Wayne Giles, MD, MS
Dean – University of Illinois School of Public Health

Wayne H. Giles, MD, MS, became the Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in September 2017. Prior to joining UIC, he spent 25 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he led the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, the Division of Population Health and the Division of Adult and Community Health. All within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. His portfolio at the CDC included running one of the organization’s most diverse divisions with programmatic and research activities in community health promotion, arthritis, aging, health care utilization, school health and racial and ethnic disparities in health.

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Paula Basta
Director – Illinois Department of Aging

Paula Basta was appointed as the Director of the Illinois Department on Aging (IDoA) in March of 2019, becoming the 13th director, and 7th woman to lead the agency. With an extensive career of dedication to improving the lives of senior citizens under her belt, Basta brings a profound amount of knowledge and experience in senior services, policy, and social justice to lead the agency.

Before becoming Director for IDoA, Basta began her career as a social worker and subsequently the Director of Religious Education at St. Clement Roman Catholic Church in Chicago. After 9 years, she transitioned into serving as the Executive Director for Housing Opportunities and Maintenance for the Elderly (H.O.M.E.); a non-profit organization committed to preserving the independence and dignity of the low-income elderly citizens in Chicago through a variety of housing and support services. Paula then spent the next 18 years of her career at the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, one of the 13 Area Agencies on Aging that contracts with IDoA to provide services to our older Illinoisans. She served as Regional Director of the Northeast (Levy) Senior Center during that time, but it was bittersweet when she was promoted to Director of Senior Services and Health Initiatives in 2018 at the Chicago Housing Authority.
Director Basta is proud to be putting her experience, integrity, and passion to work for the people of Illinois. She is honored to be able to bring her standards of hard work, plain talk, and hands on approach to Springfield.

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Peg Bauman, MD
Chief of Geriatric Medicine – Jesse Brown VA Medical Center
United States Department of Veteran Affairs

A Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) physician who helps veterans overcome the effects of long-term hospitalization and was recently named one of five national recipients of AMVETS’ “Silver Helmet” award. Dr. Margaret M. Baumann, associate chief of staff for geriatrics and extended care at the Hines VA Medical Center near Chicago, was recognized by the veterans service organization for her efforts in developing new treatment and rehabilitation programs that help veterans return to productive lives.

Kathy Cameron, BSPharm, MPH
National Council on Aging
Senior Director – Center for Healthy Aging

Kathleen Cameron has more than 25 years of experience in the health care field as a pharmacist, researcher, and program director focusing on falls prevention, geriatric pharmacotherapy, mental health, long-term services and supports, and caregiving. Cameron is Senior Director of the NCOA
Center for Healthy Aging, where she provides subject matter expertise on health care programmatic and policy related issues and oversees the Modernizing Senior Center Resource Center.

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Luisa Echevarria
The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America
Board Member

Luisa Echevarria is a board member of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America and a former Alzheimer’s family caregiver. She is also the former director of community empowerment for Univision Communications Inc. and has won Emmy awards for public service campaigns and news production.

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Amy Eisenstein, PhD
RRF Foundation for Aging – Program Officer

Dr. Eisenstein is a Program Officer at RRF Foundation for Aging. Amy has worked in the field of aging for nearly 20 years. She is an Ambassador for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a Fellow of The Gerontological Society of America, and serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Amy’s background in research, public health, aging, and evaluation of community-based interventions.

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Paul Estabrooks, PhD
University of Utah College of Health
Associate Dean for Community Engagement

Dr. Estabrooks has received one of the highest honors in the profession of kinesiology: he’s been inducted as a fellow into the National Academy of Kinesiology. A prolific scholar with more than 280 publications, Estabrooks’ research has been recognized and supported by a broad range of federal agencies, including the National Institute on Aging, National Cancer Institute, and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. He’s accrued more than $15 million from these agencies in support of his studies. Estabrooks holds a Ph.D. in kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario and a MSc in kinesiology from the University of Calgary. He joined the College of Health in January 2022 after previously serving as the Harold M. Maurer Distinguished Chair and professor in Health Promotion at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

