LEADS Project: Implementation of Population Health in an Academic Health System to Improve Health Outcomes

Bio: Sumit Fogla, MD, is the Vice Chair for Clinical Operations and Quality at the Medical College of Georgia. He earned his medical degree from the University of Mumbai and completed his family medicine residency at Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center. He earned an executive master’s degree in business administration/health care from Oakland University’s School of Business Administration and has participated in fellowships from the American Board of Obesity Medicine, American Academy of Family Physicians and the National Institute of Program Director Development. Fogla’s clinical research is focused on chronic disease management and his clinical interests are diabetes and obesity medicine, chronic diseases, preventive care and inpatient family medicine.

LEADS Project: Advancing health outcomes and financial stability through value-based care in an academic family medicine department

Bio: Dr. Sean P. Haley, MD MPH, was born and raised in Syracuse, New York. He completed his undergraduate degree at Syracuse University and completed a dual MD/MPH program at SUNY Upstate Medical University and Syracuse University. During this time, he also helped start and run a not for profit, called Hopeprint, that worked to empower resettled refugees living in Syracuse, NY. He completed his Family Medicine residency at the Medical University of South Carolina, where he served as a chief resident. He has remained on faculty at MUSC and has held various educational roles within the pre-clerkship curriculum and as co-director of the Family Medicine Clerkship. He works clinically in outpatient family medicine, inpatient hospital medicine, and post-acute care facilities.

He also serves as the Medical Director of Population Health and as the Medical Director of Care Coordination, serving on the boards of directors of Carolina Family Care and the Upstream Carolinas Accountable Care Organization. Nationally, he is the Liaison for the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research to the Community Preventive Services Task Force and recently participated in the inaugural STFM Antiracism Learning Collaborative. Most importantly, Sean is a husband, and father of two boys.

LEADS Project: Advancing Innovation in Residency Education (AIRE) 

Bio: Dr. Karuppiah is the Vice President and Designated Institutional Official (DIO) for Graduate Medical Education in Kansas City. He is the former Family Medicine Program Director at Eastern Connecticut Health Network and Assistant Director at UPMC Altoona Family Medicine residency. He was awarded the Penn State Hershey College of Medicine’s “Exemplary Teacher” award 5 years in a row.

Dr. Karuppiah trained in the United Kingdom receiving his Diploma in Family Medicine at the Royal College of General Practitioners. He has completed leadership training in a faculty development fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh – St. Margaret program, the National Institute for Program Directors Development Fundamentals Fellowship, and a 2012 graduate of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Emerging Leaders Fellowship. He holds an MPH in health policy from the University of Pittsburgh School of public health.

Dr. Karuppiah was awarded the American Medical Association’s Foundation Leadership Award in 2009, after receiving the AMA’s “Paul Ambrose” award for leadership among resident physicians in public health the year prior. Dr. Karuppiah serves on the Board of American Board of Family Medicine and Kansas Academy of Family Physicians.

LEADS Project: Cultivating a Culture of Stability and Sustainability in a Time of Redesign and Uncertainty

Bio: Erin Kavanaugh, MD, FAAFP earned her degree at the Pennsylvania State University in 2003. She completed medical education at the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in 2007. She completed her family medicine residency at ChristianaCare’s family medicine residency program in 2010.

She was hired as faculty for the Family Medicine Residency program in 2010. She completed the National Institute of Program Directors development fellowship in 2013, and was promoted to associate program director.  In April 2016, Dr. Kavanaugh was named the residency program director for family medicine and co-program director for emergency medicine/family medicine. In January 2019, she was appointed Vice Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine.  In July 2023, Dr Kavanaugh was named Chair, Department of Family and Community Medicine and Physician Executive, Complex and Community Medicine. 

Dr. Kavanaugh is a past president of the Delaware Academy of Family Physicians.  She has been awarded multiple Program Director’s Awards by the AFMRD, as well as a variety of awards for her commitment to excellence in education. She values mentorship and has been an AAFP Foundation mentor for multiple cycles of the Family Medicine LEADS program. She is currently an AAFP Health Equity Fellow for 2023.

