We have yet to reach a consensus on the intellectual foundation of the health equity movement as it tries to replace the legacy system.

Join us to discuss ways to improve or even replace the system for the best healthcare outcomes. We will also put in context the operating consensus that informs how health is apportioned.

Speakers

Gary A. Puckrein, PhD
President and Chief Executive Officer
National Minority Quality Forum

Gary A. Puckrein, PhD, is President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF) — formerly the National Minority Health Month Foundation—a not-for-profit organization that he founded in 1998. NMQF addresses the critical need for strengthening preventable illness in minority populations through prevention, early detection, and control of disease complications. In April 2001, the National Minority Health Month Foundation launched National Minority Health Month in response to Healthy People 2010, the national health promotion and disease-prevention initiative.

NMQF has received support from a wide variety of organizations, including federal agencies, pharmaceutical companies, payers, and trade associations. With support from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NMQF undertook the Zip Code Analysis Project, developing a comprehensive database that links vital statistics and otherelements—including demographic, environmental, claims, prescription, laboratory, hospital, andclinic data—in a centralized data warehouse, organized around zip codes. The Zip Code Analysis Project has enabled NMQF to develop the Health Assessment Tool, which measures and forecasts health status in small geographic areas, evaluates the impact of specific interventions, monitors changes in health outcomes, and undertakes risk assessments (health-care utilization and its financial implications). NMQF uses the Health Assessment Tool to stratify communities by geographic and health-status referents and to provide the health-disparities movement with a common set of indicators to measure and report on progress toward the elimination of disparities in health care and health status.

Dr. Puckrein has received many awards and honors, including being named a visiting scholar and fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and a visiting fellow at Princeton University. He was publisher of American Visions, the country’s leading African American art and cultural magazine, which he launched during his tenure at the Smithsonian Institution and Rutgers University. Dr. Puckrein also created and launched Minority Health Today, which served the needs of clinicians practicing in minority communities.

Mia Keeys, MA, DrPH(c)
Director of Federal Affairs
Hologic, Inc.

Mia R. Keeys is the Director of Federal Affairs at Hologic, Inc. She’s formerly the Chief of Staff to Congresswoman Robin L. Kelly, and also previously served as the Director of Health Equity Policy & Advocacy with the American Medical Association, after serving as the Policy Director of Congresswoman Robin Kelly’s (D-IL) Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Health Braintrust, the premier health policy arm of the CBC.

In April 2017, The National Minority Quality Forum recognized Mia as a 40 Under 40 Leader in Minority Health. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences features Mia’s children’s book on health equity-titled Cole Blue, Full of Valor-in their national archives, “Visualizing Health Equity.” Mia has been a Kaiser Family Foundation Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholar; a Fellow for the City of Philadelphia in the Deputy Mayor’s Office for Health and Opportunity; and an HIV/AIDS researcher in South Africa. Mia was also a U.S. Fulbright Fellow to Indonesia, where she lived and worked in various teaching, public health service and research capacities for three years, while simultaneously learning the national language, Bahasa Indonesian.