Emily A. Haozous, PhD, RN, FAAN

Emily Haozous, PhD, RN, FAAN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) is a Senior Research Scientist at PIRE’s Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest (BHRCS), in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Haozous’ research is guided by the health and wellness priorities of the Native American partners with whom she collaborates. She has published in peer reviewed journals on cancer pain management, telehealth and video conferencing, complementary and alternative therapies for pain management, issues in racial misclassification, national trends in premature mortality, and cancer decision-making, always focusing her research efforts on the interests of Native Americans and Alaska Natives. She has worked with indigenous groups throughout New Mexico to address social justice and health equity concerns, most recently completing a health impact assessment with the Santa Fe urban Native American community investigating the health implications of the chronic underfunding of the Indian Health Service. Dr. Haozous is a frequent speaker at local, tribal, state, regional, and national meetings on Native American health, particularly related to cancer prevention, palliative care, and health promotion. Dr. Haozous received her undergraduate degree in music from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her masters and PhD in nursing from Yale University. She has a background in hospice and palliative care nursing, and is passionate about policy change that brings equitable healthcare delivery to all corners of Indian Country. Dr. Haozous demonstrates her leadership through service, with an appointment to the Community Advisory Board of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leaders Program, and the National Advisory Committee for the Institute for Nursing Leadership with the American Academy of Nursing. She also serves locally as an executive board member for the Santa Fe Community Foundation and board member for Changing Woman Initiative, a women’s health non-profit with the goal of creating a Native American birth center in Northern New Mexico.

Roland Moore, PhD

Roland Moore, PhD, is the Training and Technical Assistance Director. As a Senior Research Scientist and Center Director at PIRE’s Berkeley Center (also known as the Prevention Research Center), Dr. Moore has directed and managed numerous sizeable research and evaluation projects. With a PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley, Dr. Moore’s fieldwork sites include a Central Greek community, U.S. factories, bars, restaurants, military bases, frontier Alaska Native communities and rural Native American reservations in the Southwest, Great Plains, and Southern California. His research topics have focused upon in reducing health disparities in diverse occupational populations including the U.S. military, and community-level prevention of substance use and related problems in rural Native American reservations and isolated communities. Other relevant disparities research concerns ethnographic evaluations of tobacco policy in California bars serving Asian, Latino and other ethnic groups, multi-unit housing in diverse Richmond, California, and tribally-owned casinos. He directs a study of mental health treatment barriers for US National Guard personnel, and has conducted extensive research on behavioral health issues for US service men and women. He recently was a standing member of an NIH review group on Community Influences on Health Behavior. A specialist in ethnographic and qualitative methods, he is well-versed in statistical methods and has directed numerous multi-methods research and evaluation projects, including a 15-year partnership with a tribal health clinic serving Southwest California Indians to test and assess community-based alcohol and drug abuse prevention efforts.

Juliet Lee, PhD

Juliet Lee, PhD, is the Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator. Dr. Lee is a Cultural and Applied Anthropologist with over 20 years’ experience conducting community-engaged research. She has collaborated on tribally-partnered projects to prevent alcohol and prescription drug abuse in rural Southern California reservations; to promote smokefree policies in tribally-owned California casinos; and to identify community-defined indicators of alcohol-related problems on a Great Plains reservation. She recently co-directed a two-year Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) project to improve mental health among Cambodian Americans in Oakland CA by working with grassroots community members and community-based organizations to develop and test culturally-based practices. She co-directed a 6-year Youth Participatory Action Research project with Southeast Asian American teen and young adults in Richmond, CA, with a primary aim of developing youth leadership in community-based tobacco prevention. As a NIAAA postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Lee trained in Alcohol Studies at Prevention Research Center on a project testing the effectiveness of PRC’s Community Trials, an NREPP Model Program to reduce and prevent alcohol-related problems in ethnic minority communities. Dr. Lee publishes in and reviews for scientific journals specific to behavioral and community health; CBPR; and alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.

