2024 Regions V/VII Conference

4:00 – 5:00PM: Check-In and Registration

5:00 – 5:15PM: Historical Overview of MCH Training Grants, Dr. Arden Handler

5:15 – 6:15PM: Refreshments

6:15 – 9:00PM: “Us Kids” Documentary Screening and Dialogue, Kim Snyder (director), Alex King (youth activist), Dr. Renee Canady (moderator)

Renée Branch Canady, PhD, MPA is widely known as an outstanding public health advocate, researcher, educator, and facilitator. She serves as CEO of MPHI, a nationally engaged public health institute located in Michigan where she initiated their mission to center equity and promote well-being for all. Dr. Canady is a relationship-driven leader and author of “Room at the Table: A Leader’s Guide to Advancing Health Equity and Justice.” In this well-received book, Canady presents a leadership challenge to everyone seeking to understand the intricacies of equity and justice, pushing them to become change agents within health/public health and other fields.

Canady earned her PhD in Medical Sociology from Michigan State University, master’s degree in public administration from Western Michigan University and bachelor’s degree in public health nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kim A Snyder’s most recent feature documentary, US KIDS premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Prior, she directed the Peabody award-winning documentary Newtown, which premiered in the US Competition at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Newtown screened at premiere festivals worldwide and was theatrically released followed by a national broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens and Netflix. Her most recent short, Lessons from a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane, premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded Best Documentary Short followed by the DocDispatch Award at the 2018 Sheffield DocFest and a Grierson Award nomination. Lessons… is a Netflix Original and is streaming in 196 countries. Snyder’s prior works include the feature documentary, Welcome to Shelbyville, nationally broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2011, and over a dozen short documentaries. Kim’s award-winning directorial debut feature documentary, I Remember Me was theatrically distributed by Zeitgeist Films. In 1994, she associate-produced the Academy Award-winning short film Trevor. Kim graduated with a Master’s in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and resides in New York City.

Alex King is a youth activist from Chicago, Illinois and a member of the North Lawn College Preparatory High School’s Peace Warriors Foundation, where he graduated in 2018 and has been a leading student voice against gun violence in America’s schools and communities. Peace Warriors’ goals has been to interrupt nonsense, to interject love and kindness; they are ambassadors of peace. The members live off the philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, living a non-violent life and teaching Kingian nonviolence. Peace Warriors partnered with March For Our Lives in 2018 to address gun violence reform in Chicago and across the nation.

Janine is a maternal and child health practitioner, coach, and consultant.  For over 20 years, she has worked in and with nonprofit organizations, of varying sizes and budgets. In addition to her UIC faculty appointment, she owns a consulting and coaching firm, Soar Strategies, Inc.  In her six-year tenure as the executive director of EverThrive Illinois, a maternal and child health nonprofit organization, the organization more than doubled its revenues, underwent a rebranding initiative, and strengthened private/public partnerships.   Janine has recently defended her dissertation on stress measurement in middle/high income women at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health, is a Co-Active Training Institute – trained coach, and has a Certificate of Professional Achievement in Nonprofit Management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (NU). She currently teaches “Maternal and Child Health Policy and Advocacy” at UIC. In addition, Janine serves as the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the McGaw YMCA in Evanston.

Dr. Arden Handler is the Director of the Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health and Professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Dr. Handler’s research career reflects her long-standing commitment to reducing inequities and improving the health of women, pregnant and postpartum persons, children, and families. Her specific interest is the exploration of factors that increase the risk for inequities in adverse pregnancy outcomes and examining ways in which the health care delivery system, particularly how prenatal care, postpartum care, and preconception/interconception/well-woman care can ameliorate these risks and reduce inequities. Other research and teaching interests include maternal and child health advocacy and policy, building the analytic capacity of the MCH workforce (MCH epidemiology), and the structure and functioning of the public health delivery system. Dr. Handler is PI of the evaluation of the Illinois Breast and Cervical Cancer Program, recent PI of the evaluation of Family Connects Chicago, co-PI for the evaluation of OCEAN Healthy Start, and is currently working on a number of projects focused on the delivery of health care in the postpartum period. She is Co-PI (multiple PIs) of the HRSA funded Innovations to ImPROve Maternal OuTcomEs in Illinois (I PROMOTE-IL) and co-I of Improving Maternal Health Through an Adaptation of a Two-Generation Postpartum Care Model in Diverse Settings. She is a former member of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality (SACIM) and a nationally renowned leader in maternal and child health advocacy, policy, epidemiology, and public health system improvement. In recognition of her contributions, she is a recipient of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s, 2021 Title V Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dr. William Story is an Associate Professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health and the Director of the Maternal and Child Health Catalyst Program at the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health. Dr. Story has over 20 years of experience in global public health focused on sexual, reproductive, maternal, and child health in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the U.S. Midwest. He is a social scientist with training in sociology, health behavior, and epidemiology whose work broadly addresses household- and community-level factors that are critical to improving access to health care and reducing health inequities and translating that research into improvements in policy and practice. Dr. Story was also the Training Director for Public Health for the Iowa Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (ILEND) Project at the University of Iowa from 2015 to 2023. Throughout his career, he has mentored dozens of public health graduate students, including doctoral students, who are interested in careers in MCH.

