Deanna M. Hoelscher, PhD, RDN, LD, CNS, FISBNPA

John P. McGovern Professor in Health Promotion
TCHMB Executive Sponsor
Regional Dean, UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Director, Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Distinguished Teaching Professor at The University of Texas System

Dr. Hoelscher’s research interests include teaching children and their families to engage in healthier dietary and physical activity behaviors to avoid chronic diseases, with an emphasis on low-income, diverse populations. Her recent work has focused on implementing interventions and evaluations on policy, systems, and environmental changes. Dr. Hoelscher has received multiple federal and foundation grants, and has over 200 peer-reviewed publications, as well as numerous awards for research, teaching, and mentoring. She is principal investigator of the Texas School Physical Activity and Nutrition (Texas SPAN) survey funded by the Texas Department of State Health Services to monitor the prevalence of obesity in school-aged children in the state, and the STREETS project, a NIH-funded natural experiment to determine the effects of Safe Routes to School policies on child physical activity. She is also Director of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living, where she oversees the Texas Research-to-Policy Collaboration Project. Dr. Hoelscher is the new Executive Sponsor of TCHMB beginning September 1, 2023.

Kalup Cuellar

Project Support Specialist
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Kalup Cuellar joined UT System population health as a Project Support Specialist in June 2021. He worked previously as a Senior Administrative Specialist with Ottobock Healthcare and a Test Administrator for Pearson Professional Center. He is working on a degree in electronics and advanced technologies at Austin Community College. Kalup spends most of his time fixing stuff, and has achieved a success rate of about 40/60. If you're in the building, he's always up for a chat.

Email: Kalup.Cuellar@uth.tmc.edu

Joanne Delk

Biostatistician II
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living

Joanne Delk, MS, is a Biostatistician with the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies (TCHMB). She has 20 years of experience as a project coordinator and data analyst on large-scale studies focusing on child and adolescent health, healthcare disparities, and alcohol-related disparities. Prior to joining TCHMB, she was the project coordinator for the Texas Adolescent Tobacco and Marketing Surveillance System (TATAMS), recruiting and following 4,000 Texas youth for four years to generate data for the FDA on youth tobacco behaviors and exposure to tobacco marketing. She has also worked at the Texas Department of State Health Services conducting epidemiological projects on public health and health services utilization. In 2006, she earned a Master’s degree in Nutrition from the University of Minnesota.

Email: Joanne.E.Delk@uth.tmc.edu

Susan Dimitrijevic, BSN, RNC-NIC

Senior Nurse Program Manager
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Susan Dimitrijevic is the Senior Nurse Program Manager for the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies. For the past 25 years, she has focused her nursing career on Neonatal Intensive Care, caring for critically ill infants and their families.

Her most recent position was as the Neonatal Program Manager and Clinical Nurse Manager of the Level IV NICU and NICU Transport team at Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas. In this position, she oversaw a team of over 100 nurses and healthcare professionals, managed NICU operations, ensuring all regulatory requirements and guidelines were met. She also directed quality improvement projects to optimize patient outcomes and enhance staff performance.

Susan received her BSN from Harding University and is currently pursuing her MSN from the University of Texas, Arlington.

Email: Susan.Dimitrijevic@uth.tmc.edu

Nagla Elerian, MS

Director of Population Health Strategic Initiatives
University of Texas System

Nagla Elerian is the Director of Population Health Strategic Initiatives at the Office of Health Affairs at UT System and the Program Director for the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies (TCHMB), the state perinatal quality collaborative. Prior to joining the UT System, Ms. Elerian was the Director of the Center for Health Statistics at the Department of State Health Services. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Zoology and a Master of Science in Health Statistics with a minor in Geography. She has 30 years of work experience in public health, health statistics, program evaluation and program management. Ms. Elerian worked in the areas of maternal and child health, birth defects, mental health and substance abuse, Medicaid managed care, and healthcare quality. In 1995, Ms. Elerian established the first electronic Birth Defects registry in Texas. In 1998, she established an evaluation program for Medicaid managed care where she initiated many improvements to the Medicaid managed care data and reporting. In 2007, Elerian joined the Decision Support unit at the Mental Health and Substance Abuse, where she developed through a multi-stakeholder collaboration the risk assessment tools to allow the state to evaluate and manage mental health centers and substance abuse providers using financial, access, quality and outcome indicators. She provided information and recommendations to the Texas Resiliency Disease Management workgroup for migration of the mental health assessment tool and worked with various stakeholders as she developed the algorithms for placement of eligible children into mental health services using the newly adopted Children and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS). Ms. Elerian continues to actively develop systems that incorporate data and quality improvements to informing programs and processes.