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Marla Fronczak
Age Guide Northeastern Illinois
Chief Executive Officer

Marla Fronczak has a Bachelor of Science degree from Northern Illinois University and a Master of Science in Nonprofit Management from Spertus Institute. She joined the agency’s staff in 2010, and prior to her tenure as CEO she managed the Community Planning Division. As Planning Manager, she has been responsible for developing and implementing the agency’s Area Plan, coordinating and overseeing the network of agencies that provide senior services through its eight-county planning and service area, and managing services that the agency provides directly. She had previously been a Long Term Care Ombudsman for the DuPage County Department of Community Services and was also certified as an Adult Protective Services Caseworker by the Illinois Department on Aging. Ms. Fronczak continues to work with the Illinois Department on Aging (IDoA) and the Illinois Association of Area Agencies on Aging (I4A) in fostering partnerships with Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) to assist Medicaid clients in accessing Older Americans Act funded services and to advocate to ensure these clients receive the services they need to remain safe and independent in their community.

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Kelsey Gabel, RD, PhD
Age Clinical Assistant Professor, Kinesiology and Nutrition
UIC College of Applied Health Sciences

Kelsey Gabel, RD, PhD is a clinical assistant professor and post-doctoral research assistant in the department of Kinesiology and Nutrition. Her research focuses on intermittent fasting for weight loss, metabolic disease risk, and as nutrition therapy.

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Alaine Kvedaras
Age Guide Northeastern Illinois

Alaine Kvedaras oversees the evidence-based health promotion programs for Age Guide of Northeastern Illinois.  She is a Health Promotion Specialist and Community Liaison for Kankakee & Grundy Counties.  Her service specialties include Health Promotion Programs, Community Connections Collaboratives, Tech and Education, and Counseling.

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Melissa Lamar, PhD
Rush University Medical Center
Associate Professor / Clinical Neuropsychologist

Dr. Lamar is a professor in the Division of Behavioral Sciences at Rush University Medical Center, and a clinical neuropsychologist in the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center. She received her PhD in clinical neuropsychology from Drexel University and completed her postdoctoral training in cognitive neuroscience within the intramural program of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging.  Her research focuses on cardiovascular disease risk factors, brain aging and cognition with a particular focus on Latinos and African Americans. Dr. Lamar employs novel neuroimaging and data analytic techniques to identify modifiable factors associated with health disparities in brain aging. Additionally, she incorporates translational tasks and digital technology into her work assessing cognitive functioning in order to strengthen the accuracy of her work. Together with the Boston Process Approach to Neuropsychology, Dr. Lamar is able to detect subtle alterations in behavior and pin-point their roots in brain. Dr. Lamar has published extensively on brain-behavior profiles of risk and disease in aging and has received numerous honors and awards for her work including Fellows status of the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Arthur Benton Award for Mid-Career Research from the International Neuropsychological Society.

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Kate Lorig, DrPH
Stanford University Medical Center Division of Immunology and Rheumatology
Professor Emerita Department of Medicine
Past Director – Patient Education Research Center

Dr. Lorig is a professor emerita (acting) at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the past director of the Stanford Patient Education Research Center. She has a master’s degree in nursing and a doctorate in public health with a specialty in health education. For more than four decades, using a public health approach, she has developed and evaluated community-based patient education programs in English and Spanish for people with chronic conditions including arthritis, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, and AIDS. In recent years, this work has been extended to similar programs offered via the Internet. Her present research includes the development and evaluation of programs for cancer survivors as well as for caregivers of people with posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and other cognitive impairments. These programs are offered largely over the Internet. Most recently, she has been involved in studying how to translate programs from the academic setting to the larger community.

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Phyllis Mitzen
The Center for Long-Term Care Reform at Health & Medicine Policy Research Group – Consultant
Illinois Department on Aging – Advisory Board Member
Illinois Housing Development Authority – Advisory Board Member
Skyline Village – Founding President
Mayor’s Commission for Age-Friendly Chicago – Member

Phyllis Mitzen is a policy consultant at Health & Medicine Policy Research Group, Center for Long Term Care Reform, and coordinates a program for social work students interested in aging at the University of Chicago, Social Services Administration. She was formerly at CJE Senior Life. Phyllis received her Master’s Degree in Social Work at the University of Chicago.

