Faculty

Bio

Patricia "Pita" Adam, MD, MSPH, is the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health's vice chair for clinical affairs. She teaches in the University of Minnesota Medical Center Family Medicine Residency and is also one of the founding family medicine team members on the Minnesota Primary Care Transformation Collaborative. As vice chair, Dr. Adam's goal is to improve the care delivered to patients and the experience of providers and staff as they serve patients. This includes an intentional focus on minoritized patients and their quality outcomes. She oversees the core family medicine residency clinics and is a member of the Primary Care Executive Team within our Primary Care Service Line. In that role, she oversees family medicine obstetrics care, is a champion for equitable care, and facilitates engagement in the Primary Care Service Line's Practice Based Research Network. Dr. Adam has published many evidence-based answers to point of care questions, a model for optimal communication teaching, team-based care, intrathecal narcotics for obstetric pain management, saline nasal spray for colds and sinusitis and most recently Clinic as Curriculum, a model with advanced scheduling options to improve provider-patient continuity and provider wellness.

Research Summary

Improving and understanding primary care systems in academic clinics, including interprofessional team care, teaching residents patient-communication skills, and how to transform the care in teaching clinics. Leading a multi-year implementation of Clinic as Curriculum across the core Twin Cities family medicine programs with the goal of advancing pro-clinic scheduling options to improve provider-patient continuity and provider wellness. Incorporating community health workers in a primary care clinic to improve the care of patients from marginalized communities. 

Clinical Summary

Ambulatory care; team care and interprofessional care; women's health

Bio

Prior to joining department faculty and the Medical School Program in Health Disparities Research, Michele Allen, MD, MS, completed a fellowship in primary care research and the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. She is active in health disparities research and scholarship and serves as a reviewer for several scientific journals.

Bio

Sharon Allen, MD, PhD, co-directs the University of Minnesota Medical School Essentials of Clinical Medicine course. As an NIH-funded researcher for over 25 years, she has focused on factors that contribute to smoking, specifically looking at the influence of sex hormones on smoking cessation and addictive behaviors. Her research explores novel treatments for smoking cessation, examines underlying traits that fuel nicotine addiction, combines treatments to maximize effectiveness, and recognizes sex and hormonal influences on the treatment of nicotine addiction. Dr. Allen sees patients at the University of Minnesota Physicians Women's Health Specialists Clinic and Clinics and Surgery Center, where she also precepts residents in family medicine, internal medicine, OB/GYN, and pharmacy.

Research Summary

Tobacco cessation in women and sex hormones

Clinical Summary

Women's health; osteoporosis; smoking cessation

Bio

Christine A. Arenson, MD, is director of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education. Dr. Arenson was named co-director of the National Center in July 2020, working in Nexus with Barbara Brandt, the National Center’s founding director. She transitioned to director in December 2021.

Prior to joining the National Center, Dr. Arenson served as alumni professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Arenson graduated from the University of Delaware in 1986 and Jefferson Medical College in 1990. She completed family medicine residency training at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, followed by a fellowship in geriatric medicine. She was the founding director of the Jefferson Division of Geriatric Medicine and Palliative Care and has focused on patient-centered care and team education for health professionals as strategies to improve the health of older adults. She was the founding co-director of the Jefferson Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, serving in that role from 2007-2016.

Most recently, she has been actively engaged in primary care transformation to meet the Quadruple Aim: Improve the Experience of Care, Improve Health Outcomes, Reduce Costs and Restore Joy in Practice. She previously served on the board of Jeff Care Alliance, Jefferson’s clinically integrated network, and the Executive Steering Committee for Jefferson Health population health and primary care service lines, implementing a new Advanced Primary Care Model across the Jefferson primary care network, now including over 100 practices. From 2013 – 2019 she was a member of the board of the Delaware Valley ACO. She also works to educate healthcare teams to improve healthcare outcomes. She is a past chair of the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative. She has served as a member of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education Knowledge Generation Advisory Committee since 2014.

Bio

Macaran Baird, MD, MS, is professor emeritus and retired department head in the University of Minnesota Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. Dr. Baird began his career as a family physician and family therapist in rural Wabasha, Minnesota, in 1978. He co-authored his first book, Family Therapy and Family Medicine, in 1983.  Soon after that he launched his academic career by first serving as an assistant professor and residency director at the University of Oklahoma, followed by his appointment in 1987 as professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the State University of New York Medical School, Syracuse, New York. In 1995, Dr. Baird returned to Minnesota as associate medical director for primary care for Health Partners and then moved to Rochester as medical director of the Mayo Health Plan and professor in family medicine at Mayo Clinic, Rochester. He returned to the Twin Cities as professor and head, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School and chair of the board of UCare. He held these positions from July 2002 until his first retirement in December 2017. As he was retiring, he was asked to serve as CEO for the University of Minnesota Physicians and co-president of M Health Fairview.