Email: nelerian@utsystem.edu

Jon Gibson, MS CS

Data Architect and Developer
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Jon Gibson joined Population Health in 2016 in the role of Data Architect and Developer to support research needs with incoming and generated data as well as any IT system needs the group might have.  He also serves as the Population Health Information Security Administrator.  Jon earned a  BA in History as well as a BS and MS in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin.  Prior to Population Health, Jon spent seven years as a Software Developer/Software Engineer with the University of Texas Libraries helping develop large data repositories for digital collections such as the Guatemalan National Police Archive (ahpn.lib.utexas.edu) and the Latin American Digital Initiative (ladi.lib.utexas.edu) containing millions of objects and their associated metadata.  He has over 20 years of experience in IT in a variety of areas including user support, technical training, network administration, server support and SQL and web development.

Email: Jon.Gibson@uth.tmc.edu

Kirsten Handler

Communication Specialist
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living

Kirsten Handler, Communication Specialist for the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living, works with words and images to increase the accessibility of important public health information.

Previously, she taught English at the high school level, launching a mental health organization focused on suicide prevention. As the group’s sponsor, she created district-level instructional documents on appropriate responses to outcries and spread hope among students. While she is no longer in the classroom, she is excited to continue impacting young people, who she deeply believes are the future, by amplifying the Center's work.

A proud Texas Ex, Kirsten earned a degree in Corporate Communication, minor in Business, and certificate in Media, Culture and Identity. She spent undergrad at The Daily Texan, going viral twice thanks to some clever puns.

In her personal life, Kirsten enjoys creating themed playlists, reading fiction novels and running with her dog, Moonshine.

Email: Kirsten.Handler@uth.tmc.edu

Kacey Hanson, MPH

Program Director, CDC Health Equity Grant
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Kacey Hanson is the Program Director for the CDC PQC Health Equity Grant, which supports the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies (TCHMB). She joined the UT System Population Health team in October 2022. She has more than 20 years of public health experience working on place-based initiatives, from schools to hospitals. Her expertise lays in community engagement, health disparities, training, and research methods. Hanson graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, minoring in Chemistry and Biology. She earned a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003. Prior to joining UT System, she worked at UT-Austin’s Dell Medical School as a Program Manager in the Department of Population Health (2017-2022) on one of its inaugural initiative, the Household Level Assessment (HoLA). In her spare time, she enjoys baking and serving her community through the local chapter of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, Sorority, Inc, her church, and the Austin/Travis County Food Policy Board.

Email: Kacey.A.Hanson@uth.tmc.edu

Em Karimifar, MFA

Design Lead
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Mohamad "Em" Karimifar received his MFA in multidisciplinary design from The University of Texas at Austin in 2017. He is also certified as a full-stack web developer from UT Austin and his design practice spans both user experience and product development. At population health, Em works with the research and communications team to develop data visualizations, web solutions and provide brand management to various initiatives. His interactive life expectancy data visualization tool was named the best health data visualization of 2019 by the American Association of Geographers. 

Email: em.karimifar@uth.tmc.edu

Steven Kelder, PhD, MPH

Professor, Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences
Beth Toby Grossman Distinguished
Professor of Spirituality and Healing
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin

Dr. Steven Kelder is the Beth Toby Grossman Distinguished Professor in Spirituality and Healing at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Healtj in Austin and was one of the founding members of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living. Dr. Kelder has more than 30 years of experience in design and evaluation of child and adolescent research, particularly interventions directed towards youth, schools, and parents.

Dr. Kelder is one of the lead investigators for CATCH, a research-based program that guides schools, families, and children in the process of being healthy, reaching more than a million Texas children. In 2014, Dr. Kelder helped initiate the Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH) Global Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity devoted to training and disseminating the CATCH portfolio of child health programs. Dr. Kelder also served as a senior scientific editor of the 2016 Surgeon General’s report on e-cigarettes. As a result of working on the report, Dr. Kelder produced the CATCH My Breath program, which is being used in all 50 states. Recently, his research emphasis is on interventions designed for the promotion of physical activity, healthy eating, oral health, obesity prevention, and e-cigarette prevention.

