Rochelle Dicker, MD (Chair)
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

Dr. Rochelle Dicker serves as professor in residence of surgery and anesthesia at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is the division chief for acute care surgery and heads the departmental efforts in population health. Before returning to UCSF, she served as the vice chair for critical care and the trauma medical director At UCLA. She also co-chaired the UCLA Health Equity and Translational Social Science Theme for the School of Medicine and was co-director of the Program for the Advancement of Surgical Equity (PASE).

In 2003, Dr. Dicker founded the Wraparound Project at San Francisco General Hospital. One of the nation’s first hospital-based violence intervention programs, the work of Wraparound Project centers around the integration of credible messengers and addressing the social determinants of health. Wraparound was one of seven start-up programs that formed the National Network of Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs, which is now known as the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention (HAVI).

Dr. Dicker is a member of the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, where she leads a group called, “Improving the Social Determinants to Attenuate Violence.” The group works to integrate social care and investment models and trauma-informed practices across the country in trauma centers. Dr. Dicker is also vice chair of the Committee on Trauma’s Injury Prevention and Control Committee. She also chairs the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma’s International Relations Committee and serves as organization’s liaison to the World Health Organization.

Dr. Dicker is the recipient of multiple teaching and service awards, including the UCSF Chancellor’s Award for Public Service, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the American College of Surgeons Domestic Volunteerism Award, and the AAST/COT National Safety Council Award.

Carnell Cooper, MD
MUSC Health Orangeburg (Brookdale, SC)

Dr. Carnell Cooper is chief medical officer at MUSC Health Orangeburg in Brookdale, S.C. He has extensive experience serving as chief medical officer at several major healthcare institutions. During his time working in Baltimore, Dr. Cooper taught at the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he created the Violence Intervention Program to support victims of intentional violent injury. This hospital-based program provides expert multidisciplinary support from a team working towards the shared goal of helping victims make critical changes in their lives. He was named a CNN Hero in the Community Crusader category in 2009 for this work. Dr. Cooper has led critical research and published extensively on the impact of violence on victims and has been honored by the American Red Cross as a Hometown Hero.

Terri de-Roon Cassini, MS, PhD
Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI)

Dr. Terri deRoon-Cassini is a professor in the Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Critical Care at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She also serves as executive director of the Medical College of Wisconsin Comprehensive Injury Center; as co-director of the Milwaukee Trauma Outcomes Project; and as medical director of the Trauma and Health Psychology Program, where inpatient screening and intervention as well as outpatient integrative care are provided to trauma patients. Her research focuses on neurobiopsychosocial phenotypes of psychopathology and resilience following trauma and the biological and health impacts of socio-environmental stress, such as exposure to community violence.

Thomas K. Duncan, DO, FACS, FICS
Ventura County Medical Center (Ventura, CA)

Dr. Thomas Duncan graduated from Midwestern University College of Osteopathic Medicine, Downer’s Grove, IL. He completed his residency in general surgery at the Charles R. Drew/UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles. He is board certified by the American Board of Surgery and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and International College of Surgeons. He sits on the Mentoring, Development, and Seniors committees of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST), and is the senior director-at-large to the EAST Board. Thomas is the vice chair of the Injury and Violence Prevention Committee of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST), a vice chair of the Southern California Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, and special consultant to the American College of Surgeons-Committee on Trauma (ACS-COT) injury prevention and violence control section. He is a board member of the Ventura County Family Justice Center. Thomas is the leader and founder of the Ventura County Elderly Fall Prevention Coalition and Program and Violence Intervention Program at Ventura County Medical Center (VCMC). He is the trauma medical director at VCMC, where he is also an assistant clinical professor of surgery. He is the president of Anacapa Surgical Group, Inc., and the medical co-director of Anacapa Surgical Associates, Ventura. He has been a member of staff at VCMC for over 20 years and is the immediate past chief of medical staff (2016 – 2018 and 2020). His mission is in alignment with that of the American College of Surgeons, which is to attain zero preventable deaths after injury.

Joel Fein, MD, MPH
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA)

Joel A. Fein MD, MPH is a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and the co-director of the Center for Violence Prevention at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He is an attending physician in the emergency department at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the department’s senior advisor for advocacy and health policy. Dr. Fein’s research focuses on violence prevention, mental health, and procedural pain management, and he is widely published on these topics.

Masika Gadson
Community Engagement Outreach Manager, Boston Public Schools/ Boston Trauma Response (Boston, MA)

Masika Gadson—a Boston community leader, advocate, and innovator—has been supporting resilience and healing for children and families for over 20 years. She currently works as a community engagement outreach manager at Boston Public Schools, where she provides comprehensive support to Boston Public Schools and the community as well as to district-wide efforts around family engagement. Masika serves as a lead team member for the Neighborhood Trauma Response Team and actively contributes to several city-wide safety task forces. She is a member of the training subcommittee and the leadership team at the Boston Public Health Commission Division of Violence Prevention. She is also a member of the Dorchester Corridor Health Commission and serves on the community advisory council for the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence.

Prior to her work at Boston Public Schools, Masika worked at the Violence Intervention and Advocacy Program (VIAP) at Boston Medical Center, where she provided comprehensive support to survivors of community violence and their families. She also worked at the Center for Community Health and Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for over five years and spent 12 years at the Home for Little Wanderers, where she worked with children and families.

