Karen Albright, PhD received her Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University in 2004 and was previously a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley, and a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Culture and Health in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, a position she held jointly with Stanford University. Her research interests include health disparities among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, the psychosocial and health implications of socioeconomic mobility, and the social-psychological effects of trauma. Dr. Albright, an expert in qualitative methodologies, is the Qualitative Research CORE Leader at COHO and COR. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health in the Colorado School of Public Health. She has been the recipient of a National Institute of Health Loan Repayment Program in Clinical Research fellowship and has received a number of honors for her published work, including the 2005 Robert E. Park Award for the most distinguished scholarly paper to be published in urban and community sociology.
Mandy Allison, MD, MSPH – Assistant Professor Pediatrics. Dr. Allison graduated from Williams College
in Massachusetts in 1995 then moved to the Mississippi Delta where she taught 9th
grade Biology and earned her Masters in Education as part of the Mississippi Teacher
Corps program. Mandy completed her medical school training at the
University of Utah in 2001 and continued there to complete her residency in
Pediatrics in 2004. She then completed a Primary Care Research fellowship
and MSPH at the University of Colorado, Denver. After fellowship, she
returned to the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor in the Division of
General Pediatrics from 2006 to 2012 where her clinical time was spent at a
resident continuity clinic serving mainly low-income Latino patients and she
continued to develop her research career with an emphasis on immunization
delivery and school health. In addition to her clinical and research
activities, Mandy served as the physician consultant to the Salt Lake City
School District school nurses, on the Utah School Health Advisory Committee,
and was the course director for two research methods classes. She
currently serves in an elected position on the American Academy of Pediatrics
Council on School Health Executive Committee. Mandy’s long term goal as a
pediatrician and academician is to conduct teaching, research, clinical, and
service activities that improve the health, mental health, and academic
outcomes for underserved children by changing systems of care and increasing
collaboration between pediatricians, public health officials, and schools. Her
current research includes: studying systems to ensure that all children
enrolled in child care programs are up to date for required and recommended
immunizations, conducting national surveys of primary care providers about
vaccine policy issues, evaluating the Bright Beginnings program’s effect on
children’s language and cognitive development and school readiness, and using
community-based participatory research methods to study how students’ access to
health care affects school absenteeism. Mandy is a Co-Director for the
Primary Care Research Fellowship.
Brenda Beaty joined the Colorado Health Outcomes Program in 2002 and has served as analytic coordinator since that time. She manages the efforts of the COHO analytic team as well as performing data analysis on a number of projects. She has been a SAS Certified Base Programmer since 2003. Brenda is involved in SAS User Groups at the local, regional and national levels. She works with projects both at COHO and the Children's Outcomes Research Program (COR) in the Department of Pediatrics. She received her Master of Science in Public Health in 1993 from the University of Colorado Denver and her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering with distinction from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1989.
Patty Braun, MD, MPH, a Colorado native, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Family Medicine at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. She obtained BAs in Biochemistry and in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder and went to the University of Colorado School of Medicine. After completing her pediatric residency at Yale University in New Haven, CT, she came to Denver Health where she has been a board certified pediatrician for 15 years and teacher of both medical students and residents. She recently completed a HRSA Faculty Development Fellowship during which she completed her Masters in Public Health. Her recent interests include improving the oral health of children. She is an advocate for the Colorado American Academy of Pediatrics oral health chapter. She currently is leading the states evaluation of the Cavity Free at Three Oral Health Initiative; is an original member of the Cavity Free at Three Technical Assistance Team; and is the principal investigator of a Dental Hygienist Co-location project.
