NEW MEMBERS: Winter ’18

Brief bios/plugs for new members (extracted from the Introduce Yourself Connect Community)

• Daniel Warren (Rik), initial member of Sensogram Technologies business team. Responsibilities include evangelism, channel development and management.  The technology continually reads and wirelessly reports vital signs in a variety of wearable form factors. Complementing this are solutions serving those with higher fall risk.

• Brian Eastwood, a research analyst, with a background in writing, editing, and public speaking experience. Brian joined the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Participatory Medicine.

• Amber Soucy, currently work as a “traveling” nurse in Boston, MA. Amber has been taking 13-week contracts at different city hospitals to see which facility she would like to work at once she obtains her MSN in Clinical Nurse Leadership come May of 2018.

• Nancy Wolkenfeld, hopes to gain more insight and tools on how to better help her clients navigate our extremely complex health care system.  She’s been doing Patient Advocacy for over 23 years mostly for family, friends and their referrals, and now wants to grow her business to reach more of those in need – wherever they are located.

• Greg Merritt, spent 18 years at the University of Michigan in Student Affairs. Five years ago he had a sudden cardiac arrest in the car with his bride on the way to the hospital. He eventually went to cardiac rehab and joined a newly formed advisory group in cardiac rehab at U of M.  In the last year, he created a web page and has begun blogging.

• Dan Fleshler, has had Type 1 diabetes since the Kennedy Administration. He is a freelance writer and public affairs consultant and also a sporadically active participant in the diabetes online community and an advocate on a number of issues, including adequate Medicare coverage for people with diabetes and the urgent need to make insulin more affordable and accessible. He is a monthly contributor to Diabetes Mine.  

• Esther Schorr, the co-founder and CMO/COO of Patient Power, devoted to the education and empowerment of patients and care partners as they move through their journey dealing with health issues.  They primarily focus on various forms of cancer but have an extensive library of content that spans many serious illnesses.

• Richard Gibson, a family and emergency doc, trained in informatics at Utah and Intermountain Healthcare in the early 90s. He spent 14 years helping large integrated delivery systems to put in EHRs. He is Executive Director of the Health Record Banking Alliance, a non-profit launched by Bill Yasnoff in 2006. HRBA’s mission is to educate and advocate for each consumer to have their own comprehensive, longitudinal health record.

• Gail Phillips, an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse, had an extended tenure with Centering Healthcare Institute (CHI), of Boston. She worked as an expert group facilitator. Gail established the independent practice of Phillips Healthcare Advocate,  supporting and guiding health care providers through the process of implementation for the facilitated group model of healthcare, into their practices.

• Mary Hennings, spent 30+ year career as a healthcare executive, most recently, at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, leading commercial product strategy and development work.  Earlier in her career, she was a COO at a multi-specialty practice and has also worked in hospitals, startups and large, integrated ambulatory care settings.  She has interest in the employer/consumer constituents in the health care system.

• Allison Peacock, shifted this year from patient to professional member. She’s focused her communications and practice management consultancy exclusively on Integrative Medicine. She’s a patient advocate and mind-body practitioner, teaching quarterly on empowered healthcare topics in a local hospital network’s spiritual foundation.

• Diane Cashin, has 30 years in information technology and more than 15 of those years in Health IT. She left the comfort of being a part of Cisco’s healthcare team and started Propel Health, an IoT device aggregator and communications platform start-up.  Propel My LifeTM (for individuals) and Propel Their LifeTM (for caregivers) were created as a part of her life’s mission – keeping the individual, family members and home caregivers connected so everyone can live an extraordinary life.

• Sandra Myerson is a healthcare leader who works with organizations to improve the experience of care for patients and caregivers alike!  Her expertise is in identifying gaps in patient-centered care and eliminating process inefficiencies that create an undue burden on all who interface with the healthcare system.

MEMBERSHIP NEWS: Winter ’18

Lyuba Lytvyn  is part of a team that develop high-quality rapid guidelines, co-produced with patient and carers.

Casey Quinlan is working with the Right Care Alliance.

Marilyn Mann attended a forum on the FDA’s new transparency initiatives (see this statement by Scott Gottlieb) and ran into some people from CUE, Consumers United for Evidence-Based Healthcare.

Grace Cordovano and Brian Eastwood joined Savvy Cooperative., a patient-owned co-op that helps restore power back to patients and gives them a voice in healthcare innovations.

Burt Rosen and Geri Baumblatt co-hosted the first participatory medicine Chicago meetup at Cantina Laredo. Several members and organization representatives attended. Geri plans to host another event in the spring. Consider sponsoring one in your region.

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There are a growing number of healthcare companies in Chicago. And while Chicago is home to the AMA, The American College of Surgeons and incubators like Matter hosts events for healthcare innovators, there haven’t been efforts to build a broader community around health in Chicago.
So, it was a sudden decision, but when Burt Rosen and Geri Baumblatt realized Burt would be in Chicago on December first and could co-host, they decided to host the first participatory medicine Chicago meetup at Cantina Laredo. Geri contacted other members in the Chicagoland area (there are currently less than 10) and they both posted to their networks on social media.
Geri plans to host another event in the spring, and will also be speaking about the Society to the Northwestern Health Communication Masters students.