Join us the morning of May 13 at 10:00am for our Virtual Community Health Symposium, featuring civic leaders from our city, including Bridge Meadows' Executive Director, Dr. Derenda Schubert; Central City Concern's President & CEO, Rachel Solotaroff; Kaiser Permanente's Briar Ertz- Berger, MD MPH; and Dr. Dixon Chibanda. Now more than ever we must explore community-based resources for health and well-being to ensure everyone in our collective community is taken care of and supported. It truly takes a village. 

Panelists

Derenda Schubert, Ph.D. | Executive Director, Bridge Meadows

Dr. Derenda Schubert is a psychologist with professional experience including counseling children and families as well as creating, managing, and evaluating programs in the realms of foster care, mental health, and developmental disabilities. She has held several executive leadership roles including Chief Operating Officer and Associate Director of Training at two of Oregon’s largest child and family mental health agencies. She is also a  former Board Member of Bridge Meadows. Dr. Schubert is an intergenerational champion, leading the team that created Bridge Meadows, advocating nationally for intergenerational solutions to complex social challenges, spearheading strategic planning, and shaping Bridge Meadows’ expansive vision for the future.  Dr. Schubert speaks locally and nationally on the topics of children’s mental health, community building, and intergenerational living. She is an American Leadership Forum Senior Fellow and an Encore Public Voices Fellow.  Every day, she is inspired by the love of her grandmothers and her children.

Rachel Solotaroff, M.D.| President & CEO, Central City Concern

During her time at CCC, Rachel has overseen inpatient and outpatient alcohol and drug treatment, primary care and mental health care. She has developed key strategic initiatives and stakeholder partnerships to respond to community needs and has championed data-driven models of care for specific populations, from expansion of treatment for homeless people with opioid use disorder to an advanced medical home for medically complex homeless individuals. In her leadership of Old Town Clinic, she secured national recognition from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's LEAP project as one of the 30 highest-performing clinics in the United States, as well as achieving recognition as an NCQA Tier 3 Patient-Centered Medical Home. In 2014, Rachel received the Karen Rotondo Outstanding Service Award from the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council.

Briar Ertz- Berger, MD MPH | Kaiser Permanente

Briar is originally from the east coast, having lived most recently in the New York City area where she studied at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Despite her east coast roots, she has been completely enamored with Oregon since moving here for her residency at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). She and her domestic partner have a lovely daughter who they take with them on outdoor adventures. For Briar, medicine is an incredibly rewarding career, especially emergency medicine, which allows her to care for a wide variety of patients and to continually challenge herself intellectually. It is a privilege to serve the patients who come to Kaiser Permanente for their care.

Dixon Chibanda | Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Zimbabwe

Dixon Chibanda is the director of the African Mental Health Research Initiative (AMARI). He's based in Zimbabwe, where he works on the Friendship Bench program, a cognitive behavioral therapy–based approach to kufungisisa, the local term for depression, literally translated into “thinking too much.” At the Friendship Bench, patients receive individual problem-solving therapy from a specifically trained lay health worker. Chibanda is passionate about connecting with ordinary people in ways that improve their lives using simple but effective programs that can be carried out by non-specialists or professionals. He likes to think outside the box as he explores ways of helping people with conditions such as depression, PTSD and ADHD.

Tickets for this event are limited and complimentary, with a suggested donation of $25. Learn more by clicking Tickets & Sponsorship at the top of the page.

All proceeds from this event benefit Bridge Meadows intergenerational housing communities. Visit BridgeMeadows.org to learn more.