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Jay Olshansky, PhD
UIC School of Public Health
Professor

An outspoken critic of the lifespan-enhancement industry, Olshansky studies changes in life expectancy for human populations — and finds that for some groups, survival is actually decreasing. His research ranges from estimates of the upper limit of human longevity, to the policy implications of individual and population aging, to forecasts of the size, survival, and age structure of the population — and the never-ending pursuit of provable methods to slow the aging process. The focus of his research to date has been on estimates of the upper limits to human longevity, exploring the health and public policy implications associated with individual and population aging, forecasts of the size, survival, and age structure of the population, pursuit of the scientific means to slow aging in people (The Longevity Dividend), and global implications of the re-emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases.

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Norm Ryan, MD
Spectrum 7 Healthcare Consulting, LLC
Principal

Norm Ryan, MD is a primary care physician who has held senior medical executive roles with Alere Health, UnitedHealthcare, and Humana.

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Renae Smith-Ray, PhD, MA, CCRA
Walgreens Center for Health and Wellbeing Research
Research Investigator, Manager – Health Analytics, Research, and Reporting

Renae Smith-Ray is a Health Outcomes Researcher with Walgreens Boots Alliance. Dr. Smith-Ray also has an appointment at the Institute for Health Research and Policy (IHRP) as a Research Scientist and an Adjunct Lecturer in Community Health Sciences within the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Dr. Smith-Ray’s areas of expertise in public health are in gerontology, health promotion, and cognition and her research interests include health promotion interventions for older adults and factors that influence the translation and dissemination of health promotion programs. Dr. Smith-Ray has experience working on health behavior change research interventions targeting physical activity and cognitive health. She has been PI on two pilot randomized trials testing the viability of a computer-based cognitive training intervention to improve balance and reduce falls among older adults. Dr. Smith-Ray is a member of the research team that has developed and tested Fit and Strong!, an evidence-based physical activity / behavior change program for older adults with lower extremity osteoarthritis.

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Diane Slezak
Age Options – Vice President and CEO

Diane Slezak joined AgeOptions in 1976 and became president and CEO in November 2018. Prior to that, she was chief operating officer, with responsibility for the daily operations of AgeOptions, including budget, infrastructure, human resources, technology and other operational components. Since joining the agency in 1976, she has advocated for and facilitated the establishment of several new programs to serve older adults. In 1999 Diane worked to design and establish the Health Care Choices Program that helps older people understand and make informed choices about their health care coverage, including Medicare. She also conducted intensive community-based planning to establish the Family Caregiver Program, including working with 13 community agencies that provide caregiver specialists. In addition, she worked to merge two local nonprofit human service agencies in order to maximize funding spent for services.

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Colleen Pittard
National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA)
Partnership Manager

NRPA’s Health and Wellness Team works with local park and recreation agencies to provide tools, resources and technical assistance to help improve access to healthy foods and increase opportunities for people to be physically active in their communities. Our areas of focus include ensuring that all people have safe access to quality park and recreation facilities and programming; promoting healthy eating and physical activity standards; expanding access to evidence-based health prevention programs; connecting parks and the health community, and supporting programs and policies that eliminate health disparities.

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Michael Wolf, PhD, MA, MPH
Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine – Director, CAHRA
Associate Vice Chair for Research – Department of Medicine
James R. Webster, Jr. Professor of Medicine and Medical Social Sciences

Dr. Wolf’s work focuses on 1) the study of cognitive, psychosocial, and health system factors that affect a person’s ability to successfully manage health, and 2) the design of practical, scalable interventions to help individuals and families access, understand, and use health information to make appropriate health decisions and adopt recommended behaviors. The HeLP lab has particular interests in aging, multi-morbidity, medication regimen safety and adherence. Most of our work is interventional and leverages health and consumer technologies as appropriate to ‘hardwire’ patient education, counseling, and monitoring activities in primary care settings to improve chronic disease self-management.

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