Communities Joined in Action is led by a national Board of Directors composed of leaders with front-line experience in the business of healthcare, community health care redesign, leadership development and organizational change. Among the board members are community champions that have built full access programs.
- Donyel B. Barber – Treasurer
- Karen Minyard, PhD – Administrative Home Representative
- Melissa Monbouquette, MPA – Secretary
- Quentin Moore, MPH – Immediate Past Chair
- Kara Murphy, MSMOB
- Gary Renville – Chair
- Carrie Rheingans, MPH
- Carol Zechman, LCSW
Director Emeritus
- Laura Brennan, MSW
- Mary Lou Andersen (deceased)
- Ronald Ashworth
- Eric Baumgartner, MD, MPH
- Marilyn Hughes Gaston, MD
- Doug Krug
- Linda M. Kinney, MHA
- Camille Miller, MSSW
- Quentin Moore
- Ben Raimer, MD
- Mark Redding, MD, FAAP (deceased)
- John Scanlon, PhD
- Judith Warren, MPH
- Vondie Woodbury, MPA
Donyel serves as the Community Centered Health Coordinator for Gaston Family Health Services, a Federally Qualified Health Center. She promotes community engagement, while working with communities to identify social determinants leading to poor health of the community. Working alongside the community, her mission is to achieve health equity and improve the overall health of the community. She is a 1996 graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree and she is certified in Facilitative Leadership. During the November 2019 election cycle, Donyel was elected to a 4 year term on the Gastonia City Council.
Director & Associate Research Professor
Georgia Health Policy Center
Department of Public Management and Policy
Atlanta, Georgia
kminyard@gsu.edu
www.ghpc.gsu.edu
Karen Minyard, PhD has directed the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC) at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies since 2001. Minyard connects the research, policy, and programmatic work of the center across issue areas including: community and public health, end of life care, child health, health philanthropy, public and private health coverage, and the uninsured. Prior to assuming her current role, she directed the networks for rural health program at the GHPC. She has experience with the state Medicaid program, both with the design of a reformed Medicaid program and the external evaluation of the primary care case management program. She also has 13 years of experience in nursing and hospital administration.
Dr. Minyard is an advocate for the importance of community in national, state, and local policy and the power of communities to improve health. Dr. Minyard maintains her connection with communities by working directly with local health collaboratives and serving on the boards of the National Network of Public Health Institutes, Physicians’ Innovation Network, and Communities Joined in Action.
Dr. Minyard’s research interests include: financing and evaluation of health-related social policy programs; strategic alignment of public and private health policy on all levels; the role of local health initiatives in access and health improvement; the role of targeted external facilitation and technical assistance in improving the sustainability, efficiency, and programmatic effectiveness of non-profit health collaboratives; and public health systems and financing.
Dr. Minyard frequently makes presentations and acts as a neutral convener and facilitator for groups and organizations. She often provides testimony for the state legislature and recently presented to congressional and executive agency staff at the National Health Policy Forum. Currently, she is spearheading a team of faculty and staff at Georgia State University dedicated to translating national health care reform.
Dr. Minyard received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree in nursing from the Medical College of Georgia, and a doctoral degree in business administration with a major in strategic management and minor in health care financing from Georgia State University.
Deputy Director
BUILD Health Challengemelissa@buildhealthchallenge.org
Melissa Monbouquette is the Deputy Director of the BUILD Health Challenge, a national initiative that advances multi-sector, community-driven partnerships to improve health equity. She serves as a thought leader and key resource for awardees and partners by guiding BUILD’s strategy and implementation, and leads the program’s innovation efforts to drive sustainable improvements in community health. Melissa has over a decade of experience in nonprofit strategy and operation. She holds a master’s degree from The George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration and a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University.
Quentin J. Moore, MPH has practiced in the public health and community benefit fields since the late 1990’s. He has a Masters of Public Health in Human Nutrition from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a Bachelors of Arts from Fisk University in Nashville, TN. As part of his role at Beaumont Health, located in his home community, Quentin is responsible for leading evaluation of programs aligned with Community Health Needs Assessment requirements, identifying new funding opportunities, partnering to implement innovative financing models, reporting and disseminating outcomes, collaborating with the OUWB School of Medicine and identifying new value added initiatives to support Beaumont Health’s mission across all sites.
Quentin most recently served as the Director, Population Health & Disparities Prevention at Trinity Health. During his 10 year tenure at the Trinity Health system office, Quentin was engaged in a number of progressive positions within the Community Benefit/Community Health area, including leadership of community benefit reporting, launch and implementation of a diabetes telemonitoring initiative, evaluation and reporting of program models, development of a system equity plan, system integration efforts and the creation, development and launch of a nationally recognized innovative program/funding model, Transforming Communities Initiative, a multi-year, $80 million program to address community needs through policy and environmental changes. Quentin also spent a number of years at the Michigan Public Health Institute and led community based strategies around nutrition, physical activity and cardiovascular disease. In addition, his work has been highlighted in national publications and replicated, including a nutrition environment assessment tool (NEAT) adapted for use by the Department of Defense. Quentin continues to serve on a number of national and local boards that support community health improvement and continues to look for different ways to engage new sectors in the work of health systems and communities.