Dr. Baird is a past-president of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine and was a founding member of the Collaborative Family Health Care Association. In 1999 he co-chaired the COGME 13^th Report to Congress: Educating the Physician Workforce for the Future and in 2001 he was co-chair of the Health and Behavior Report for the Institute of Medicine. He has received awards from the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), the Collaborative Family Health Care Association (CFHA), the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians, the Minnesota Medical Association and the University of Minnesota Medical School. He has authored and edited three books and several government and/or foundation reports related to mental health; he has also published over 40 papers and book chapters.

During Dr. Baird’s tenure at the University of Minnesota, the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health grew in the number of faculty, from 50 to around 100, and residency programs grew from six to eight. Funded research and research-focused faculty grew to make the DFMCH the third-highest NIH-funded department of family medicine in the US.

For two years after retiring, Dr. Baird served as a consultant to the dean. Among his duties during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic was to be part of the three-member team that did the first layer of review to assess the risk/benefit balance for all medical school clinical research grants. Many principal investigators were asked to delay patient enrollment to reduce the risk of infection for patients and staff. NIH and other funding sources did not penalize grant recipients for these actions.

Dr. Baird is now retired and lives with his wife, Kris, in Lake City, Minnesota. 

Service Summary

Dr. Baird is focusing his interests in environmental and mental health causes and volunteers to provide primary care for a free clinic near Lake City, Minnesota. He is currently the president of the board of directors of the Hiawatha Valley Mental Health Center, a multi-center non-profit organization that provides mental health services to five counties in southeastern Minnesota. He is also a member of the Health Professionals for a Health Climate, HPHC, based in the Twin Cities, and is president of the Lake City Kiwanis Club.

Bio

Greta Bauer, PhD, MPH is a Professor and Director of the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health (ISGH). She holds the endowed academic chair in sexual health. Prior to 2022, Dr. Bauer was a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University in London, Canada, where she held a Sex and Gender Science Chair through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). As an epidemiologist, Dr. Bauer’s focus on sexual and gender health has been both substantive and methodological, with a focus on the impacts of social marginalization. She is an international leader in both community and clinical research on transgender and non-binary health, and in incorporating intersectionality into quantitative research methods. As an interdisciplinary epidemiologist, she has published in top academic journals across medicine (e.g., Annals of Emergency Medicine), public health (e.g, American Journal of Public Health), psychology (e.g., Psychology of Women Quarterly), social science (e.g., Social Science & Medicine), sexual health (e.g., Journal of Sex Research), and epidemiology (e.g., Epidemiology). Her research and professional expertise have been used in legislative or court processes in Canada with regard to blood donation policy for gay and bisexual men, the addition of gender identity and expression to federal and provincial human rights codes, and legal challenges in multiple provinces regarding restrictive criteria for trans people to change sex designations on identity documents. Pronouns: she/they

Bio

Mark Berg, MD, is faculty at the University of Minnesota Woodwinds Hospital Family Medicine Residency. Prior to joining M Physicians in 2016, he spent 18 years delivering babies, rounding at nursing homes and the community hospital, attending the sidelines of high school sporting events and serving primary medical needs of the New Prague communities in Minnesota. His medical interests include wellness, sports medicine, obstetrics, and office procedures.

Clinical Summary

Sports Medicine; Sports medicine with wrestling, running, baseball and nordic skiing focus. Vasectomy. Office-based procedures.

