Equal Access to Care for All Communities

Healthcare leaders will discuss how the healthcare community is coming together to improve access to care for all patients, everywhere. Recognizing that stereotypes, bias and clinical uncertainty influence diagnosis and treatment, learn how education is playing a key role in expanding culturally competent care and how physicians are utilizing data and working alongside communities to improve health equity.

Join an engaging discussion with leading healthcare professionals focused upon eliminating health disparities.

Learning Points:

Discuss how information and technology can assist physicians in advancing health equity
Demonstrate how health systems are engaging communities beyond the walls of hospitals
Identify how education plays a critical role in improving health equity

Carladenise Edwards

Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer
HFHS

Bio info: Joining the health system in July 2020, she provides executive counsel and leadership for the system’s strategic...

Joining the health system in July 2020, she provides executive counsel and leadership for the system’s strategic planning efforts and partnership ventures, business development and transformation initiatives, government affairs, as well as Henry Ford Innovations, the health system’s multi-disciplinary team responsible for product design and commercialization, technology transfer, licensing agreements and international programs.

Dr. Edwards is an accomplished healthcare executive with nearly three decades of healthcare, nonprofit and government experience. Prior to Henry Ford, she was executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Providence St. Joseph Health, a $24 billion Catholic health system headquartered in Renton, WA, comprising 51 hospitals and 800 clinics across seven states.

Before that, she served as chief administrative officer for Providence Health & Services’ Population Health division and was instrumental in the 2016 merger with St. Joseph Health.

Additional executive leadership roles including chief strategy officer for Alameda Health System in Oakland, CA, where she facilitated the expansion and rebranding of the integrated public health system with a mission of Caring, Healing, Teaching and Serving All.

An expert in the intersection of healthcare and technology, Dr. Edwards also served as founding president and CEO of a nonprofit corporation, which governed California’s electronic Health Information Exchange, held technology based leadership roles in Georgia’s Department of Community Health, and advised healthcare, technology and nonprofit clients as principal advisor and CEO with a Florida based consulting firm.

Rooted in a strong commitment to service, Dr. Edwards serves on several boards, including the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing, Seattle-based College Success Foundation, Heluna Health, a not-for-profit population health company headquartered in California, and Apatics, Inc.

She has a Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from the University of Florida, a master’s degree in Education and Psychological Services and bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Edwards also studied neuroscience at the University of Leuven in Belgium and gerontology at the University of California Los Angeles.

Dominic Mack, MD, MBA

Director, National Center for Primary Care
Morehouse School of Medicine

Bio info: Dominic provides oversight of NCPC’s portfolio of programs and projects related to health information technology,...

Dominic provides oversight of NCPC’s portfolio of programs and projects related to health information technology, substance use prevention, health services research and policy. He leads the promotion of health equity through research, training and application of innovative technology solutions that advance primary care systems to improve population health.

Dominic is the Director of the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network (NCRN), a $40 million partnership with the Office of Minority Health focused on mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minority and other disproportionately impacted communities. He is also the founding director of the Georgia Health Information Technology Center (GA-HITEC) and Georgia Health Connect (GaHC) health information exchange. Dominic spent over 20 years practicing medicine and providing medical leadership in metropolitan Atlanta with many years of service in the Federally Qualified Health Center system. He works to develop national partnerships in rural and urban communities and takes a team-based approach to implementing and sustaining community-based interventions for better outcomes. He is founder and past president of Mack Medical Consultants, a for-profit company dedicated to the improvement of business practices in medical organizations.

Sam Shah

Founder and Director
Faculty of Future Health, Ulster University

Bio info: Sam is a digital health technology advisor to a number of healthcare and technology companies, spanning a range of...

Sam is a digital health technology advisor to a number of healthcare and technology companies, spanning a range of industries including telecommunications, assessment of apps, scaling new technology into the NHS and workforce solutions. Sam was previously Director of Digital Development for NHS England and NHSX, where he was responsible for digital development of the ecosystem and leading on a number of national transformation programmes.

Sam has worked on a number of initiatives including the flagship project to digitise urgent care in the NHS. Sam headed up the national learning and development programme for NHS England, which considered different channels to access healthcare using technology. He has also been involved in the assessment of healthcare technology through a number of grant schemes and accelerator programmes. Sam continues to work in the NHS within primary care and champions a range of agendas including improving diversity within the workforce.

Walter Suarez, MD, MPH, FHIMSS

Executive Director, Health IT Strategy & Policy
Kaiser Permanente

Bio info: Dr. Suarez is a physician and a public health and medical information systems specialist. He is responsible for...

Dr. Suarez is a physician and a public health and medical information systems specialist. He is responsible for developing KP’s internal and external eHealth/Health IT policy positions and providing national and international leadership and guidance on several health IT-related domains including digital health, electronic health record systems, health care administrative processes, privacy and security, mHealth, medical device interoperability, telehealth and health information exchanges.

Between 2008 and 2016 Dr. Suarez was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to serve in the prestigious National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS). In 2015 Dr. Suarez was appointed the Chair of NCVHS, the first Hispanic physician to serve in this position. Dr. Suarez also served in the U.S. Health IT Standards Committee advising the National Coordinator for Health IT at HHS. He served as the founding President and member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Public Health Data Standards Consortium, and advisor to the World Health Organization on eHealth. He is also a founding member of the Digital Bridge Initiative to advance interoperability between public health and health care organizations, as well as the Gravity Project, a national Social Determinants of Health data interoperability initiative.

Dr. Suarez is an active member of several national and international health-related standards development organizations, including ASC-X12N and Health Level 7 (HL7) International, where he serves as Chair of the Board of Director. He was also recently appointed to the Board of Directors of HIMSS North America.

Dr. Suarez earned his medical degree from the Colombian School of Medicine, and his master’s in public health from Tulane University.