Executive Committee
Executive Committee
Chair, Claude A. Jacob, DrPH, MPH
Public Health Director, City of San Antonio Metropolitan Health District
Read BioClaude Jacob
Claude A. Jacob has over two decades of administrative experience in public health. Since July 2021, Dr. Jacob has been the Public Health Director of the nationally accredited San Antonio Metropolitan Health District (Metro Health). In his role, Dr. Jacob directs over 50 programs and initiatives across Metro Health’s Communicable Disease, Community Health & Safety, and Environmental Health & Operations divisions and oversees a $100 million budget aimed to modernize the work of the department.
In April 2022, Dr. Jacob spearheaded the launch of SA Forward, which is a multi-year plan that addresses the priority areas and social conditions that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Initial SA Forward milestones include the establishment of Metro Health’s Office of Mental Health & Community Resilience as well as the Policy & Civic Engagement Office.
Prior to joining Metro Health, Dr. Jacob was Chief Public Health Officer for the City of Cambridge in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Dr. Jacob’s previous professional experiences also include serving as the Deputy Director for the Office of Health Promotion at the Illinois Department of Public Health, Bureau Chief with the Baltimore City Health Department’s Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control, and Director of Community Affairs at the Sinai Community Institute affiliated with the Sinai Health System in Chicago.
Dr. Jacob currently serves on the board of directors for the American Public Health Association (APHA), the Public Health Accreditation Board, and the Texas Association of City and County Health Officials. He is a past president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and past president of APHA’s Black Caucus of Health Workers which awarded Dr. Jacob the 2022 Dr. Hildrus A. Poindexter Award for distinguished service in the field of public health. Jacob also completed fellowships with the W.K. Kellogg Emerging Leadership in Public Health and CDC’s National Public Health Leadership Institute.
Jacob received a Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.
Vice Chair, Colleen Svoboda, MPH
Partnerships & Assessment Manager College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Read BioColleen Svoboda
Colleen is an experienced facilitator, planner, community health advocate, and performance improvement specialist. Colleen started her public health career providing technical assistance and training to local health departments in Nebraska. She led a team of six to coordinate a successful accreditation effort at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services requiring a focus on community health assessment, strategic planning, health improvement planning, quality improvement, performance management, and workforce development. Colleen was a Program Coordinator at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center managing community grants, implementing community health needs assessments, and coaching community organizations in their efforts to prevent childhood obesity. Currently, she is the Partnerships and Assessment Manager at the UNMC, College of Public Health.
Secretary/Treasurer, Julie Willems Van Dijk, PhD
Julie Willems Van Dijk
Julie most recently served in Governor Tony Evers’ administration as the Deputy Secretary and State Health Officer for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. From the beginning of the pandemic until her retirement in September 2021, she led the Department’s COVID-19 response, building an infrastructure for COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, surveillance, and vaccination to control and contain disease spread. Committed to data transparency and data-driven policies, she communicated with the public as one of the Department’s primary spokespeople, providing regular updates about the course of COVID-19, the state’s response, and the actions Wisconsinites could take to protect themselves.
Prior to joining the Evers Administration in 2019, she was a Senior Scientist at the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute (UWPHI), and served as the Director of County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, a national collaboration between the UWPHI and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, providing data, evidence, and guidance to over 3,000 counties who are building a culture of health. She also directed the RWJF Culture of Health Prize program, recognizing communities across the nation who were advancing health and health equity.
Julie’s ability to lead at the state and national level was built on her strong foundation in local public health where she served for 21 years as a public health nurse, director of nursing, and a health officer for Marathon County Health Department. In addition to her traditional public health work, Julie has served on the boards of Aspirus Wausau Hospital Board of Directors, Bridge Community Health Clinic, and as an elected member of the Wausau School District Board of Education.
Julie received a PhD in Nursing with an emphasis in Public Health Leadership from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a graduate of the Robert Wood Johnson Nurse Executive Fellows program, the National Public Health Leadership Institute, and is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.
Member At-Large, Bruce Dart, PhD, MS
Executive Director, Tulsa City/County Health Department Tulsa, Oklahoma
Read BioBruce Dart
Dr. Bruce Dart has served five local health departments in three states during his 34-year career in public health. Currently, he is the Executive Director of the Tulsa City/County Health Department (THD), a local public health agency of 340 team members serving a county of over 600,000 people in Oklahoma. Dr. Dart serves in a leadership role as a member of several National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) work committees and is a NACCHO Past-President and former Board member. He also serves on PHAB’s Accreditation Committee. He is a Registered Environmental Health Specialist and former Nebraska Environmental Health Administrator of the Year. He is a Year 15 graduate of the National Public Health Leadership Institute and his team was co-winner of the Martha Katz award for best project. He has received an appointment as a Visiting Associate Professor in the Oklahoma University College of Public Health and serves on the CASA, MyHealth, and Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy Board of Directors in Tulsa. He also chairs the Oklahoma State Health Department’s Obesity Prevention Committee as part of the Oklahoma Health Improvement Plan. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from Drury University (MO) in 1977, his MS in Administration (Health Services) from Central Michigan University in 1989 and his PhD in Health Services from Walden University (MN) in 2005.