Bio

Dianne Berg, Ph.D., is an associate professor and licensed psychologist, with an emphasis in Child and Adolescent Gender Health at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health (ISGH). She provides clinical services to adults, adolescents and children with sexuality and gender concerns. Her areas of interest are transgender issues – including gender creative children, and compulsive sexual behavior – including the unique needs of partners of people with compulsive sexual behavior. Dr. Berg and her colleague, Dr. Katie Spencer, are the authors of the Gender Affirmative Lifespan Approach (GALA™) of Psychotherapy and Education that is the theoretical framework for the clinical-research program of the Gender Health Services at ISGH. Dr. Berg is an invited speaker both nationally and internationally, including appearances on PBS and in Scientific American Mind magazine as well as presentations at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) symposium and the national conference of the American Association for Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT). She is a published author with more recent work being a chapter co-author for an APA book on Assessment for Children within a Gender Affirmative Model of Care. She is currently developing a group therapy curriculum for trans-identified youth and their parent/s and is exploring clinical innovations to enrich supportive therapy experiences for gender creative children. Dr. Berg is a member of the Child and Adolescent Committee of WPATH, as well as an AASECT certified sex therapist and AASECT certified supervisor. Dr. Berg works in conjunction with pediatric endocrinology, urology, genetics and MDH Newborn Screening to provide a multidisciplinary clinic for children/adolescents with Disorders of Sex Development (DSD). Dr. Berg received her PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health. Pronouns: she/her/hers.

Research Summary

Transgender issues, compulsive sexual behavior, sex offender treatment, children and adolescent gender diversity

Bio

Dr. Berge is a professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health as well as the inaugural holder of the Carole J. Bland, PhD Endowed Chair at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Berge is both a researcher and behavioral medicine clinician. She is a licensed mental health therapist and supervisor who specializes in integrated care and community-based partnerships to address family health issues. Her NIH research agenda focuses on conducting both childhood obesity prevention and treatment studies within primary care settings with the ultimate goal of decreasing childhood obesity disparities in low-income and minority households. She is also the director of the Healthy Eating and Activity across the Lifespan (HEAL) Center and the Principal Investigator of the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health (BIRCWH) K-12 grant. Additionally, she is the director of the Center for Women in Medicine and Science (CWIMS) at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Research Summary

Dr. Berge's NIH research agenda focuses on weight and weight-related health behaviors across the lifespan, families and health, women's health, and integrated care. She conducts both childhood obesity prevention and treatment studies within primary care settings with the ultimate goal of decreasing childhood obesity disparities in low-income and minority households. Dr. Berge has expertise in conducting mixed methods studies that include observational methods such as, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and video-recorded family tasks, as well as quantitative survey data to more fully understand the complex family dynamics and processes related to physical activity and dietary behaviors in children and adolescents. Dr. Berge is one of the most cited authors on family dynamics and childhood obesity with over 125 publications, 300 presentations and 20 book chapters on related topics. She has an impressive funding trajectory including NIH K12, R03, R13, R21, R56, and R01 grants funded across several different institutes including NHLBI, NIDDK, and NICHD. Dr. Berge also serves on several NIH study sections including the Psychosocial Risk and Disease Prevention study section at NIH and several special interest study sections.

Clinical Summary

Depression, anxiety, PTSD/stress response, and weight-related behaviors.

Bio

Clinical faculty at the North Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program and director of rural programs for the University of Minnesota, Dr. Bergeson spent nine years as a full-spectrum rural family physician and was the founding program director for a rural residency program in Washington state. She is passionate about full-spectrum family medicine including obstetrics and training the next generation of family physicians to serve rural and urban communities in need.

Research Summary

Delivery of care in under-resourced settings, rural GME, and clinical reasoning.

Teaching Summary

Dr. Bergeson developed a longitudinal clinical reasoning curriculum to improve medical decision-making, especially in under-resourced and high-stress settings.

Clinical Summary

Full-spectrum family medicine including obstetrics, inpatient care and emergency room care.

Bio

Bio

Karen Borchert, MD, is the associate program director of the University of Minnesota Medical Center Family Medicine Residency. She is also a graduate of this program and joined the faculty in 2015. Dr. Borchert practices full-spectrum family medicine including obstetrics at Smiley's Family Medicine Clinic in Minneapolis, MN. She is passionate about providing comprehensive reproductive health care, LGBTQ+ care including gender-affirming care, and improving patient and physician education.

Research Summary

Pregnancy of unknown location, early pregnancy failure, family planning, postpartum depression

Clinical Summary

Women's health, transgender care, office-based gynecologic procedures, reproductive health, prenatal care, medication-assisted treatment, refugee and immigrant health.

Bio

Dr. Braaten, MD, is faculty at the University of Minnesota Duluth Family Medicine Residency. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago and attended Northwestern University Medical School. She completed her residency at the West Suburban Family Practice Residency, serving the West Side of Chicago. Dr.Braaten first practiced at Family Practice Community Wellness Center, serving an inner-city Latino population. She completed a faculty development fellowship at Cook County Hospital and taught with the St. Elizabeth Family Practice Residency. After 6 years she and her family moved to Northern Minnesota where she joined a rural practice in Deer River, working part-time.
After working in Deer River for ten years, Braaten joined the Duluth Family Medicine Residency Program as faculty in 2013 and she continues to do some rural ER work. In her free time, she enjoys time with her husband and four children.