Kara Murphy, MSMOB
President
Access Dupage
Kara is President of Access Dupage, a nonprofit organization in Carol Stream, Illinois whose mission
is to provide affordable health services to DuPage County residents, regardless of income.
Kara.knows she is blessed to work in a community like DuPage, with hundreds of organizations
working together, anticipating and adapting to a changing landscape. A history working in small
nonprofits and large health systems helps her to understand the assets the community can apply to
reducing healthcare barriers, and the challenges patients face connecting to the care they need. Over
14 years at a small nonprofit, she has also become an expert lightbulb changer. Kara maintains
balance exploring the forest preserves with two-legged and four-legged friends, visiting the French
Market for culinary inspiration, and curling up with a good book.
President & CEO
Project Access Northwest
Seattle, Washington
Breaking a cycle of family poverty, to be the first in his family to graduate high school, Gary Renville attended Oregon State University (BS, 88) and Columbia University Teachers College (MA, 97). He has over 20 years total experience in a variety of increasingly responsible positions in education and nonprofit leadership.
Immediately prior to joining Project Access Northwest, Gary served as Regional Vice-President and Interim Vice President, Field Services of the National Kidney Foundation. Throughout his career he has helped to raise millions of dollars and in-kind resources managed by nonprofit partners to actively engage individuals, corporate volunteers and other groups in meaningful volunteer experiences. His work has crossed multiple sectors to include all aspects of fundraising, strategic planning, nonprofit management and board development, cause-related marketing, membership growth, program development, event planning and the building of organizational culture and corporate employee volunteer engagement.
An avid tennis player, Gary has volunteered his time and nonprofit expertise with the United States Tennis Association and, appointed by their Board Chair, served on the USTA National Committee for Diversity and Inclusion.
Gary is currently volunteering as Board President of the Seattle Tennis Alliance, as a member of the national Communities Joined in Action (CJA) Board of Directors, and as Co-Chair of the annual National Health Care Conference of CJA.
Gary’s leadership skills include expertise in meaningful volunteer engagement, fund development and innovative problem-solving through the building of strategic partnership opportunities.
Carrie Rheingans is the Senior Program Manager of the Washtenaw Health Initiative (WHI), which is based at the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT, pronounced ‘chart’) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In this role, Carrie coordinates the work of more than 200 social and clinical service providers, and manages 15 community-based projects to increase outreach and enrollment into health insurance, and improve access to mental health, substance use, dental, and primary care for low-income residents. As part of her work with the WHI, Carrie helped facilitate the first-ever joint hospital Community Health Needs Assessment and Implementation Plan for three nonprofit hospitals, and she helps implement Michigan’s State Innovation Model in one of the five test regions in the state. Carrie is also an adjunct lecturer in the University of Michigan School of Social Work, teaching courses on health care policy, community organizing, management of human services, and social policy and evaluation.
Carrie is a June 2016 graduate from the Leadership Detroit program at the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, which trains mid-career professionals to be regional leaders. Before her current roles at the WHI and adjunct lecturing, Carrie was a co-founder, the Director of Civic Engagement, and most recently, the Executive Director of Casa Latina, Washtenaw County’s first Latino community center, which existed from 2011 – 2015. Carrie has experience working with the Washtenaw County Public Health Department and Unified, which is the AIDS service organization for eleven counties across southeast Michigan. She was an AmeriCorps member with Team Detroit for the national AmeriCorps program on HIV and AIDS in 2008-2009. In addition to these local activities, Carrie has worked with HIV and AIDS organizations in Peru and China, a microfinance organization in Bangladesh, a developmental biology lab in Germany, and conducted youth violence research in South Africa. She worked with the national Campaign to End AIDS as a leader and peer trainer with their Youth Action Institute from 2008-2012.
Carrie holds master’s degrees in public health and community social work from the University of Michigan, and received her bachelor of science there as well. She was born and raised in Michigan, and has spent the last seventeen years based in Washtenaw County.
Carol Zechman LCSW, is the Senior Director of the Access to Care programs at MaineHealth since 2004. Prior to coming to MaineHealth, Carol was the Director of Community Support Services for a Portland-based Social Services Program and an inpatient social worker at Maine Medical Center. Her experiences provide her with an understanding of the challenges of working with disenfranchised and vulnerable populations. She has served on the following committees- State Public Health Coordinating Council, Greater Portland Refugee and Immigrant Health Care Collaborative, Cumberland County Health Disparities Work Group, Portland Mayor’s Healthcare Task Force, Quality Counts Community Care Team Steering Committee and the Cumberland County District Health Coordinating Council. Carol was the 2019 Maine Public Health Association’s Phebe Conrey King Access to Healthcare Award recipient.