Member At-Large, Mariah R. Pokorny
Director of Accreditation and Reporting, South Dakota Department of Health
Read Bio
Member At-Large, Renee Branch Canady, PhD, MPA
CEO Michigan Public Health Institute (MPHI)
Read BioRenee Canady
Dr. Renée Branch Canady serves as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MPHI; a unique public trust dedicated to advancing population health through public health innovation and collaboration. In this role she leads the strategic direction of the organization as they strive to build a world-class infrastructure to support the Institute’s diverse and progressive program areas and projects, while establishing and maintaining stakeholder relationships.
Prior to joining MPHI in 2014, Dr. Canady served as Health Officer and Director of Ingham County Health Department, located in Lansing, Michigan. In that role she oversaw the county’s statutory responsibility to protect and promote the health of county residents and lead the expansion of the innovative and nationally known, Ingham County Health Equity Social Justice program.
Dr. Canady has held faculty and leadership positions within the College of Nursing and the College of Medicine, Program for Public Health at Michigan State University where she developed a research trajectory in health disparities and continues to serve as an assistant professor in the Division of Public Health.
Dr. Canady has been recognized as a national thought leader in the areas of health inequities and disparities, cultural competence, and social justice. She has published and presented broadly on these topics and her passion for this work is evident in her personal, academic, and professional life. Dr. Canady has been highly influential in broadening the discussion of health equity and social justice while serving on numerous national boards, review panels, and advisory groups. She has served and currently serves on numerous advisory boards including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) County Health Rankings Scientific Advisory Group, the National Collaborative for Health Equity Advisory Committee, the Institute for Alternative Futures Public Health 2030 project Advisory Group, and the National 10 Essential Public Health Services Task Force, whose charge is to update this foundational public health framework.
Dr. Canady serves as the Treasurer on the Board of Directors of the National Network of Public Health Institutes (NNPHI) and as vice-president on the Ascension Health System Michigan Market Board. In addition, she serves as a member of the Ingham County COVID-19 Special Populations Workgroup, and
most recently was appointed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer to serve on the State of MI Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities. Dr. Canady has been an outstanding public health advocate, researcher, educator, and facilitator. She earned her PhD in Medical Sociology from Michigan State University, a master’s degree in Public Administration from Western Michigan University and a bachelor’s degree in Public Health Nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Directors
Directors
Terry Allan, MPH
Terry Allan
Terry Allan served as the health commissioner at the Cuyahoga County Board of Health (CCBH) from 2004 – the Spring of 2022, when he retired after 35 years of public service. CCBH is the local public health authority for over 880,000 citizens residing in 57 Greater Cleveland communities. Terry has direct program and administrative experience in Emergency Preparedness, Environmental Health, Epidemiology and Surveillance and Community Health programs. He led the County’s response throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Ebola response and H1N1 influenza pandemic. Terry served as the first Regional Coordinator for Public Health Preparedness for Northeast Ohio during the post-911 development of the public health preparedness infrastructure in Ohio. He was also the statewide coordinator of the Ohio Department of Health/Association of Ohio Health Commissioners Preparedness Workgroup during that same period. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Bowling Green State University and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Hawaii. He is an adjunct faculty member at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine and has served on a range of community Boards, including the Greater Cleveland Health Care Association, the Cuyahoga County Family and Children First Council and the Cuyahoga County Invest In Children Initiative. He was presented with the Mt. Sinai Foundation’s Annual Maurice Saltzman Award for public health service in 2017.
Terry is a past-President of both the Association of Ohio Health Commissioners (AOHC) and the National Association of County and City Health Officials. He has served on several national advisory panels for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He has testified before the United States Congress on emergency preparedness and response. Terry is a Year 13 Scholar of the CDC’s National Public Health Leadership Institute. He is a member of the Accreditation Improvement Committee of the National Public Health Accreditation Board and the Advisory Board for the Public Health National Center for Innovation. He is the current Board Chair for the St. Luke’s Foundation of Greater Cleveland and the Friends of St. Colman Foundation.
Lisa Pivec
Lisa Pivec
Lisa Pivec is the Executive Director of Public Health for Cherokee Nation. Ms. Pivec is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She originates from the Peavine community on the Cherokee Reservation where her ancestors settled after the forced removal from Cherokee homelands in the southeastern United States.
She serves on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tribal Advisory Committee as the authorized representative for Oklahoma Area. Ms. Pivec also serves as an elected member of the board of directors for The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) representing tribal public health. Ms. Pivec led Cherokee Nation to become the first tribe in the US to receive Public Health Accreditation from the Public Health Accreditation Board. She currently is the principal investigator for several funding agreements with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ms. Pivec is responsible for operations within the Public Health including Health Research, Community Health Promotion, Male Seminary Recreation Center, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, and the Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection and Comprehensive Cancer Control programs.
Ms. Pivec works on adapting health alignment models for Cherokee Nation utilizing a sovereignty lens to place Cherokee values at the foundation of the work. Facilitating cross-collaborative efforts within Cherokee Nation and its partners is a focus for Cherokee Nation Public Health. She has been with the Cherokee Nation since 1991 and hopes to continue in service of her people throughout her professional career and beyond.
David M. Souleles, MPH
Chief of Staff, Health Affairs, University of California, Irvine
Read BioDavid Souleles
As Chief of Staff for UC Irvine Health Affairs, David M. Souleles, MPH, is a member of the Health Affairs cabinet focusing on development and implementation of enterprise-wide strategies, and engagement with health leadership across the University of California, the region and the nation. UCI is comprised of the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences, inclusive of the School of Medicine, Bill & Sue Gross School of Nursing, School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Program in Public Health; UCI Health, serving nearly 4 million people as the Orange County region’s only academic health system and expanding with a new medical complex in Irvine; and the UCI centers and institutes of health. Through his strategic acumen, Souleles advances the distinctive ONE HEALTH vision for education, research and service dedicated to creating a diverse future healthcare workforce offering accessible, team-based, equitable, top-tier precision care for individuals and communities. Souleles brings 36 years of experience to improving public health. He previously served as the Administrative Director of Occupational Health at UCI overseeing an expansion of the program to cover employees across the entire university. He also served UCI as the Public Health Response Team Director managing the campus response to the COVID-19 pandemic and as the MPH Program and Practice Director for the UCI Program in Public Health. Prior to UCI, Souleles served in several roles with the Orange County Health Care Agency including Deputy Agency Director, Public Health Services; Public Health Chief of Operations; and Division Manager for Disease Control and Epidemiology. In these roles he led public health programs for the more than 3 million people in the county while successfully guiding agency accreditation. In 2001, Souleles was appointed by Governor Gray Davis to serve as Chief Deputy Director for the California Department of Health Services where he oversaw a $32 billion annual budget. Previous to this he was Preventive Health Bureau Manager and AIDS Program Manager for the City of Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services. He began his career as an HIV/AIDS health educator with UCI. With his return to the university, his career path has come full circle. Souleles has served as President of the County Health Executives Association of California, a statewide organization of county and city health directors, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Health Accreditation Board, the national accrediting body for state, local and tribal public health departments. He holds a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Los Angeles and an undergraduate degree in psychology from UCI.
Stephen Williams, MEd, MPA,
Stephen Williams
Stephen serves as the Director for the Houston Health Department (HHD), a full-service public health department with 1300+ employees serving the 2.3 million residents of Houston while also overseeing a $166 million budget.
Stephen is actively involved in Public Health issues at the local, state, and national levels. Under Stephen’s leadership, HHD has become more visible and the citizens of Houston have been afforded a better quality of life. Stephen currently serves on the COVID-19 Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel (EVAP) to develop vaccine allocation strategies as recommendations to the Texas Commissioner of Health for the state of Texas. This panel develop and apply guiding principles on equitable distributions across urban and rural communities. He has spear-headed the implementation and institution of several programs in HHD such as See to Succeed, Assessment, Intervention and Mobilization (AIM), Project Saving Smiles and pioneering the Affordable Care Act outreach and enrollment efforts through the Enroll Gulf Coast collaborative. The collaboration allowed stakeholders across the Gulf Coast to work together as partners with a common strategy and organization to provide outreach and enrollment to the region’s estimated 1.4 million uninsured while also gaining national attention and White House support.
Stephen received his Master’s in Public Administration from Baruch College, City University New York, Master of Education from the Auburn University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology/Social Work from Huntingdon College. He is an Alumnus of the American Leadership Forum, Houston/Gulf Coast Chapter/Medical Community Class, and is a graduate of the National Urban Fellowship Program and Executive Leadership Institute sponsored by the National Forum for Black Public Administrators.
Stephen L. Williams chairs the Texas Department of State Health Services Public Health Funding and Policy Committee (Senate Bill 969), is the past Board President of the Coalition of the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, and a former Chair of the Harris County System of Hope. He is an Adjunct Professor at the UT School of Public Health and serves on the National Commission on Prevention Priorities, National Health Law Program Board of Directors, Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health External Advisory Board, Texas Agri-Life Extension Services Urban Advisory Board and Texas Health Improvement Network Advisory Board Council.
He is a member of the National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO), Texas Association of City and County Health Officials (TACCHO), American Public Health Association (APHA), Rotary Club of Houston and the National Forum for Black Public Administrators (NFBPA).
Prior to serving as the Health Director in Houston, Stephen also served as Administrator of Public Health and Deputy Director of Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department and Executive Manager, Travis County Health Human Services and Veterans Services.
Matt Willis, MD, MPH
Matt Willis
Dr. Matt Willis has been the Public Health Officer for Marin County, California since 2013.
Dr. Willis calls on experience as an internal medicine physician and an epidemiologist to advance health for all in Marin.
He has served in the Indian Health Service, as Director of Primary Care on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, and at the C.D.C. as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer.
He is a champion for cross-sectoral collaboration to tackle complex public health challenges, and has published research in pandemic response, vaccine promotion, tuberculosis control, and opioid safety.
He holds a Medical Degree from Temple, a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard and completed Internal Medicine residency at Cambridge Hospital in Boston.