Dr. Braaten enjoys the breadth of Family Medicine from birth to death, including part-time clinical work in a rural emergency department. She coordinates the community involvement including a weekly clinic at the CHUM homeless shelter and the residency's JEDI Committee. She also coordinates Duluth family medicine residency's multi-disciplinary Medication Safety Conference and serve on the Essentia-wide Peer Review Committee.

Teaching Summary

Teach OB and inpatient family medicine and outpatient clinic

Service Summary

Lead physician CHUM homeless shelter clinic

Chair of Duluth Healthcare and Homelessness Committee

Lead MMA Foundation Wound care kit grant 2022-23

President HS Booster Club Boys' Swimming 2021-23

President HS Booster Club Music Program 2022-present

Clinical Summary

Full spectrum family medicine for over 25 years

Bio

Dr. Brady received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and Biological/Health Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her clinical psychology internship at the University of Illinois at Chicago Institute for Juvenile Research, and a 2-year postdoctoral research fellowship in Health Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to joining the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (DFMCH), Dr. Brady conducted research and taught courses within the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. In the DFMCH, Dr. Brady divides her time between conducting research and providing behavioral health care at M Health Fairview Smiley’s Clinic.

Research Summary

Dr. Brady has developed transdisciplinary and community-engaged programs of research. Dr. Brady’s transdisciplinary research has primarily focused on the prevention of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). She is Multiple Principle Investigator (MPI) for CARDIA-PLUS: A Life Course Investigation of Biopsychosocial Pathways to Bladder Health and Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms, which is funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). She is also a Co-Investigator for the NIDDK-funded Prevention of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms (PLUS) Research Consortium. Dr. Brady’s community-engaged program of research has focused on the well-being of adolescents and diverse communities, including a focus on how assets of individuals and their families, peers, schools, and communities can promote health protective behaviors. This includes research on mental health and emotional well-being, sexual health, prevention of violence and substance abuse, identification of social and structural determinants of health, and promotion of health equity. Dr. Brady’s research has utilized community partnerships and coalitions to reach diverse communities. Sources of funding include the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), United States Department of Education, and Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Teaching Summary

Dr. Brady has taught courses in community health promotion, adolescent health, and the application of conceptual frameworks and theory to the development of prevention interventions and research. In addition, Dr. Brady mentors early career scientists, both individually and as part of workshops, in the conceptual aspects of planning a program of research.

Bio

Dana Brandenburg, PsyD, LP is faculty in the University of Minnesota Medical Center Family Medicine Residency. She completed a fellowship in primary care and behavioral science education through Michigan State University. Her scholarly interests include the integration of mental health services into primary care, behavioral science education within residency education, interprofessional education and health behavior change. Dr. Brandenburg is the training director for the Primary Care Behavioral Health Fellowship program. Additionally, she serves as a health care professional representative on the state Health Care Home Advisory Committee with the Minnesota Department of Health.

Research Summary

Smoking cessation, health behavior change, primary care psychology

Bio

Darin Brink, MD, is faculty at the University of Minnesota Woodwinds Family Medicine Residency. Prior to joining the department in 2010, he started a free clinic for refugees in Moscow and provided medical care and instruction in Moscow, Samara, and Tula Oblasts, Russia. Brink also has several years experience as a small town family doctor in South Dakota. He has a strong interest in medical missions and humanitarian medical care.

Bio

Dr. Kathryn Brown has been a member of the St. John's Hospital Family Medicine Residency core faculty since 2015. She received her medical training at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities campus and completed her family medicine training in 2014 at the St. John's Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program. In the field of family medicine, Dr. Brown is motivated by developing and sustaining collaborative relationships with patients in the clinical setting, working with families, providing obstetric care, and enhancing the patient experience as they interface with medicine. Dr. Brown's research interests include: improving the patient experience in clinical care and management of chronic pain and safe opiate prescribing. In her personal life, Dr. Brown enjoys time with her family, cooking, time spent outdoors, and ceramics.