Elizabeth Waiters, PhD

Elizabeth Waiters, PhD, has led and participated in a variety of evaluation and technical assistant projects with foundations, community-based organizations and government agencies. As a Program Director with Prevention Institute, and a Senior Associate with Social Policy Research Associates, she directed an evaluation of the Community United Against Violence’s membership initiative, which sought to create a pipeline of community advocates within lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) low-income and communities of color, including Native Americans. She was a key analyst of a four-year evaluation of the Blue Shield Foundation’s Strong Field Project to End and Prevent Domestic Violence, and worked with a number of domestic violence agencies serving African American, Latino, Native American, Asian American, and immigrant communities throughout the state in this capacity. She managed and was a lead analyst of an evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Evaluation Fellows Program to build a pipeline of ethnically diverse evaluation professionals. As a lead evaluator of the Packard, Irvine and Hewlett Foundations’ Community Leadership Project, she worked with several Native American, African American and Latino LGBTQ arts-based organizations to provide guidance to the Foundations on the capacity-building needs of small and mid-size community organizations serving low-income people and communities of color in the San Francisco Bay Area. A credentialed coach, Dr. Waiters has worked with organizations that serve diverse populations (e.g., the LGBTQ, Native American, and at-risk youth communities) dealing with a variety of issues (including community, youth, domestic and sexual violence) as a coach, technical assistance provider and evaluator. Currently consulting on Dr. Lee’s study of social media influences for youth substance use.

Anna Pagano, PhD

Anna Pagano, PhD, will serve as Training and Technical Assistance Manager. Her research focuses on health disparities and vulnerable populations’ access to mental health services. With a PhD in Medical Anthropology from UCSD, Dr. Pagano is particularly interested in community-created strategies for mental health care and promotion. She has over a decade of experience conducting community focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and surveys to learn about community members’ health care needs and practices. She has provided technical assistance to help Ford Foundation Grantees evaluate their educational diversity programs, to the National Institutes of Health to evaluate health education materials for Spanish-speaking elders, and to Children International evaluation staff from all over Latin America assess the impact of their activities over time. With Drs. Moore and Lee, she has conducted participatory health research with Native people on an underserved rural Great Plains reservation. The research involved intensive field work and in-depth interviewing of stakeholders including tribal leaders, spiritual leaders, and providers of mental health care based in Native traditions specific to that nation and tribe. Dr. Pagano’s doctoral research investigated disparities in health care in Brazil, with particular focus on institutionalized discrimination based on popular notions of race and health behavior; her research included intensive field research conducted in Portuguese. Also fluent in Spanish, Dr. Pagano currently directs an NIH-funded study of indigenous recovery houses developed by underserved Latino immigrants in the SF Bay Area to support their paths to sobriety, and is conducting pilot research into recovery systems for underserved Latinas in the SF Bay and Los Angeles areas. She also serves as a co-investigator on studies of substance abuse treatment systems and tobacco cessation led by colleagues at UCSF. In addition to these professional experiences, she has five years’ experience as a Spanish-language volunteer at Street Level Health Project, a free community clinic in Oakland. In that time, she has helped many indigenous community members (mostly Mam speakers from Guatemala) navigate the mental health care system, and has conducted needs assessments to learn more about community members’ simultaneous use of indigenous and biomedical therapies.

Claradina Soto, PhD, MPH

Claradina Soto, (Pueblo, Diné) PhD, MPH, is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Institute for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention Research. She has extensive experience working with California Tribes and Native American communities in urban settings. Dr. Soto is a Governor Appointee to the Tobacco Education Research Oversight Committee, (TEROC), a legislatively mandated advisory committee to oversee the use of Proposition 99 tobacco tax revenues toward commercial tobacco prevention education and tobacco related research. She has worked on several grant based studies including two funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP), as Principal Investigator. The first study will investigate the efficacy of Project SUN (Stop the Use of Nicotine), a teen smoking cessation program to promote tobacco use cessation among American Indian teens throughout California. The second is a study to evaluate an American Indian youth driven media campaign to create commercial tobacco prevention media messages on commercial tobacco abuse/ Electronic Smoking Devices (ESDs) and its harmful effects with Digital Storytelling, Photo Voice, and a Public Service Announcement. She is also a Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science (TCORS), Co-Investigator. The USC TCORS Project 2 examines knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of small independent retailers in vulnerable population (African American, Latino, Korean, and American Indian) neighborhoods & tribal lands regarding compliance with FDA regulations in California. Dr. Soto is a longtime advocate for the Native American/Alaskan Native communities and other priority populations to advance health equity.

Cathleen Willging, PhD

Cathleen Willging, PhD, is a Senior Scientist and Center Director at PIRE’s Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest (BHRCS) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Willging’s research and evaluation studies, largely funded by the NIH, center on public mental health and substance use services in the United States, health care reform, implementation science, and the advancement of culturally- and contextually-relevant programs to support marginalized groups affected by health and health care disparities. Her current research focuses on implementation and sustainment of evidence-based interventions to improve the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents, and includes a study of 11 child welfare systems in California that is supported through a subcontract with the University of California at San Diego; she travels to Southern California frequently. She is a Cultural and Medical Anthropologist and worked with American Indian communities since 1996 when she designed and implemented an 18- month ethnographic study of mental healthcare delivery within an Indian Health Service setting. She has worked on a project addressing culturally responsive diabetes prevention programs for urban American Indian women, and served as co-investigator of a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) study to build capacity of stakeholders to plan, execute, and assess culturally relevant interventions to reduce agricultural-related injuries on the Navajo Nation. She has provided technical assistance to tribes in the conduct of CBPR, spearheaded a national, multi-tribal study of barriers and facilitators to development and implementation of comprehensive impaired driving prevention programs in American Indian communities, evaluated a university-based pipeline program for American Indian students interested in careers in medicine, and completed a mixed-method intervention study pertinent to American Indian women in prison. Dr. Willging has also conducted studies on the implementation of large-scale mental health policy reforms and systems-change initiatives in California, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. She is especially concerned with culturally relevant interventions to ameliorate the effects of social injustice experienced by diverse populations, including youth and adolescents, incarcerated women, and gender and sexual minorities.

Mary Gordon, MA

Mary V. Gordon, MA, is a Senior Program Director at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, MD. A PIRE employee since 1992, she has worked on a number of public health-related projects. She was recently appointed as the Co-Center Director for the Calverton Center. Her earlier position was as Director of Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center (UDETC) at the Pacific Institute of Research and Evaluation (PIRE). In her functional role as a Director, Ms. Gordon managed a $3M budget, supervised the senior staff, managed over 30 consultants and was the staff lead for the Center’s National Youth Initiative.

Ms. Gordon’s areas of expertise include policy development, strategic planning and community coalition support. Mary was also the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Center’s Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) contract. The contract addressed the underage drinking technical assistance needs of CADCA’s newly developed National Coalition Institute. Her professional background includes program administration, training, and evaluation. Across her PIRE career, she has been responsible for program management, strategic policy development, and training in several health and behavioral research programs. Ms. Gordon has extensive experience managing complex projects to assure that deliverables are timely and maximally useful to all stakeholders. She has exercised this skill at the state, local, and federal levels, working with diverse and mainstream populations, to improve public health outcomes. Ms. Gordon has more than twenty years of professional experience in the field of program administration, training, and technical assistance.

Bob Saltz, PhD

Bob Saltz, PhD, is a Senior Research Scientist and Associate Director at PIRE’s Prevention Research Center in Oakland and one of its founding staff members. Dr. Saltz is one of the nation’s leading experts on understanding ways that environmental contexts may influence risky behaviors. He has conducted research studies on responsible beverage service programs, drinking among college students, work-related drinking among public-sector employees, and indicators of drinking problems among women. He was recently the Evaluation Director for California Community College’s Student Mental Health Program (CCC SMHP), a project designed to support mental health services across California’s community college campuses. He is also the Evaluation Director for California’s Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grant (SPF SIG), a project that implements comprehensive community prevention interventions to reduce alcohol-involved trauma in 12 California counties. Dr. Saltz was also a senior co-investigator on PIRE’s Community Trials Project, a community-based participatory research project that involved collaborating with two communities in California and one in South Carolina to implement and evaluate environmental strategies to reduce underage drinking.

Al Stein-Seroussi, PhD

Al Stein-Seroussi, PhD, is a Senior Program Evaluator at the PIRE's Chapel Hill (NC) Center. His area of expertise is assisting state and local stakeholders in evaluating and monitoring their substance abuse prevention initiatives. During his 23 years at PIRE, he has managed dozens of evaluation contracts and is adept at working with clients to meet their evaluation needs and PIRE’s contractual obligations. His recent projects include directing the evaluations of four Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive Grants (SPF-SIG), four Safe Schools/Healthy Students grants, and two grants to integrate behavioral and physical health care. These projects have typically involved working with multiple communities to help them clarify their goals, create clear linkages between their goals and programmatic activities, identify culturally appropriate process and outcome measures, collect and analyze data, and report findings. Dr. Stein-Seroussi was also a member of the PIRE team that evaluated the Student Mental Health Program of the California Community Colleges.

Narinder Dhaliwal, MA

Narinder Dhaliwal, MA, is Technical Assistance Consultant for Tribal Entities. Since 2005, Ms. Dhaliwal has served as the primary technical assistance provider to gaming Tribes throughout California on indoor clean air issues in tribal casinos, housing, medical facilities, and administrative/governmental properties. With tribal permission and collaborative assistance, she has co-designed and conducted multiple independent research projects that have gathered public health data on air particulate monitoring, economic impact studies, and tobacco use prevalence among gaming customers. The data has been gathered, analyzed and provided back to tribal governments along with technical assistance regarding practical and economically viable steps to adopt and implement tribal policies to improve public health outcomes for their members as well as customers, guests, and partners in economic development. Ms. Dhaliwal is an active member of the American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian Caucus within APHA. Ms. Dhaliwal is the 2016 recipient of California Nations Indian Gaming Association-CNIGA Annual Paula Murillo Industry Leader Award. Although still allowable by sovereign right, large and small tribes are re-examining and voluntarily modifying their policies to increase non-smoking areas throughout tribal properties including casinos, educational and administrative facilities, and tribal housing. Ms. Dhaliwal is directly responsible for these changes. Her work has included providing technical assistance to Tribal Governments including the Yocha Dehe Wintu Nation, Pit River Tribe, Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, Rincon Band of Luiseno Indians, United Auburn Indian Community, and San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians among many others. Colleagues throughout the nation credit Ms. Dhaliwal with understanding the deep and real meaning of cooperation, collaboration, and trust that is absolutely critical to working with and providing technical assistance to Tribal Nations. As director of ETR’s outreach material clearing house TECC and as director of ETR’s California Clean Air Project, Ms. Dhaliwal supervises both logistics professional Crystal Mantle, who is experienced in convening teleconferences with tribal entities, and graphics artist Jennifer Silver-Herman, with extensive experience in tailoring mental health training and outreach materials to Native American and other population groups.

Michael E. Bird, MPH, MSW

Michael E. Bird (Santo Domingo & Ohkay Owingeh Pueblos), MPH, MSW is a Native American Public Health Expert. Throughout his distinguished career in public health, Michael Bird, Santo Domingo, San Juan Pueblo, MSW, MPH, has been working to enhance the health of the public, particularly the health of American Indian and Alaska Native people. From 1998 to 1999 he was the first American Indian (and the first social worker) to serve as President of the American Public Health Association (APHA), an internationally respected organization with more than 50,000 members that has been influencing policies and setting priorities since 1872. Bird was elected President of APHA after decades of working in program development and health policy at the tribal, state, and national level. When the following article was published, Bird was the executive director of the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center (NNAAPC). Currently he is a public health consultant.

Roxane Bly, CS

Roxane Bly (Ohkay Owingeh & Laguna Pueblos) CS, has worked as an independent consultant since 2000. She has the proven ability to conceptualize programs based on community need, articulate proposed program in writing, secure funding and other resources, and ensure successful implementation. In 2013, she developed and implemented an in-person consumer assistance program for the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange. Designed to ensure that Native people benefit from new health coverage options through the Affordable Care Act, this program involved setting up a network of outreach, education and enrollment sites in Native communities around New Mexico. Trained and certified 30 in-person assisters and partnered with the Albuquerque Area Indian Health Service to deploy 25 Certified Application Counselors. Within nine months, the program provided outreach to over 30,000 individuals resulting in more than 4,000 Native people acquiring health coverage. Due to its success, the program was extended and expanded with a budget of $2.4 million and was nationally recognized by the National Indian Health Board in September 2015.

In 2010, she assisted the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department to implement and evaluate programs designed to expand health resources in Native communities across the state. From 2010 to 2013, she served as Associate Evaluator for a federally funded Tribal Home Visiting program. Responsible for secondary data analysis and community engagement while assisting the Lead Evaluator with the development of a Benchmark Plan and plan for rigorous evaluation. Developed a Learning Circle, a supportive environment to foster a common focus and incentive for program staff and evaluation team to learn together by applying evaluation findings to current practice. In 2012, she served on the W.K. Kellogg Foundation New Mexico Strategic Learning and Evaluation Team. Responsible for building capacity of WKKF grantees for strategic Community Engagement and Knowledge Transfer, and application of strategic learning to enhance the effectiveness of grantees’ work in New Mexico. Since 2015, she has served as Co-Investigator on “Seasons of Care” a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health that examines how Native American elders access health insurance and healthcare services.

