Don Wright, MD, MPH
Acting Assistant Secretary for Health
Director, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Dr. Don Wright is currently the Acting Assistant Secretary for Health and has been the Director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion since January 3, 2012. In this capacity, he leads the coordination and policy development for public health and prevention activities within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ODPHP is responsible for Healthy People 2020, a framework for public health priorities and actions comprised of a comprehensive set of 10-year national health objectives. As Director of ODPHP, he also provides leadership for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, evidence-based nutrition policy, and is the Chief Medical Advisor for healthfinder.gov.
Prior to joining the ODPHP team, Dr. Wright served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Healthcare Quality. From 2007 to 2009, he was the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health within HHS. During this time, he was appointed by the president to serve as the alternate U.S. delegate to the World Health Organization Executive Board. Before joining HHS, Dr. Wright was Director of the Office of Occupational Medicine for the U.S. Department of Labor, where he built strong governmental and non-governmental partnerships addressing safety and health.
Dr. Wright received an undergraduate degree from Texas Tech University, a medical degree from the University of Texas, and a master’s degree in public health from the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Noel Eldridge, MS
Senior Advisor and Public Health Analyst, Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Noel Eldridge is a Senior Advisor and Public Health Analyst the Center for Quality improvement and Patient Safety at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and joined the AHRQ Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety staff in June 2010. At AHRQ his work has focused primarily on the analysis and use of data from the Medicare Patient Safety Monitoring System, and working within AHRQ and with other agencies on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Partnership for Patients program. From 2000 until joining AHRQ, Noel was the Executive Officer for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) National Center for Patient Safety (NCPS). In this position, he served as a link between the Director and other staff and offices within the VHA, as well as other agencies, groups, and organizations. Noel led development and pilot testing of the VHA Directives for Ensuring Correct Surgery, Preventing Retained Surgical Items, and Improving Hand Hygiene Practices, and contributed to numerous other VHA initiatives. In 2008 Noel was awarded the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Chairman’s Medal.
Noel has worked in Washington since 1988 and was Director for Scientific Peer Advisory and Review Services for the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and a Study Director at the National Research Council. He began his career at NASA Headquarters working on the Spacelab Life Sciences-1 mission as a biomedical engineer. He has a BE in mechanical engineering from the Cooper Union and an MS in bioengineering from Clemson University.
Andrew Geller, MD
Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Public Health Service
Medical Officer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Dr. Geller is a Medical Officer in the Medication Safety Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His research interests include medication safety, chronic disease management, and the intersection of medicine and public health practice. Dr. Geller received a BS from Cornell University and an MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. After completing residency training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) at Emory University, he served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer in CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion. Dr. Geller is currently a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service. He is also a Clinical Associate in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine and practices as a Board-certified PM&R physician at the Emory Rehabilitation Hospital.
Christine Lee, PharmD, PhD
General Health Scientist
Center for Drug Evaluation and Research
Food and Drug Administration
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Dr. Christine Lee received her PhD from the University of Florida Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy department and PharmD from the University at Buffalo. Her research interests include understanding health care professional behavior with a focus on social and behavioral research. She currently works for the FDA for the Safe Use Initiative and is involved with research and collaborations with the private and public sector to reduce preventable drug harm.
Clydette Powell, MD, MPH, FAAP
Director, Division of Health Care Quality
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Dr. Clydette Powell serves as the Director of the Division of Health Care Quality within the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP). Her responsibilities include oversight of the federal efforts to advance two National Action Plans: one for the prevention of Health Care Associated Infections (HAIs) and the other for the prevention of Adverse Drug Events (ADEs). Prior to her work at ODPHP, Dr. Powell served as a Medical Officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Dr. Powell’s medical degree was awarded by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and her MPH is from the UCLA School of Public Health. Her residencies and fellowship training were at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centers. She is triple board certified in pediatrics, child neurology, and preventive medicine/public health.
Friedhelm Sandbrink, MD
Deputy National Program Director for Pain Management
Specialty Care Services
Veterans Health Administration
U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs
Dr. Friedhelm Sandbrink is board-certified in neurology, clinical neurophysiology and pain medicine. He completed his residency training in neurology at Georgetown University and his fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. He leads the interdisciplinary Pain Management Program at the Washington VA Medical Center and serves as Deputy Director for the Pain Management Program in VA Central Office (VACO). He has academic appointments at Georgetown University and George Washington University in Washington, DC, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD.
Nadine Shehab, PharmD, MPH
Senior Scientist, Medication Safety Program
Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Dr. Nadine Shehab is a senior scientist with the Medication Safety Program in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Shehab provides leadership in adverse drug event (ADE) surveillance using a national public health surveillance system (NEISS-CADES). Data from NEISS-CADES have been used to help prioritize national medication safety priorities for initiatives such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) National Action Plan for ADE Prevention and in setting national healthcare quality measures for medication safety.
Based in the greater Washington, DC area, Dr. Shehab serves as the CDC liaison to various medication safety standards-setting committees and expert panels to help translate CDC public health data into patient safety policies, and leads several of the program’s engagements with federal and non-federal partners, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the United States Pharmacopeia. Additionally, she provides leadership and programmatic support to the CDC Medication Safety Program in pharmacy and pharmacoepidemiologic sciences, policy, data analysis, as well as external and internal collaborations and communications. She has served as the principal or co-investigator for several peer-reviewed epidemiologic studies characterizing U.S. emergency department visits and hospitalizations for ADEs published in journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics. Prior to CDC, Dr. Shehab held an appointment as a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan (UM) College of Pharmacy and was a clinical pharmacist in Drug Information at UM Health System.
Dr. Shehab received her Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Toledo, completed post-graduate clinical residencies at the Cleveland Clinic and the UM Health System, and received her Master of Public Health degree from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Lemeneh Tefera, MD
Medical Officer, Center for Clinical Standards and Quality Senior Policy Advisor, Center for Program Integrity Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Dr. Lemeneh Tefera, who goes by “Tef,” received his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Southern California and then completed an emergency medicine residency at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. He continued his career in academic medicine with faculty appointments at Mount Sinai Hospital, Montefiore Hospital, and Beth Israel Medical Center — all in New York City. In addition to his urban ER clinical experience, he worked as a visiting doctor in Australia, England, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates, and volunteered with Doctors Without Borders in Haiti.
His work abroad developed into an interest in comparative health delivery systems that inspired him to return to graduate school. At the London School of Economics and Political Science, Dr. Tefera studied both health and behavioral economics with a keen interest in how monetary and non-monetary incentives impact provider behavior.
Prior to joining the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Dr. Tefera served as a Senate health policy fellow where he worked on a wide range of health policy and legislative issues. At CMS, Dr. Tefera serves as a Medical Officer and policy advisor for the group that oversees CMS’s value-based purchasing programs and the new Merit-Based Incentive Payment Systems (MIPS). He is also the lead clinical advisor on CMS’s first sepsis measure, SEP-1. Dr. Tefera also serves as a Senior Advisor to the Center for Program Integrity leadership team where his focus is developing integrity infrastructure for the MIPS program and also developing innovative responses to combat prescription opioid abuse. In addition to his policy work, Dr. Tefera is a practicing emergency medicine physician.
Preventing Adverse Drug Events (ADEs): Measuring Progress on the ADE Action Plan