Research Summary

Improving the patient experience in clinical care; management of chronic pain; safe opiate prescribing

Clinical Summary

Specialties: Family Medicine/Primary Care

Bio

Dave Bucher, MD, is a core faculty member at the Methodist Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program in St. Louis Park. He holds an adjunct professor appointment in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health (DFMCH) and sees patients for his faculty panel at the Minneapolis location of Park Nicollet Clinic. He teaches third- and fourth-year medical students at the Creekside residency clinic and precepts the family medicine residents in their training program. He has facilitated second-year medical students in their Foundations of Clinical Thinking course since 2011, and has been a small group facilitator for first-year medical students in their SAR course (sexuality course).

Research Summary

Primary care clinical research

Service Summary

Dr. Bucher practices full-range family medicine and has special interest and experience in LGBTQ+ care, dermatology in primary care, and sports medicine/fitness.

Clinical Summary

Family medicine / primary care

Bio

Jennifer Budd, DO, has been faculty in the University of Minnesota St. John's Hospital Family Medicine Residency since 2016. She is the current medical director at Phalen Village Clinic. She practiced full-spectrum family medicine for 10 years in North St. Paul, MN. During that time she was also a family medicine community preceptor at the University of Minnesota Physicians Bethesda Family Medicine Clinic. Her current interests and projects include a medication reconciliation process in the ambulatory setting, standard approach to pediatric obesity, and developing the OMM curriculum for our residency program with an emphasis on treatments used in the office setting.

Clinical Summary

Women's and children's health; osteopathic principles and practice; quality improvement; chronic disease management

Bio

Caitlin Canton, DO, is an assistant professor for the University of Minnesota Medical Center Family Medicine Residency. The ability to provide community-focused care at Smiley's to a diverse patient population combined with the resources of a University program is what drew her to this position. Some of her professional interests include inpatient medicine, climate health and environmental justice, and community medicine with an emphasis on health literacy.

Clinical Summary

Women's health and reproductive care; LGBT+ primary care and gender-affirming care; Climate health curriculum; Inpatient medicine; Osteopathic manipulative treatment

Bio

Barbara Carver, PsyD, LP, is a licensed psychologist and the Director of Behavioral Medicine for the University of Minnesota/St. Cloud Hospital Family Medicine Residency since 2019. Dr. Carver received her doctoral training at Pacific University in Oregon. She completed her post-doctoral training at Washington State University. Barbara also completed a two year intensive Gestalt Therapy training program at the Gestalt Therapy Training Center Northwest in Oregon.

Dr. Carver is one of the founding providers of Integrated Behavioral Health at CentraCare Health. She also has previously worked as an outpatient therapist specializing in the treatment of eating disorders at CentraCare Health. Her current clinical duties include providing integrated behavioral health services in primary care setting and teaching family medicine residents.

Clinical Summary

Acceptance and commitment therapy, gestalt therapy, integrated behavioral health, patient centered care

Bio

Dr. Casey attended the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine in Athens, Ohio, and completed her residency in Sandusky, Ohio, at Firelands Regional Health Center. She is passionate about leadership and training the family medicine leaders of the next generation. She truly loves the preventive medicine aspect of family medicine and helping patients to understand motivations to change. Her clinical interests include all of medicine, birth to death, including integrative medicine and osteopathic manipulation.

When not teaching, she loves all of the many outdoor sports in Duluth each season and traveling with her husband, especially to visit her son, daughter, and son-in-law.

Teaching Summary

Dr. Lisa Casey has been involved in medical education as faculty for family medicine residencies as well as adjunct faculty for medical schools for the past 20 years. She served in several different residency programs in Ohio and Pennsylvania before moving to Minnesota. She helped to start a family medicine residency as the founding program director in Lima, Ohio, and is privileged to be currently serving as the program director at the Duluth Family Medicine Residency.

• Family Medicine Outstanding preceptor of the Year from Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine
• Faculty Academic Excellence Award From Residents of Mercy Family Practice
• Outstanding Family Practice Attending From Osteopathic Intern class

Clinical Summary

Dr. Casey's clinical interests and expertise include integrative medicine, preventive medicine, and dermatology.

Bio

Richard Cash, MD, joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota CentraCare St. Cloud Family Medicine Residency in 2019. After graduating from the residency in 2002, he practiced full spectrum family medicine for several years before embarking on a journey that gave him myriad different clinical opportunities and experiences. His professional interests include hospice medicine, geriatrics, medical ethics, NFP/FABMs, and addiction medicine.

