Advocacy Grand Rounds

Kristin Song is a gun safety activist after her 15-year-old son Ethan was killed with an unsecured gun in his best friend’s house. She is a mother, activist and voice for Brady’s End Family Fire Initiative. She and her family carry on Ethan’s legacy by forging change and fighting for the passage of Ethan’s Law to ensure safe firearm storage in every American home. Kristin has worked tirelessly to get Ethan’s Law passed in Connecticut and is now focused on getting this passed nationally. For those who may not know, Ethan’s Law, requires all guns to be secured if a child or unauthorized person can gain access.

Deanna Behrens, who is a pediatric critical care physician at Advocate Children’s Hospital in the Chicago area. She co-authored the first editorial on gun violence published in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine journal and was the lead author on a chapter on firearm injury prevention advocacy for Pediatric Clinics of North America. Dr. Behren’s Health Policy Scholar with the Academic Pediatric Association continues to work on strengthening gun laws.

Jeremy Stein is a nationally recognized gun violence prevention expert, advocate and survivor. He served as the Executive Director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence (CAGV) for the last 6 years, where he helped lead the way for the passage of some of the strongest gun laws in the nation. Jeremy is a seasoned litigator with over 23 years of experience and has a strong passion for reducing gun violence.

Dr. Michelle Fiscus is a board-certified pediatrician and public health advocate who practiced general pediatrics in Franklin, TN for 17 years before transitioning to a career in public health in 2016. She served as the medical director of the Tennessee Department of Health’s Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program and led the state’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts until July 2021. She now serves as the inaugural Chief Medical Officer of the Association of Immunization Managers, the professional organization of the 64 CDC-funded immunization programs across the U.S. states, territories, and major cities. Dr. Fiscus also serves as a senior health policy consultant for the National Academy for State Health Policy and serves on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Pediatrics as District IV Chair representing Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and the Carolinas. 

Larry Levitt is the executive vice president for health policy, overseeing KFF’s policy work on Medicare, Medicaid, the health care marketplace, the Affordable Care Act, racial equity, women’s health, and global health. He previously was editor-in-chief of kaisernetwork.org, which was KFF’s online health policy news and information service and directed KFF’s communications. Levitt, along with Dr. Mollyann Brodie, work with KFF’s founding President and CEO, Dr. Drew Altman, to oversee the organization. Prior to joining KFF, Levitt served as a senior health policy adviser to the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, working on the development of the Clinton Administration’s Health Security Act and other health policy initiatives. Earlier, he was the special assistant for health policy with California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, a medical economist with Kaiser Permanente, and served in a number of positions in Massachusetts state government. Levitt holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Allison serves as a senior member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and as a member of the American Law Institute, and she has served as a board member and board chair of the Food and Drug Law Institute. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Yale Law School, Georgetown University School of Law, and American University’s Washington College of Law. In addition, since its inception, Allison has judged the American Constitution Society’s Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law. She has written articles for N.Y.U.’s Annual Survey of American Law, Duke Law School’s Law & Contemporary Problems, TRIAL Magazine, various BNA legal publications, Internal Medicine News and Regulatory Affairs Journal (UK).

Allison is admitted to the District of Columbia Bar and is admitted to practice before numerous federal courts. She graduated from Brown University and Yale Law School.

Mary currently directs all American Cancer Society (ACS) and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) litigation efforts to eliminate cancer as a major health problem. Includes using pro bono legal services to assist in drafting amicus briefs or agency comments, as well as recruiting, retaining, and supervising the work of 5 mult-national law firms on a wide range of issues including: implementation and litigation surrounding the Affordable Care Act, HIPAA disclosures, Americans with Disabilities Act, medical research and tobacco control.

Prior work with ACS and ACS CAN included supervising all compliance with lobby disclosure and tax laws related to public policy work, including the LDA and creation of a 501(c)(4) entity.

Dr. Niyogi is Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Tulane School of Medicine, Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Tulane School of Public Health, Professor in Social Entrepreneurship at the Phyllis M. Taylor Center, and a Medical Justice and Advocacy Fellow through the AMA/SHLI. She is a volunteer physician with the asylum network with Physician for Human Rights, co-founder and co-director of the Resident Initiative in Global Health (RIGHT) at Tulane. She has worked in over a dozen countries focusing on medical capacity building and humanitarian aid. Dr. Niyogi is the founding director of the Formerly Incarcerated Transitions (FIT) Clinic Initiative which strives to achieve health equity for people impacted by mass incarceration. 

Duron Aldredge, MD, MHS currently serves as a primary care physician in a carceral setting in California. He is a founding board member of the Black Organizing Project, a grassroots organization focused on the empowerment and advocacy of black residents in Oakland, CA, and in other adjacent Bay Area communities.

William Weber, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. He helped found the Medical Justice Alliance, a national organization that trains volunteer physicians to provide expert witness work to advocate for the health of individuals in carceral settings. He serves as a vice chair on ACEP’s Public Health and Injury Prevention Committee. He also developed Chart Decoder, an app that translates medical terms to help patients understand their medical records.

Len M. Nichols is a health economist with a long history of commitment to health care justice. [For the 2017 Women’s march, he designed a tee shirt that in big bold letters said “liberty, justice and health care for all.”] Len’s career has spanned academia (Wellesley College and George Mason University), public policy research institutions (Urban, Mathematica, New America Foundation), and government (Office of Management and Budget, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Federal Trade Commission.  Since his experience as senior advisor for health policy in the Clinton administration, Nichols has consistently added moral arguments to technical health and social policy debates. He is a popular speaker at activist and academic meetings. His current Collaborative Approach to Public Goods Investment, or CAPGI, project at Urban is the culmination of lessons learned while teaching, researching, writing, testifying, advising, and listening throughout his career.  Len earned his BA from Hendrix College in 1975, his MA in economics from the University of Arkansas in 1976, and his PhD in economics from the University of Illinois in 1980.