Masika’s approach to violence intervention and prevention is grounded in a statement that she likes to emphasize: “We don’t only show up for bad times in the community; we have to show up in good times as well.” Celebrating strengths and accomplishments of the community is a critical element of Masika’s work.

Thea James, MD
Violence Intervention Advocacy Program at Boston Medical Center (Boston, MA)

Thea James, MD is the vice president of mission and associate chief medical officer at Boston Medical Center. She is an associate professor of emergency medicine at Boston University School of Medicine as well as an attending physician in the Emergency Department. She is the Director of the Violence Intervention Advocacy Program (VIAP), which she co-founded in 2006. Dr. James engages in groundbreaking clinical and academic work that takes place both in BMC’s backyard and around the world. She co-founded Unified for Global Healing, a foundation aimed at improving health outcomes worldwide. As a supervising medical officer on the Massachusetts Disaster Medical Assistance Team she has provided emergency medical care to victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, and earthquake victims in Iran and Haiti.

Brian S. Kern, Esq.
Acadia Professional, LLC (Morristown, NJ)

Brian Kern is an attorney and partner with Acadia Professional, LLC, a nationally renowned healthcare professional and financial risk brokerage firm devoted to supporting independent physicians. At Acadia, Brian is responsible for building a national stop loss market to protect physicians as they transition from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursement. He is also Of Counsel at Frier & Levitt, LLC, a national boutique health law firm. At Frier Levitt, Brian formed a new practice group dedicated to protecting physicians who become the subject of regulatory issues, including licensing and billing matters. Mr. Kern is admitted to the NJ State Bar Association and is a member of the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA). He frequently speaks before heath law and medical organizations, including state, county and specialty societies. He writes for publications throughout the healthcare industry, including MedScape (of Web MD) – where he serves on the editorial advisory board, Medical Economics, and MD News. Many of his works can be found at www.acadia.pro. Mr. Kern formerly sat on the advisory council for NJ Physicians. He is currently on the Board of NJ Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), where he serves as its Affiliate Chair, and a member of the Union County Medical Society Judiciary Committee. Mr. Kern has testified before the NJ Legislature, and has worked on several bills impacting healthcare. In 2016, he was honored as one of “40 Under 40” by NJ Biz.

Michael Levas, MD
Project Ujima (Milwaukee, WI)

Dr. Michael Levas has been with the Medical College of Wisconsin's Section of Pediatric Emergency Medicine since 2011. He is a product of the south side of Milwaukee and completed his undergraduate work at Saint Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin. Following graduation from the Medical College of Wisconsin, he completed his pediatric residency and emergency medicine fellowship training in Kansas City, Missouri. He completed his Masters in Clinical and Translational at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Since joining the faculty at the Medical College, Dr. Levas has been intimately involved with health care disparities, youth violence, and injury prevention policy and research. He is the assistant medical director of Project Ujima, one of the premier hospital-based youth violence prevention and intervention programs in the United States. He currently serves as Vice Chair of Diversity in the Department of Pediatrics and as Deputy Director of the Comprehensive Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He further co-chairs the Injury Reduction Initiative at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.

Mike McLively
Giffords Law Center (San Francisco, CA)

Mike McLively is a senior staff attorney at Giffords Law Center and the policy director of the organization’s Center for Violence Intervention, where he oversees an effort to use policy mechanisms to support and promote evidence-based violence intervention strategies in America’s most impacted communities. The author of three major reports for Giffords Law Center on the topic of community violence, including A Case Study in Hope: Lessons from Oakland’s Remarkable Reduction in Gun Violence, Mike has spoken in many public forums—and to many state and local leaders across the country—about the need to address the day-to-day shootings that fuel America’s gun violence epidemic. An expert on gun policy and urban gun violence, Mike has discussed and debated issues related to gun violence on national television, including CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, and has appeared on a variety of radio programs, including KPCC’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle and WBEZ Chicago’s Morning Shift. Mike has also been quoted extensively in articles covering gun violence in publications such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Gawker, Vice News, and Mother Jones.

Selwyn Rogers Jr., MD, MPH, FACS
University of Chicago Medicine (Chicago, IL)

Selwyn Rogers Jr., MD, MPH, FACS, is an acclaimed trauma and critical care surgeon and public health expert who has served in leadership capacities at health centers across the country. His current roles at University of Chicago Medicine include serving as chief of trauma and acute care surgery, founding director of the trauma center, and executive vice president of community health engagement. Beyond trauma and surgical critical care, Dr. Rogers has been an advocate for treating intentional violence as a public health issue. In partnership with the Center for Community Health and Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he developed a violence intervention and prevention program that works to address the social factors that put patients at increased risk for trauma and mortality. He also helped to launch the Violence Recovery Program at University of Chicago Medicine.

Johnnie Williams
Denver Youth Programs, GRASP (Denver, CO)

Johnnie Williams serves as executive director of Denver Youth Programs at GRASP (Gang Rescue and Support Project), where he oversees the organization’s work to provide youth in the community with constructive alternatives to gangs and other destructive activities. He also manages At-Risk Intervention and Mentoring (AIM), a hospital-based violence intervention program at University of Colorado Hospital. Mr. Williams’ expertise includes violence intervention and prevention, group facilitation, community building, and alcohol and drug counseling. He has developed successful programs for several community-based organizations in Denver, including Faces (Family Advocacy Care Education and Support), the Shaka Franklin Foundation, and the Gilliam Youth Services Center.