Bio

Nicole Chaisson, MD, MPH, is faculty at the University of Minnesota Medical Center Family Medicine Residency. She is also one of the family medicine team members on the Minnesota Primary Care Transformation Collaborative. She completed fellowship training in adolescent medicine and has strong interests in adolescent health and wellness and reproductive health. Dr. Chaisson earned her MPH in maternal and child health from the University of Minnesota.

Clinical Summary

Family planning and prenatal care, women’s health, adolescent health and wellness, cross-cultural health care, community-oriented care

Bio

Kirby Clark, MD, is faculty in the University of Minnesota St. John's Hospital Family Medicine Residency and Director of the Rural and Metropolitan Physician Associate Programs. He also serves as a master tutor for several Medical School courses; instructor for two department courses – Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO®) and Family Medicine Ultrasound; and co-director for the department Leadership and Finance course. His medical interests include pediatrics, office procedures, inpatient medicine, practice management, and education. 

Bio

Eli Coleman, PhD, is Professor Emeritus and former director of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health. He held the first endowed academic chair in sexual health. Dr. Coleman is the author of numerous articles and books on compulsive sexual behavior, sexual offenders, sexual orientation, gender dysphoria, chemical dependency and family intimacy and on the psychological and pharmacological treatment of a variety of sexual dysfunctions and disorders. He is one of the founding editors of the International Journal of Transgenderism and is the founding and current editor of the International Journal of Sexual Health. He is one of the past-presidents of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the World Association for Sexual Health, the International Academy for Sex Research and the Society for Sex Therapy and Research. He is currently the Chair of the WPATH Standards of Care Revision Committee. He has been a frequent consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pan American Health Organization (the regional office of WHO), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pronouns: he/him/his

Bio

Jennifer Connor, PhD, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist and an associate professor at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health (ISGH). Her research interests include women's sexual and reproductive health, such as vulvodynia and infertility. She has conducted research in sexual health in the Minnesota Somali community, including the impact of female genital cutting. Her clinical interests include vulvodynia, infertility, couples therapy, sexual dysfunction, and gender creative and transgender children and adolescents. Connor received her PhD from the University of Minnesota. Pronouns: she/her/hers

Bio

Diana Cowdrey, MD, CAQSM, is faculty at the University of Minnesota St John's Family Medicine Residency. She practices both family medicine and primary care sports medicine. Her clinical interests include preventative care, overuse injuries, and ultrasound guided procedures.

Clinical Summary

Sports medicine and family medicine

Bio

Brooke Cunningham, MD, PhD, is a general internist, a sociologist, an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, and commissioner for the Minnesota Department of Health. Dr. Cunningham uses mixed methods to examine factors at both the provider and organizational levels that impede or facilitate efforts to address health equity, including how health care workers make sense of race and frame the causes of and solutions to racial disparities in health and health care.She teaches a course on race to first-year medical students and has been invited to speak to students and faculty from other medical schools about race and medicine.Dr. Cunningham practices internal medicine at the Community-University Health Care Clinic (CUHCC), a federally-qualified health clinic in Minneapolis that serves a diverse patient population, most of whom live in poverty.

Research Summary

Research Funding GrantsPrincipal Investigator
2016-18, U of M CTSI Pre-K Award
Purpose: Conduct a systematic review of interventions conducted with health care personnel to promote engagement with race, racism, or racial disparities in health and to develop a scale to measure providers’ psychological safety and perceptions of organizational culture in relation to racial health and health care disparities.

2015-17, U of M Office of the Vice President for Research
Title: "From 0 to 100: Building Strong Positive Organizational Climates for Health Equity"
Purpose: Use qualitative methods to identify the domains of health equity climate, by contrasting a local safety net health system—which has recently decided to elevate health equity—to health systems which are considered “best in class.”

2015-16, U of M Serendipity Grant
Title: "Come Step in It: Real Talk about Race"
Purpose: Use participatory action research to develop an intervention to promote effective dialogues about race in health care.

Co-Investigator
2015-20, NHLBI
Title: "The Impact of Residency Factors on Racial, Size, and LGBT Bias in Physician Trainees"
Purpose: This study is part of a program of research intended to evaluate and improve the degree to which physician training promotes physicians’ ability to provide equally high quality and patient-centered care to all patients regardless of their race or ethnicity, size, or sexual orientation.

2013-17, VA Health Services Research & Development
Title: "Motivating Providers to Reduce Disparities in Their Own Practice"
Purpose: Develop and test communication strategies to motivate VA providers to prevent racial health care disparities.