including Apple and Microsoft. She served almost 18 years in the U.S. Senate where she held numerous senior leadership roles, including Republican staff director of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions where led legislative efforts and perfected the art of legislating through the mentoring and leadership of Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and then-Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. She also previously served as staff director for two subcommittees of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and as legislative director for Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. McGuire’s ability to work with members of both parties has been widely recognized