Speakers

Mary Ann Abrams, MD, MPH

​Mary Ann Abrams is a Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She led Iowa Health System’s (now UnityPoint Health) health literacy quality initiative and development of Health Literacy Iowa. Her focus is on implementing and sustaining health literacy-related interventions in real-world clinical settings, including a reader-friendly consent for surgery; health literacy tools, training, and resources; and partnering with patients and adult learners.

Erin Carlson, DrPH, MPH

​Erin Carlson is Associate Clinical Professor at University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation where she is the Director of Graduate Public Health Programs and teaches public health courses. Prior to coming to UTA in 2016, Dr. Carlson previously worked as a principle and co-investigator on community-based infectious disease research, and in projects concerning access to health care for vulnerable immigrant populations. Her work has been funded by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, National Science Foundation, Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, and other organizations. She has received several awards including the Robert Wood Johnson Emerging Scholar Award in Disparities Research, University of North Texas Health Science Centers’s Dean’s Outstanding Research award, University of Texas at Arlington’s William S. Ward Endowment Award for outstanding teaching, University of Nebraska Medical Center Outstanding Alumni Award, and a three-time awardee of the University of North Texas Health Science Center’s Outstanding Faculty in Teaching award. Dr. Carlson has consulted for the CDC and Veterinarians Without Borders on a variety of international infectious disease projects. Currently, Dr. Carlson devotes much of her research and volunteer efforts to her passion-- access to health care for uninsured immigrant populations. In addition to serving on the board of directors for a local health care organization devoted to serving vulnerable uninsured populations, she is grateful that her passion can be supported with state-funded evaluation work of several community-based cancer screening interventions for underserved, uninsured minority populations.

Michael Escamilla, MD

​Michael Escamilla is a Professor of Psychiatry and Department Chair. He is board certified in Psychiatry and is also a Jungian Analyst (member of the International Association of Analytical Psychology). He completed his undergraduate degree at Harvard, his M.D. at UT Southwestern, and his Psychiatry training at the University of California at San Francisco. He was an American Psychiatric Association Fellow in Psychiatric Genetics, also at UCSF, and has conducted seminal studies in the genetics of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in Latino populations, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. He has also worked to teach Recovery oriented psychiatric practice across the state of Texas. Dr. Escamilla completed his training in Analytical Psychology at the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich. He has published over 100 journal articles and is the author of the book Bleuler, Jung and the Creation of the Schizophrenias (2016, Daimon Verlag publisher). His clinical treatment areas are analytical psychology, Jungian psychotherapy, and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders.

Suad Ghaddar, PhD

​Suad Ghaddar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). She holds degrees from the American University of Beirut (BBA, MBA) and The University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA) (PhD). Previous appointments include Director of the South Texas Border Health Disparities Center at UTPA, and Research Associate at the Center for Border Economic Studies at UTPA. Dr. Ghaddar’s research focuses on understanding the health literacy of different segments of the border population and on the design of interventions that help promote health literacy as a mechanism to address health disparities among minority and disadvantaged groups.

Belinda Gonzalez Hampton, MBA, CHW, CHWI, CQIA

​Belinda Gonzalez Hampton is the Community Engagement Specialist for the Health Equity and Community Engagement Division for Tarrant County Public Health.  She has been working in this area for three years.  Her role in this division is to provide training in the areas of health disparities and inequities in Tarrant County especially as they relate to health literacy and the Hispanic community.  She developed the first training presentation about working with the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) population and health literacy to present to the TCPH WIC staff.   This training contributed to the improvement in service delivery to the limited English Proficient population as it related to WIC Services.

Previously Ms. Hampton was the health planner and grant writer with the former division of Health Planning and Policy at Tarrant County Public Health.  In this area, Ms. Hampton was involved in working/developing the agency’s strategic plan along with the division manager; providing training regarding Health Impact Assessments and Health in All Policy Initiatives; in addition to being a member of the Community Advisory Board for the University of North Texas Health Science Center for Health Disparities, where she worked with the annual conferences for the past 3-4 years; Black Women’s Aids Initiative of Tarrant County, and other health-related organizations.  She is a founding/planning member of the 1st Annual Latino Health Symposium in 2015.

Ms. Hampton earned her MBA in Organizational Management from Texas Women’s University, being a Certified Community Health Worker and Certified Community Health Worker Instructor by the State of Texas.  In addition, she is bilingual Spanish, and bi-cultural.

Octavio N. Martinez, Jr., MD, MPH, MBA, FAPA

​Octavio N. Martinez, Jr.,​ is the executive director of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at The University of Texas at Austin.  The foundation’s grants and programs support mental health services, research, policy analysis, and public education projects in Texas.

The Hogg Foundation is part of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin.  Dr. Martinez also holds an appointment of Senior Associate Vice-President within the division and heads up the Community Integrated Health Initiatives program for the Division.  Additionally, he is a Professor of Psychiatry at Dell Medical School, Clinical Professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work; Faculty Affiliate of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice in the School of Law, and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the Long School of Medicine, UT Health San Antonio.

Teresa Wagner, DrPH, MS, CPH, RD/LD, CHWI

​Teresa Wagner currently works for SaferCare Texas as the Clinical Executive addressing health literacy. In that role, she has established a multi-stakeholder health literacy collaborative with the DFW Hospital Council Foundation and testified on health literacy legislation in Texas. Her testimony helped place health literacy into the State Health Plan. She has delivered multiple programs, speaking engagements and trainings on health literacy issues. As a result of her work, she received the 2018 Texas Health Literacy Hero Award.