Michael is a senior researcher in Public Citizen’s Health Research Group focusing on behavioral health, drug and device safety and efficacy, occupational safety and health, and broader health policy issues. He has over 25 years of clinical and governance research experience in the health sciences, and more than 35 peer-reviewed publications. He is especially skilled as a health services researcher focused upon brain-based illness including psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia and depression, addictions such as opioid and alcohol use disorders, and degenerative or neurodevelopmental diseases such as dementia and autism. Modalities of health science research Michael has contributed to include: behavioral genetics, MRI structural and functional brain imaging, and large administrative data analytics. He also has served as a director of studies and consensus activities pertaining to national health care strategies at both The National Academy of Sciences and the National Quality Forum, and he is especially knowledgeable about the U.S. Medicaid program. Michael has an M.P.H. degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Ph.D. in health policy from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Diana Zuckerman received her Ph.D. in psychology from Ohio State University and was a post-doctoral fellow in epidemiology and public health at Yale Medical School. She started her career on the faculty of Vassar College and Yale University. She served as a senior policy advisor in the Clinton White House, working for First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. She subsequently served in leadership positions at numerous nonprofit organizations and has been in her current position at NCHR since 1999.  She has testified before Congress, the Canadian Parliament, and numerous U.S. federal agencies, and been an invited speaker at national medical, public health, and legal conferences.

While in her current position, Dr. Zuckerman was a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics for several years. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA. She was previously on the Board of the Congressionally mandated Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, and the chair of the Maryland Women’s Health Promotion Council, appointed by the Governor of Maryland.  She was the first non-physician to be elected to the Women in Medicine International Hall of Fame.

Cassie Ehrenberg is Senior Counsel for Pro Bono Initiatives at the Lawyering Project. Among other projects, Cassie leads the team responsible for managing the Abortion Defense Network. The Abortion Defense Network is a collaborative effort with five other national reproductive rights organizations and seven of the nation’s largest and most esteemed private law firms. The Abortion Defense Network connects abortion providers and supporters to the legal resources they need to navigate the post-Roe landscape. Prior to joining the Lawyering Project, Cassie was a partner at a small firm specializing in union-side labor law and ERISA. Cassie graduated from Cornell Law School and Dartmouth College. 

Lauren Paulk, J.D., is Senior Research Counsel at If/When/How, where she focuses on in-depth legal research in support of If/When/How’s litigation and policy team and state and grassroots advocates. Prior to joining If/When/How, Lauren led state policy work related to reproductive health, rights and justice as Policy Counsel at the National Partnership for Women & Families; tracked and analyzed state bills on reproductive rights and health as a Senior State Legislative Fellow with the Center for Reproductive Rights; worked at the intersection of reproductive justice and LGBTQ liberation as an If/When/How Reproductive Justice Fellow at the National Center for Lesbian Rights; and supported young people in forming healthy relationships as a AmeriCorps Teen Advocate with Home Free.

Lauren has authored and co-authored legal scholarship on constitutional standards for reproductive rights, international human rights law as it relates to assisted reproductive technology, and state harms at the intersection of immigration and abortion for young people in Texas.

Leila Jade Levi spearheads NWLC’s work developing legal supports for health care professionals facing employment barriers and discrimination due to their support for or participation in abortion care. Prior to joining NWLC, she was an Attorney-Advisor at the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the Civil Rights, Labor, and Employment Law Division, and a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, as a prosecutor in the Sex Offense and Domestic Violence section. 

She served on the board of the Hispanic Bar Association of DC for 8 years, and was President in 2019. She has a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law and B.A. from Rice University. She teaches group fitness classes and attended culinary school in Italy before law school. She lives in DC with her husband and 2 kids.

Brian Hurley, MD, MBA, FAPA, DFASAM is an addiction physician and the Medical Director of the Division of Substance Abuse Prevention and Control in the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. He is the President of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and gives presentations around the world regarding addiction medicine. He is the Co-Clinical Director of the Addiction Treatment Starts Here program through the Center for Clinical Innovation, focused on increasing the delivery of medications for addiction treatment in California’s community health centers. He is a senior researcher at the Friends Research Institute and is currently concluding his role as a co-primary investigator on a Tobacco Related Disease Prevention Program-funded project integrating smoking cessation services into community mental health centers and patient-centered medical homes. He has also led numerous grant funded projects for Medications for Addiction Treatment Access Points projects funded by the Sierra Health Foundation supporting access to medications for addiction treatment across Los Angeles County. He is also a co-investigator for several Rand Corporation projects evaluating the integration of substance use disorder and mental health treatment within community health settings. 

Dr. Colleen Lane is a triple board certified physician in internal medicine, pediatrics, and addiction medicine. She serves as the director of addiction medicine at Corewell Health West in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She previously served as the medical site director at Whitman-Walker Health in Washington, DC where she began a substance use disorder program catering to the needs of the community. Through her research and public health endeavors she aims to learn more about the intersections of substance use in patients living with HIV and hepatitis C.

Joe Rivera is the Founder and Principal Consultant for Enroll IQ Consulting, with 39 years of experience in the health insurance industry and public financial programs field. Joe enjoyed 27 years of service at a Colorado community health center, 20 of which involved providing Medicaid and Marketplace enrollment assistance and leading a highly successful team of Enrollment Specialists. Joe now provides advisory and hands-on support to community health centers, state and national primary care association and state-based marketplaces; now focusing on Medicaid unwinding strategic planning. He has a keen interest in helping organizations improve access to care and provide the very best patient experience. Joe resides in the beautiful Southern Colorado Rocky Mountains.