Steph Weber, PsyD, MPH is an Associate Professor and clinical psychologist at University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center where she serves as the Associate Director and Training Director for the Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) program. Dr. Weber earned her Doctor of Psychology degree from the University of Indianapolis in 2011 and her Master in Public Health from University of Cincinnati in 2020. She is also the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” Ambassador to Ohio and leads the Act Early Ohio state team, where her work focuses on early identification of developmental delays and disabilities. Clinically, Dr. Weber directs Next Step Clinic, a multidisciplinary clinic for preschool-aged children with prenatal opioid exposure and specializes in treatment of behavior disorders as well as toilet training and pica in individuals on the autism spectrum.

Dr. Jennifer Gidley Larson is a Clinical Assistant Professor and member of the pediatric faculty group in the Division of Rehabilitation Psychology and Neuropsychology. Dr. Larson was awarded her Ph.D. in clinical neuropsychology from the University of Utah. After completing her clinical internship at Children’s Hospital Colorado, she completed her post-doctoral fellowship in pediatric neuropsychology at the Kennedy Krieger Institute/Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She provides comprehensive outpatient neuropsychological assessments to diverse and complex child clinical populations of various ages with a broad spectrum of developmental, medical, and neurological disorders. She is also the Program Director of Mi-LEND for the University of Michigan. Her research interests include the motor and executive systems and their interactions with development, outcomes research for children born prematurely, and the clinical utility of neuropsychological measures and methods.

Zobeida Bonilla is the Director of the Global Health Certificate Program at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and teaches in the Maternal and Child Health MPH program. She is also an affiliate faculty in the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies program and the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies in the College of Liberal Arts. Through her work, Dr. Bonilla collaborates with a number of organizations and programs, including Centro, Our Bodies Ourselves, and the STEPS Program (Speech Therapy Education, Practicum, and Services for Latino Children and Families) at Indiana University.

Dr. Bonilla’s work in maternal and child health focuses specifically on issues related to global health, pregnancy health education among Latinos, program evaluation, and health disparities. Globally, her work focuses on the Caribbean region and Latino/a health. She has held several program management positions including Program Manager of the Latina Health Initiative of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Program Coordinator of Eduquemos a Nuestras Mujeres of Wake County Human Services in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Program Evaluator with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the West Virginia Prevention Resource Center.

Emmanuel M. Ngui, DrPH, MSc., is an Associate Professor in Community and Behavioral Health Promotion at the Joseph J. Zilber College of Public Health, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  He serves as the director of the Master of Public Health (MPH) and the Maternal and Child Health Graduate Certificate and Catalyst Training Program at the Zilber College of Public Health.  Dr. Ngui received his public health doctoral training in Maternal and Child Health from the Gillings School of Global Public at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Before joining the faculty at the Zilber College of Public Health, he was a faculty member in the Department of Pediatrics and the Institute of Health and Society at the Medical College of Wisconsin.  His broad research interests include health inequalities in maternal and child health populations and the role of social determinants of health and paternal engagement in birth outcomes, maternal and child health and wellbeing. This work strives to apply an emancipatory pedagogy in community engaged, epidemiological, and health services approaches to research on health equity and population health in reproductive health/birth outcomes and services among children and youth with special health care needs.  He has served as the principal investigator of the Milwaukee Fetal and Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) program until 2023 and is currently principal investigator and evaluator of the Making Milwaukee a Lead Safe City project funded through the Wisconsin Partnership Program.

Dr. Drissa M. Toure is a trained physician, behavioral scientist, and maternal and child health expert. He aims to conduct research that can integrate with health systems and community organizations to make a significant public health impact. Dr. Toure’s research interest lies in understanding the biological and environmental factors that affect early childhood development. He is passionate about training the MCH workforce, applying research to improve the lives of vulnerable children and women, and advocating data-driven recommendations. His research interests include epigenetic and pregnancy outcomes, early childhood and family policy, pediatric mental health, and health disparities.

Dr. Toure has long-standing experience in working with underserved communities, external stakeholders, and funders to develop and implement program evaluations that promote equity using quantitative and qualitative data.