2018 USPHS IPEC Award: ETSU Responds to the Opioid Epidemic

Learn more about this speaker here.

Learn more about this speaker here.

Alice McCaffrey is the Director of the Sullivan County Anti-Drug Coalition and has worked for the Coalition since its start in January 2011. Alice has a BS in Business Administration: Organizational Innovation, is a certified prevention specialist, a graduate of CADCA's National Coalition Academy, and a trainer for the TN ACE Initiative: Building Strong Brains, and Trauma Informed Care. Prior to her work with the Coalition, she facilitated Bristol's community-wide response to Hurricane Katrina (Bristol Cares), Bristol's Weed and Seed, strategic planning for the YWCA Board, and worked with churches to uncover impediments to growth, and facilitated Bristol’s Farmer’s Market Strategic Planning. Currently, she resides in Bristol, TN with her husband, Dave Baldwin.

Commander (Dr.) Oluchi Elekwachi is a public health pharmacist in the US Public Health Service. She was first called to active duty in May of 2000 as an Ensign with HRSA’s Commissioned Corps Operations Section (CCOS) in Rockville, MD. While there, she developed the Commissioned Corps Procedural Manual and designed the CCOS Web Site. She later served as an assistant project officer for Clinical Pharmacy Demonstration Projects at the HRSA Bureau of Primary Health Care, Office of Pharmacy Affairs. In that position, she also worked to define and develop outcome measures by serving on the HRSA Health Disparities Steering Committee. Her duties also included educating the public on 340B Drug Pricing Discount Program. CDR Elekwachi was later stationed at the CDC/ATSDR where she performed a demographic analysis of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan population in order to provide framework for developing Fish Consumption Advisories for physicians, pharmacists, and nurses of that region.

In 2003, CDR Elekwachi joined the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) as a Senior Review Officer in the Office of New Drugs in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) where she oversaw the regulatory review processes for diabetes, obesity, bone, and pediatric product development. She is currently stationed at the FDA Center for Biologic Research and Evaluation (CBER), where she is the primary labeling, advertising and promotional product review of travel-related, herpes zoster, and human papilloma virus vaccines. She is the Team Leader for the Proprietary Name Review team in CBER.

CDR Elekwachi was selected for and completed the Excellence in Government (EIG) Senior Fellowship Program. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before going on to complete a Master’s Degree in Public Health at the George Washington University. She earned her Doctorate in Pharmacy from Howard University, after which she completed a Pharmacy Practice Residency at the Washington, D.C. Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center. Most recently, Dr. Elekwachi completed a Global Health Graduate Fellowship at the University of Maryland. She is an adjunct Associate Professor of Health Management at the University of Maryland University College. To maintain her skills and professional knowledge, Dr. Elekwachi practices ambulatory care pharmacy in the community setting. She is also the Principal Investigator on two federally funded grants from the Office of Minority Health and the Office of Women’s Health, both examining the role of health communication on health disparities and gender-sensitive messaging.