Maya Bunik, MD received her medical degree from the University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis in 1988. She completed a residency, including a chief residency, in pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver and The Children's Hospital in 1992. She was Clinical Assistant Professor UCSF working at Children's Hospital in Oakland for over 10 years. She returned to Colorado to complete the primary care research fellowship at the University of Colorado Denver including MPSH 2003-2005. Dr. Bunik is currently Associate Professor in Pediatrics and medical director of the Child Health Clinic. Her main health services research interest lies in improving breastfeeding initiation and duration and healthy early infant feeding practices (ages zero to three) as they relate to the continuum of obesity for low-income populations and more specifically, Latinos. Her other interest lies in quality improvement with asthma, second hand smoke and integrated mental health in the outpatient setting. She has published investigations in combination feeding (breast and formula) in Latina mothers as well as telephone support and culturally-enhanced scripted guidelines to support breastfeeding in low-income Latinas; completed secondary database study of breastfeeding and enrollment in the Special Supplementation Program for Women, Infant and Children (WIC) Program. Also, she published the evaluation of an innovative field trip model breastfeeding curriculum that she developed during her time at Children's Hospital Oakland. She was recently invited to speak about Planning A Research Agenda for WIC and Breastfeeding by the Institute of Medicine.
Amanda Dempsey, MD, PhD, MPH graduated from the University of Rochester in New York in 1991 and earned her Doctorate degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee in 2000. Amanda completed her residency at Seattle Children’s/University of Washington in 2003. In addition, she is involved in Health Services Research/epidemiology. Amanda has been affiliated with Pediatric Academic Society for 7 years, the Society for Pediatric research for 4 years, the International Papillomavirus Society for 6 years and the Academic Pediatric Association for 5 years. Before Amanda began her career in January 2012 with University of Colorado as the Associate Professor of Pediatrics, she held the positions of Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan from 2006-2011 and Acting Instructor for the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington from 2003-2006. Amanda’s interests include Immunization Delivery, vaccine refusal, human papillomavirus infection and mathematical modeling. Her clinical interests include sick and well general pediatrics, well newborn care and pediatric dermatology.
Sheri Eisert, PhD has been conducting health services research focused on vulnerable populations for the past 15 years. As an economist, her areas of research interest include access, insurance, cost effectiveness, utilization and comparative health care systems. The majority of her funding has been through AHRQ where over the past 10 years she has led 2 master task order contracts-the Integrated Delivery System Research Network (IDSRN) and Accelerating Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks (ACTION). Through these contracts she has led 22 task orders representing over $10 million in funding. Most recently she has collaborated with the University of Utah, Intermountain Healthcare, the University of Colorado, COHO, the Denver and Salt Lake City VA and Denver Health to create the Rocky Mountain Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research. After 10 years as Director of Health Services Research at a safety net, she has expanded her research interests to veterans through her recent appointment at the VA. Prior to Denver Health, Dr. Eisert was an Assistant Professor in the University of Colorado Graduate School of Public Affairs as the Director of the Health Policy Concentration. Dr. Eisert received her PhD in Economics from the University of Washington, her MS in Public Finance from the University of Wisoconsin Madison and a B.S. in Criminal Justice from Arizona State University. Dr. Eisert is currently serving as the health economist for the NIH Challenge grant focused on pediatric immunizations, led by Dr. Allison Kempe.
David Fox, MD received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ in 1996 and completed his residency and chief residency at the Children’s Hospital of New York. For the next five years he served as the Director of Pediatric Inpatient Medicine at St. Barnabas hospital in the Bronx, NY. While there, he helped to start a new pediatric residency at St. Barnabas, and served as an Associate Residency Director for three years. After moving to Colorado in 2006 and working as a hospitalist and ambulatory pediatrician, he began a Primary Care Research fellowship. His research interests include regional variation in pediatric care, the utilization of pediatric decision aids and fundoplication in the special needs population.
Laura Hurley MD, MPH received her medical degree from the University of New Mexico in 1997 and completed her internal medicine residency and chief residency at the University of Colorado. She worked as a hospitalist for two years, both in Colorado and New Mexico, before joining Denver Health's medical staff in 2004 as a primary care physician. She completed a HRSA Faculty Development Fellowship in 2008 during which time she completed her Masters in Public Health. She has been involved in research related to adult immunization since 2005 when she began working on the Vaccine Policy Collaborative Initiative with Dr. Kempe. Her other research interests include cardiovascular health disparities and healthcare for undocumented individuals. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine. She is a member of the American College of Physicians as well as the Society of General Internal Medicine.