LEADS Project: Fostering interdepartmental collaboration to improve comprehensive health care for high-risk pregnancies

Bio: Dr. Kopec earned his medical degree from Wayne State University in Detroit and completed his residency in Family Medicine at the University of Michigan. He pursued additional training in high risk and surgical obstetrics in Seattle. He practiced full-scope Family Medicine with Obstetrics in the Seattle area, where he was involved as faculty in a new residency program based in a community health center system. He completed a faculty development fellowship through the University of Washington.

He joined the Family Medicine Department at Eastern Virginia Medical School in the fall of 2021 as Assistant Professor. He currently serves as a department Medical Director and as the Assistant Program Director for Women’s Health. He plays an integral role in both clinical operations and resident education within the department. He maintains a broad scope of practice, including hospital rounding, obstetrics, and outpatient procedures.  Some of his current projects include clinical quality improvement, resident education initiatives in women’s health, and initiatives aimed at improving maternal and child health in the region through interdepartmental collaboration.

LEADS Project: Creating the Academic Primary Care Practice of the Future 

Bio: Dr. Nelson is the Vice Chair for Clinical Operations for the department of Community Health and Family Medicine at the University of Florida. She is also Associate Chief Medical Informatics Officer for UFHealth and an Associate Professor and faculty member in the University of Florida Family Medicine Residency Program. Through these seemingly disparate roles she is passionate about improving systems and inspiring the next generation of family doctors.

Dr. Nelson earned her MPH and MD degrees at Tufts University School of Medicine. She followed medical school with residency in family medicine at the Lawrence Family Medicine Residency. She continues to use her broad training to provide full spectrum outpatient family medicine including prenatal and pediatric care and inpatient rounding.

LEADS Project: Supporting Family Medicine Faculty Onboarding and Identity Development in the First Three Years

Bio: Dr. Anne Nofziger is an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, NY. Current roles include Associate Chair in the department of Family Medicine, Associate Dean for Advising in the medical school, and Director of the Dean’s Teaching Fellowship for mid-career faculty at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame and her MD from Indiana University School of Medicine, followed by Family Medicine residency and serving a year as Chief Resident at the University of Rochester. She joined the Family Medicine faculty in 2000, as the medical school planned for major curricular reform.

Dr. Nofziger has directed the School’s multi-modal end of phase assessment program until 2011, and served as director of the medical school's Primary Care Clerkship until 2020. She has served as director of junior faculty affairs in the Department of Family Medicine since 2021. Her academic interests include formation of clinical competence and professionalism, advancing equity in medical education and primary care, individualizing mentorship for students and junior faculty, communication coaching, women’s health, and comprehensive outpatient primary care.

LEADS Project: Developing a Strategic Plan for the Development of a Fam Medicine Department in GW

Bio: Dr. Portela is the Chief of the Family Medicine Section within the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Medical Faculty Associates at George Washington University (GW). Previously she was also the Medical Director of the George Washington Immediate Primary Care Clinics. Through this role she works towards expanding the footprint of Primary Care and Family Medicine at GW and the Medical Faculty Associates to improve access and quality of care in the community as well as to increase family medicine exposure and mentorship opportunities for students. Dr. Portela is an Assistant Professor at the School of Medicine, where she serves as a Coach and a Public Health Mentor at the medical school. Dr. Portela is the PI of the HHS funded Health Equity Leaders Development Initiative and a practicing primary care physician.

Dr. Portela prior worked in HHS at the Health Resources Services Administration leading efforts to re-envision primary care training focused on transforming health care delivery systems aimed at improving access, quality of care and cost-effectiveness. Dr. Portela previously provided volunteer clinical services at Unity Health Care, a Federally Qualified Health Center in DC and in 2017 was an Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity at George Washington University.

Previously, while pursuing medical school training in her native Puerto Rico, she shared in the development of an assessment on the health and education sectors for President Obama's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Economic Development. Subsequently, she pursued residency training at Duke, and completed the Commonwealth Fund Mongan Fellowship in Minority Health Policy at Harvard, where she obtained her master's degree with concentrations in Public Health Leadership and Health Policy and Management.

Dr. Portela has taken diverse leadership roles and has served in Health Equity local, state and national boards and committees. She is passionate about increasing access and quality of health care services to vulnerable populations, and about teaching, mentorship, diversity, and inclusion.

LEADS Project: Examining different models for residency programs with multiple clinical sites

Bio: Alexis Benavidez Reedy-Cooper, MD MPH, attended Swarthmore College near Philadelphia and graduated with a B.S. in Engineering Science. After college, she obtained her MPH at Emory University. In Atlanta, she participated in public health research into pediatric HIV with the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Reedy-Cooper then attended medical school at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, a program affiliated with Case Western Reserve University. There, she discovered her love of family medicine and continued her research, spending a year studying medication reconciliation in primary care. Dr. Reedy-Cooper completed family medicine residency at Lancaster General Hospital, where she developed an interest in women's health, addiction medicine and the care of complex, underserved patients. In 2015, she started working in medical education at Penn State University College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. She started working in undergraduate medical education, and then moved on to graduate medical education. In 2020, took a position as the Residency Program Director at Penn State Health St. Joseph in Reading, PA, where she has worked on creating a supportive environment for training the next generation of family medicine physicians to lead, teach and thrive in practice. 

LEADS Project: Restoring in-office procedures to family physician scope of practice in the Rush University Medical Group

Bio: Kate Rowland, MD, MS, is an associate professor and the vice chair for education in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at Rush University. Dr. Rowland is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Rush Medical College. She completed training at the Advocate Illinois Masonic Family Medicine residency and the University of Chicago primary care clinical scholars fellowship, where she received her Master of Science in health studies. She is currently co-director of the Rush M3 Longitudinal Integrated Course and M4 family medicine subinternship and previously held leadership roles in family medicine residency programs and faculty development fellowship programs. Dr. Rowland is on the executive board of the Illinois Academy of Family Physicians and serves as a medical editor for the American Academy of Family Physician’s FP Essentials series. Her areas of interest include longitudinal medical education, evidence-based medicine, and the translation of evidence to practice. She and her husband, a physics professor, have three children.

LEADS Project: The Benefits of Enhanced Staffing within the Primary Care Medical Home Model of Care

Bio: J. Bruin Rugge currently serves as the Clinical Vice Chair in the Department of Family Medicine at Oregon Health & Sciences University. He received his MD and MPH degrees from Yale University School of Medicine, and completed a joint residency in Family Medicine and General Preventive Medicine/Public Health at Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU). Directly after training, he joined the Department of Family Medicine at OHSU and became the medical director of the Scappoose Clinic, a federally designated Rural Health Center (RHC). In 2017, he was appointed the Clinical Vice Chair of Family Medicine. He directly oversees the operations of five clinical sites with approximately 200,000 annual visits as well as the inpatient services for the Department’s inpatient services at OHSU, which include adult, pediatric and maternity care patients.  Additionally, over the past five years, he has been working closely with OHSU’s Hillsboro Medical Center (HMC) to develop the clinical footprint to support a new family medicine residency. This program, now in its third year, trains eight residents a year in two different clinical sites. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor. 

LEADS Project: Improving Patient Outcomes with Clinical Data

Bio: Dr. Mark Ryan is an Associate Professor and the Vice-Chair of Clinical Operations and Quality at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)’s Department of Family Medicine and Population Health. In this role, Dr. Ryan provides support and guidance for 10 medical offices and supports the current growth of the Department’s clinical operations. Dr. Ryan completed his undergraduate training at the College of William and Mary, and his medical training at the VCU School of Medicine. After completing a rural residency in Blackstone, Virginia, Dr. Ryan worked in for four years in Charlotte County, Virginia. After four years in rural practice, Dr. Ryan returned to Richmond, Virginia, to practice at VCU Health’s Hayes E. Willis Health Center, a safety net practice for VCU Health which focuses on caring for uninsured and underinsured patients as well as many patients with limited English proficiency.

Dr. Ryan served as Medical Director for seven years, during which time he helped build an interprofessional practice team and established the center as a key medical student teaching site. Dr. Ryan is the Medical Director for the International/Inner City/Rural Preceptorship (I2CRP) program and has served as the Course Director for VCU’s “Patient, Physician, and Society” course, and is the Medical Director for a service project in the Dominican Republic.

LEADS Project: Transforming the health system science curriculum at an academic medical center through the lens of primary care

Bio: Novneet Sahu is an assistant professor of emergency medicine and family medicine at New Jersey Medical School, and he practices emergency and family medicine in Newark, New Jersey. Sahu’s work focuses on clinical care, education, and health development in low-resource environments, locally and globally. He co-directs the community medicine and urban health track for emergency medicine residents at the medical school and serves as medical director for the New Jersey Family Practice Center, which serves a large population of patients who face health inequities.

Through his role with the U.S. Army Reserve Civil Affairs Command, Sahu is the humanitarian assistance and public health physician that focuses on planning and executing U.S. civil affairs global health engagement in Europe and Africa. His recent work includes improving access to care through transdisciplinary collaboration in East Africa and assessing disaster resiliency in southeastern Europe. He has experience in developing health infrastructure with minimal resources in “failed states.”

Sahu mentors medical students and resident physicians interested in global health and community medicine and bridges local and global health concepts on health development. He maintains membership in several professional associations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Emergency Medicine, and National Association of Emergency Medical Services Physicians.

LEADS Project:Enhancing Rural and Unserved Population Opportunities for Students Using Federally Qualified Health Centers and Community Health Center Platforms

Bio: Ashley Saucier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta, Georgia. Dr. Saucier completed her medical education and residency training at MCG. Since completion of her training nine years ago, she has been a faculty member in the Department of Family and Community Medicine engaged in teaching medical students and residents, research, and patient care. She has demonstrated passion and dedication for medical student education as evidenced by multiple Excellence in Teaching Awards and her Clinical Science Teaching Distinguished Faculty Award. She currently serves as the Assistant Dean for Evaluation, Accreditation, and CQI for Academic Affairs and the Associate Director of Medical Student Education for Family and Community Medicine. In her roles, she feels privileged to experience and lead medical student education from multiple angles including teaching, assessment, curriculum development, recruitment and maintenance of community faculty teaching networks, and playing a central role in MCG’s LCME accreditation process. Outside of work, Dr. Saucier enjoys spending time with her husband and three children, teaching exercise classes, eating chocolate, and serving at her church. She is looking forward to developing leadership skills from a national cohort of leaders in Family Medicine as part of the ADFM Leads Fellowship.

LEADS Project: Mobile Health Unit Growth

Bio: I got into healthcare because I wanted to help people but knew it would be better for everyone if I stayed away from the OR and patient care, so I decided to work on the financial side and be a patient/physician advocate. I enjoy the problem solving on the fly and assisting patients through our complex healthcare system. Most of my work experience has been in the private sector until moving to Tucson and joining the University of Arizona and stepping into the academic side of things. Now I get to see a whole other side of healthcare regarding teaching and growing our residents into great Family Medicine physicians.

In my spare time I enjoy hiking with my wife and dog. We also enjoy cooking (my wife and I, that is. Our dog enjoys the eating part) and traveling. I’m originally from Akron so, by no fault of my own, I am a Cleveland Browns fan. My buddies and I try to go to an away game every year (sadly, I have yet to see a road victory but always hopeful).