David Lakey, MD

Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Chief Medical Officer
The University of Texas System
Senior Adviser to the President
UT Health Science Center at Tyler

David Lakey is Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Chief Medical Officer for The University of Texas System. He is also Senior Adviser to the President at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler. He previously served on federal public health advisory committees for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Defense Health Board. Currently he serves on the March of Dimes Board of Trustees and the Trust for America’s Health Board of Directors.

Dr. Lakey served as Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services from January 2007 to February 2015. As Commissioner, Dr. Lakey led one of the state’s largest agencies with a staff of 12,000 and an annual budget of $3.3 billion and oversaw programs such as disease prevention and disaster preparedness, family and community health services, environmental and consumer safety, regulatory programs and mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment programs. During his tenure as Commissioner, Dr. Lakey served as president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) in 2011‐2012, and received several national awards including the AMCHP President’s Award, the March of Dimes President’s Public Health Leadership Award, and the Arthur T. McCormack Award.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, graduating with high honors from Rose‐Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana, and received his medical degree with honors from Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Lakey was a resident in internal medicine and pediatric medicine and completed a fellowship in adult and pediatric infectious disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Dorothy Mandell, PhD

Associate Professor
Neonatal Consultant
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Dr. Mandell received her PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle in Developmental Psychology and her BA from The University of Texas at Austin. She also served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Wake Forest School of Medicine and the University of Amsterdam. Her research has spanned multiple topics in maternal and child health including understanding long-term effects of a variety of perinatal and post-natal insults and intergenerational transfer of traits. She has also conducted analyses and research on a variety of public health topics, including work that has supported the Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force, Healthy Texas Babies, and the strategic plan to align prevention resources between the Department of Family Protective Services and the Department of State Health Services in Texas. She served as the primary investigator for the Texas Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) and is currently a research consultant for Texas PRAMS. She is currently an Associate Professor at UT Health Science Center at Tyler and supports the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies and is the Primary Investigator for the Safe Babies project in Population Health.

Email: Dorothy.J.Mandell@uth.tmc.edu

Melissa Marts, BBA

Budget and Contract Manager
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Melissa Marts joined UT System Population Health as the Budget and Contract Manager in January 2022. She has over 20 years experience working with IT budgets and negotiating telecommunications contracts for national and international businesses. Melissa received her Bachelor of Business Administration from Abilene Christian University.

Email: Melissa.L.Marts@uth.tmc.edu

Sarah McConnon, MPH

Program Manager
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Sarah McConnon joined the TCHMB team in February 2023 as a Program Manager. She has a Masters in Public Health from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston (UTHealth) and a Bachelors of Science in Biology from University of Texas at Austin. Her focus on community health and systems change has led her to work in schools, parks, government, nonprofits, clinics, and research, always aiming to strengthen systems and develop strategies to help people flourish wherever they are. In recent years, Sarah has served on the executive team of the Community Collaborative for Child Health at the Michael and Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living, worked on the School Physical Activity and Nutrition (SPAN) data collection project with UTHealth, and implemented a novel multisector initiative to strengthen the early childhood system in Travis County called Help Me Grow for Greater Austin. She has presented at numerous conferences on early childhood development and multi-sector methodologies for addressing problems.

Email: Sarah.McConnon@uth.tmc.edu

Tiffni Menendez, MPH

TCHMB Program Director
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living

Tiffni Menendez, MPH is the Senior Program Manager of Research for the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health in Austin. Tiffni coordinates and manages Center project and activities, including grant management, metrics-tracking, and coordination across projects that support and disseminate evidence-based research to push the frontiers of public health discovery and practice within the family, community, and health policy environments. She is responsible for all operational and supporting strategy development for the Center, as well as connecting with community partners. Tiffni is the Project Director of the Research-to-Policy Collaboration Project and Program Director on TCHMB.

Tiffni Menendez has served as operations manager of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living since it was established in 2016. She brings 20 years of diverse experience in public health and program management. Much of her professional experience has focused on public health research in elementary school communities, with an emphasis on obesity prevention and the promotion of physical activity behaviors within the school and home environments. Tiffni holds a BS in Psychology from Texas A&M University and a Masters in Public Health from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health.