Karen Kelminson, MD, MPH performed her residency and earned her MD in pediatrics at UCD. As a member of the Primary Care Research Fellowship at UCD she also earned her MPH. Karen is an Assistant Professor at The Childrens Hopsital in pediatrics. Her current areas of exploration are medical home for children with special health care needs and improvement in care coordination.
Beth McManus, PT, MPH, ScD, is an Assistant Professor in Health Systems, Management, and Policy at the Colorado School of Public Health. She also serves as a Methodology Consultant for the Chilren’s Outcomes Research Program. Dr. McManus completed her undergraduate, PT, and MPH degrees at Boston University. She completed her ScD in Developmental Epidemiology at the Harvard University School of Public Health. Prior to coming to COR, Beth was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include children with special health care needs (CSHCN), Part C early intervention, classifying infants and toddlers with developmental vulnerability, coordinated systems of care for CSHCN, caregiver burden, and effectiveness of population health interventions for CSHCN.
Elaine Morrato, DrPH, MPH received her masters degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University in 2003 and her Doctor of Public Health in Epidemiology in 2006. Previously, she was a manager in the pharmaceutical industry for 15 years where she had responsibility for leading prescription and over-the-counter drug development programs. Her experience encompasses the US, Canadian, and European health care systems and covers a variety of therapeutic categories, including cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and periodontal diseases. Dr. Morrato completed her Fellowship in Outcomes Research at the University of Colorado Denver, School of Pharmacy. She is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Systems, Management & Policy in the Colorado School of Public Health with secondary appointments in the Departments of Pediatrics and Clinical Pharmacy at the University of Colorado Denver. Dr. Morrato is also Assistant Director for the Children’s Outcomes Research Program sponsored by The Children’s Hospital. Dr. Morrato’s research interests include FDA policy evaluation and promoting the diffusion of drug warnings and other medical evidence. She is currently a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Adminsitration’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee.
Sean O'Leary, MD, MPH is a Pediatric Infectious Diseases specialist and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado. He received a BA in Environmental Studies from Brown University in 1991 and graduated from University of Texas Houston Medical School in 1996. After completing pediatric residency at The Children's Hospital in Denver in 1999, he moved to Fort Collins where he practiced as a general pediatrician for 8 years. He currently is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the sections of General Academic Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases. His research interests include immunization delivery, vaccine safety, and vaccine hesitancy. Dr. O'Leary is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.
Marion Sills, MD received her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1993 and completed her residency in pediatrics at Hopkins in 1996. She completed her fellowship training in pediatric emergency medicine at Children's National Medical Center while also completing her MPH at the George Washington University. Dr. Sills is board-certified in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and in Pediatrics, and is a member of the Academic Pediatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. She is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, and is an Attending Physician in the Emergency Department at The Children's Hospital. She serves as a faculty mentor to residents and fellows. Her research interests include emergency department crowding, quality measures for care provided to children in the emergency department, and health information technology in the emergency department.
Christina Suh, MD received her medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine in 2003. She completed a general pediatrics residency at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital Medical Center in 2006 and the Primary Care Research Fellowship in 2008. She is board certified in General Pediatrics, is currently an Instructor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver, and attends in the ambulatory outpatient general pediatrics clinic at The Childrens Hospital. Her research interests include immunization delivery and policy and community based interventions to prevent childhood overweight and obesity.
Vijaya Vemulakonda, MD, JD earned her degrees from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA in 1996 and the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in 2000. Dr. Vemulakonda completed her urology residency at Baylor College of Medicine in 2006. In 2008, she completed a fellowship in Pediatric Urology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle Children’s Hospital. Vijaya has been a member of the American Urologic Association and of the Society for Fetal Urology and is currently a candidate member of the American College of Surgeons and the Society for Pediatric Urology. Prior to joining the University of Colorado, Department of Urology as Assistant Professor at Children’s Hospital in June 2010, she held the position of Assistant Professor for the Division of Urology Department of Surgery from 2008-2010 at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine. Dr. Vemulakonda’ s research interests include health care disparities in children with congenital urologic anomalies, the effects of integrated care models on quality of life and health status in children with complex medical needs, and the role of shared decision making in optimizing pediatric surgical outcomes. She is currently a member of the Clinical Faculty Scholars Program at the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute.