An IPE Approach to the Opioid Epidemic

Dr. Wendy E. Braund is the Director of the Center for Public Health Practice (CPHP) at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), where she also serves as the Associate Dean for Public Health Practice and as a Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Previously, she served as Wyoming State Health Officer and Public Health Division Administrator for the Wyoming Department of Health and prior to that, as a federal official with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As a board certified preventive medicine physician, Dr. Braund brings a strong background of public health practice and policy to her academic role. The CPHP is a catalyst within GSPH and the practice community for engaged scholarship in public health through applied research, practice-based teaching, and professional service, making both Dr. Braund and the CPHP well positioned to address critical public health issues such as the opioid crisis in PA. Dr. Braund is a 2007 graduate of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Preventive Medicine Residency Program and is board certified in General Preventive Medicine and Public Health. She is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine. Her degrees include a BA from Duke University, MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, MD from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, and MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dr. Ohtake earned her professional physical therapy degree from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Following several years of clinical practice, Ohtake completed her Master of Science in exercise physiology and her doctoral degree in physiology from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Following her graduate studies, Ohtake completed a three year post-doctoral fellowship focusing on respiratory physiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Ohtake is the Assistant Vice President of Interprofessional Education and an associate professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Science at the University at Buffalo. She leads the Office of Interprofessional Education and is responsible for the development, implementation, and assessment of the academic and clinical interprofessional education and collaborative practice curriculum. Students from the health professions programs of athletic training, dental medicine, dietetics, health law, healthcare management, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physical therapy, public health, and social work participate in the IPE program. Dr. Ohtake has extensive experience in simulation-based learning and incorporates this instructional strategy into the UB IPE curriculum.

Dr. Ohtake actively engages in interprofessional education research. She is currently principal investigator on the SUNY IITG Award Improving health care delivery for refugees and African Americans using technology-enhanced interprofessional experiential learning and was co-investigator on the SUNY IITG Award for Information resources for evidence-based interprofessional health care decisions: Developing, testing and evaluating library-based innovative technology enhanced team instruction methods. Dr. Ohtake’s research in simulation pedagogy has been recognized nationally by the American Physical Therapy Association Academy of Acute Care Physical Therapy. Dr. Ohtake has over 65 peer-reviewed publications and has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international professional meetings. She has served on the editorial boards of Physical Therapy and Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy Journal.

Dr. Ohtake earned her physical therapy degree at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec and has over 30 years of experience as an acute care physical therapist. She earned her Master’s and PhD degrees at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and completed a three-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Dr. Howley is an experienced Educational Psychologist who has spent over 20 years advancing medical education. She currently leads strategic efforts to support the advancement of teaching and learning across the continuum of medical education. She oversees the newly formed Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships unit within the Medical Education Cluster. Prior to becoming the Senior Director of Initiatives and Partnerships at the Association of American Medical Colleges, she served as the Assistant Vice President of Medical Education and Physician Development for the Carolinas HealthCare System in North Carolina. In that role, she led a number of medical education initiatives across the professional development continuum, including graduate medical education accreditation and physician leadership development. She concurrently served as the Assistant Professor of Educational Research at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, where she supported curriculum and faculty development at the UNC regional campus in Charlotte, and engaged in scholarship contributing to empirical and conceptual literature in evaluation and assessment of clinical performance. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Central Florida, and both her Master of Education and PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Virginia.

Anthony (Tony) Mazzaschi is the Senior Director for Policy and Research at the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH). He joined the Association on April 1, 2014 and has principal responsibility for developing and effectively advocating for the policy positions of the ASPPH and advancing the capacity of the research faculty of members to conduct critical population-based and prevention-oriented research. He works closely with the ASPPH Advocacy and Research Committees.

Before joining ASPPH, Mr. Mazzaschi was senior director for scientific affairs at the Association of American Medical Colleges for 19 years. He directed the AAMC’s Council of Faculty and Academic Societies (CFAS) and led various AAMC's research policy initiatives, including those related to research evaluation, the cost of research, and research cost allocation. He was the AAMC staff leader on various controversial research policy issues, including: animals in research and medical education, stem cell and SCNT research, facilities and administrative (F&A or indirect) costs, effort reporting, and other research funding and grants management issues.

Mr. Mazzaschi’s research articles and policy commentaries have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Journal of the Medical Library Association, the FASEB Journal, Public Health Reports, and Academic Medicine.

Mr. Mazzaschi recently stepped down from the board of directors and the executive committee of the National Association for Biomedical Research, a leading advocacy organization promoting sound public policy in support of ethical and essential animal research. He was a founder and for more than a decade served on the board of directors of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR). He also served as Treasurer of the organization. He was principal investigator of the AAMC-ORI Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) Program for Academic Societies. Mr. Mazzaschi served as Interim Chief Scientific Officer of the AAMC from October 2008-July 2009.

In 2009, Mr. Mazzaschi received the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries’ Cornerstone Award in recognition of his efforts promoting “widespread understanding of the significant changes taking place in medical and biological sciences as scholarly communications move from print to digital.”

Before joining AAMC, Mr. Mazzaschi managed the public affairs program of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) and was previously with the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). A native of Laconia, New Hampshire, Mr. Mazzaschi is a graduate of James Madison College at Michigan State University, and earlier in his career spent a decade working on Capitol Hill, both in a Senate personal office and as a professional staff member on a House subcommittee.