Email: Tiffni.Menendez@uth.tmc.edu

Divya Patel, PhD

Associate Professor
TCHMB Research Director
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Divya Patel joined the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies (TCHMB) in November 2015.  She is an epidemiologist (Ph.D., 2003, University of Michigan) with a broad interest in women’s health research.  Previously, she served on the faculty in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan (2004-2010) and in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at Yale University (2010-2012).  She received a 5-year career development award from the National Cancer Institute for her research focused on the prevention and early detection of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers in women.  She has also worked at the Texas Department of State Health Services and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on population-level maternal and child health projects.  Dr. Patel holds an adjunct position at the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston - Austin Regional Campus, has taught several graduate-level courses in Epidemiology, and has provided research mentorship to students ranging from undergraduates to medical residents and fellows.

Email: Divya.Patel@uth.tmc.edu

Onyinye Omega-Njemnobi, MBBS, MPH

Program Manager
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living

Onyinye Omega-Njemnobi joined the TCHMB team as a project manager in October 2023. She is a researcher in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health in Austin and the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living. Onyi coordinates tobacco prevention and control research, particularly e-cigarette use prevention among adolescents and youth. She is well-versed in research coordination and management, including intervention design, evaluation, and dissemination. Additionally, she is proficient in data management, including data collection and analysis. Her research interests include the epidemiology (incidence, prevalence, and determinants) of child and adolescent health and chronic and infectious diseases. Onyi manages the CATCH My Breath (CMB) project and was a postdoc on the Texas Coronavirus Antibody Response Survey (TX CARES).

Onyi was born and raised in Nigeria. She is an MD with a Master's in Public Health from UTHealth SPH. She is an avid reader; enjoys spending time with family and friends and experiencing new places and cultures.

Email: onyinye.s.omeganjemnobi@uth.tmc.edu

Sarah Presti, MS OTR/L

Senior Event Planner
Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
Affiliate of the University of Texas System

Sarah Presti joined the UT System Population Health team in June 2020. She holds a master's in Occupational Therapy and a BS in Occupational Science from Keuka College. Sarah has dedicated the past 16 years primarily focusing on pediatrics. Prior to joining UT, Sarah was the Training Director for a non profit in Austin, working on inclusion opportunities for children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other developmental disabilities. In 2018 she received her certification in Autism Movement Therapy®. In her role at Population Health, she plans and organizes all educational conferences and large events, including the Annual Texas Collaborative for Health Mothers and Babies (TCHMB) Summit and the Pediatric Brain Health Summit. Her focus is creating valuable content and engagement opportunities to advance health care quality, equity and patient safety for all Texas mothers and babies and promote community resilience and optimal development in Texas’ children.

Email: Sarah.Presti@uth.tmc.edu

Patrick Ramsey, MD, MSPH

Chief Medical Officer
UT Health San Antonio

Dr. Ramsey is the Chief of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Director for the “Stork One” Maternal Transport program, and Maternal Medical Director for the University Hospital Level IV Maternal Center at University Hospital/UT Health San Antonio. Dr. Ramsey completed his medical school training at the University of Wisconsin Madison School of Medicine in 1994 and residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, MN in 1998. He completed a fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2001. He also received a Master of Science in Public Health with emphasis in Epidemiology/International Health in 2003.

He is certified by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Maternal-Fetal Medicine. He currently serves in several regional, state, and national leadership roles as Chief Medical Officer for the Texas Collaborative for Healthy Mothers and Babies (TCHMB), Past Chair of the Texas Medical Association Committee on Reproductive, Women’s and Perinatal committee, member of the SMFM Fellowship Affairs Committee, Chair of the Texas Perinatal Advisory Council, Vice Chair of the Texas Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Task Committee, and President of IDSOG. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers in major journals. His research interests are clinical trials, infectious diseases in pregnancy and prevention of maternal morbidity/mortality.

Heather Salas, M.Ed.

Campus Administrator II
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Austin
Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living

Heather has worked in public education for 24 years. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from the University of Northern Iowa. She taught in San Antonio school districts and attended the University of Texas at San Antonio where she earned her Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership. She worked in elementary administration for 17 years where she built a strong partnership with Head Start that allowed her campus to be selected as one of 12 from across the nation to participate in a National Head Start Office Collaboration Project to promote the transition from early childhood programs into public school districts. Her campus was a finalist and state-wide winner for the HEB Excellence in Education Awards earning the campus $30,000 in grant funds. She joined UTHealth Houston in January 2023 as the Campus Administrator. In her role, she manages financial processes, Human Resources, IT, and Research Administration.

Email: Heather.R.Salas@uth.tmc.edu