Raymond Daw, MPH

Raymond Daw, MPH, (Diné) has worked as a Behavioral Health Administrator with the Yukon-Kuskokwim Healthcare Corporation. Before this, he worked as a Health Service Administrator with the Yukon-Kuskokwim Healthcare Corporation in Bethel, Alaska, and in the same position with the Navajo Department of Behavioral Health Services in Widow Rock, Arizona. From 1992 to 2007 he served as Executive Director of the Na’nizhoozi Center, in Gallup, NM.

He has consulted at the Co-Occurring Center for Excellence (SAMHSA) on best practices, indigenous healing, manpower development, systems design, evaluation, and interventions. He has done the same with Totah Behavioral Health Authority, Farmington, NM consulting on the Mentor/Trainer Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA) and motivational interviewing (MI), public policy, program evaluation, plus traditional healing program development. Mr. Daw has served as a consultant with HIV Prevention Evaluation Design and Training, Minnesota, SAMHSA, Mayatech to review program prevention services for inclusion of Native American culture, as well as in the roll of capacity-Building and Resource Development, in Humboldt County, CA, SAMHSA, IQ Solutions to provide training on historical trauma and review sustainability plan.

Bonnie Duran, Dr.PH

Bonnie Duran Dr.PH (mixed race Opelousas/Coushatta descendent) is a Professor in the Schools of Social Work and Public Health at the University of Washington, and is the Director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research at the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute (http://health.iwri.org ). She received her Dr.PH from UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 1997. Bonnie teaches graduate courses in Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Health Promotion/Disease Prevention, Social Justice and Health,  Critical Social Theory and Mindfulness in Social Work Practice. She has worked in public health research, evaluation and education among Tribes, Native Organizations and other communities of color for over 35 years.

Dr. Duran is currently the Principal Investigator of 2 NIH funded research projects in “Indian Country”. Working with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and 25 Tribal Colleges, she is conducting 2 studies; (a) a psychiatric epidemiology prevalence and correlates study (N=3,202, and (b) a TCU-cultural adaptation of Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS).  Dr. Duran is also Co-PI of an NIMH funded R25 HIV and mental health research training program. Her past work includes partnering with the Navajo Nation, Indian Health Service and Indigenous Community Based Organizations on frontier rural projects aimed at improving health services, and developing culture-centered health promotion.

The overall aims of Dr. Duran’s research are to work in partnership with communities to design health treatment and prevention efforts that are empowering, culture-centered, accessible and sustainable and that have maximum public health impact. She has many publications including articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and books. (See her profile here and here). Dr. Duran is an Editor of Community-Based Participatory Research for Health: Advancing Social and Health Equity, 3rd Edition coming out in November. See here.

Bonnie Duran is also a Buddhist mindfulness practitioner and teacher. She teaches long and short mindfulness retreats at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS dharma.org) in Massachusetts and at Spirit Rock Meditation Center (SRMC Spiritrock.org) in California, as well as other venues throughout the US.

Nadine Tafoya, MSW

Nadine Tafoya (Mescalero Apache), MSW, is president of Nadine Tafoya & Associates, (NTA) a small research, evaluation and planning firm located in Santa Clara Pueblo, Espanola, New Mexico. Ms. Tafoya leads and manages all projects. Ms. Tafoya has over twenty-five years’ experience specializing in work with Tribal communities, governments, and organizations and state and federal departments working with Tribes; the work of NTA includes: organizational development, research and evaluation, project planning and coordination, and facilitation services in behavioral health. NTA specializes in: substance abuse prevention and treatment, mental health intervention and treatment, youth and community development initiatives, mediation, anti-oppression, creative conflict management and intercultural peace building strategies. The firm is the author of numerous culturally specific and innovative training materials, manuals and guides written with and for Tribal program providers and consumers, to inform and teach in a non-academic format. Materials have also been developed for non-Natives about collaboration, protocols, and processes for successfully working with Native American programs and organizations. NTA was established in June 1998. NTA is committed to an approach that merges best practice and Native American values and cultural practices.