Meet the Board and Staff of the Physicians' Innovation Network
PIN Board Members and Staff
Rae Young Bond
Rae Young Bond is the executive director of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Medical Society, the Medical Foundation of Chattanooga, and Project Access, a community health partnership to coordinate charity care for low-income uninsured residents of Hamilton County.
In Tennessee she also has served as executive director of the Tennessee Municipal League, and was the founding director and president of First Things First, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening families. Before moving to Chattanooga, she was director of public affairs for the National Governors¿ Association (NGA) in Washington, D.C., for ten years; editor of a national weekly newspaper published by the National Association of Counties (NACo); a congressional press secretary; and an award-winning journalist in her native Idaho. She is a graduate of Towson State University.
She has provided technical assistance to communities in several states as they developed Project Access Community Health Initiatives. She is a member of the Physician Innovation Network (formerly American Project Access Network) Board of Directors, the American Association of Medical Society Executives and its County CEO Task Force; Communities Joined in Action and its Legislative and Conference Committees; and the Association for Community Health Improvement.
She has served on the national board for America¿s Charities; on the planning committee for the 2005 Communities Joined in Action/Association for Community Health Improvement Conference; on the boards of the Southeast TN Association of Professional Fundraisers the Coalition Against Domestic and Community Violence, the Center for Nonprofits, First Things First, the Hamilton County Courts Mediation Pilot Project (Steering Committee), Scenic City Women¿s Network, Front Porch Alliance, the Why kNOw Education Program, and numerous other boards and health care task forces. She also served on the Citizens¿ Panel to Select a City Judge and on the Conference Planning Committee for the Tennessee Economic Council on Women.
Rae and her husband Bill have two sons, Daniel and John-Michael; three dogs, Henry, Otto, and Dexter; and two cats, Mallory and Loki.
Joan M. Colfer, M.D, M.P.H
- Medical School: University of Auto De Guadalajara (Mexico)
- Internship: Maryland General
- Residency: Union Memorial (Maryland)
- Board Certification: Preventive Medicine
- Specialty: Public Health
- Phone: 239-252-5332
- Website
Peter Ellis, MD, MPH
Dr. Ellis has an active clinical practice in New Haven, CT and is Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. He co-founded Waterbury Project Access located in Waterbury CT in 2004 which has donated over $3 million in patient care services to date. In 2010, he and colleagues from the New Haven County Medical Association, Yale-Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars, Hospital of St. Raphael and Yale-New Haven Hospital will launch Project Access New Haven.
"While we all long for meaningful, national health care reform, progress is painfully slow. Meanwhile, patients living in our communities continue to suffer from treatable medical conditions because they cannot afford medical care. Project Access is an effective model to engage and physicians and community partners to work together to improve the health of our own communities. Our motto is, 'Health care reform starts at home'".
Suzanne E. Landis, MD, MPH
Dr. Landis has an active clinical practice in Asheville, North Carolina and is a Professor of Family Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine-Chapel Hill. She is a chief architect of Project Access and a founder of the Physicians' Innovation Network (PIN).
"Doctors are the ones most able to awaken communities to the imperative of achieving 100% access and eliminating health disparities. We need to be conveners of community leaders and change agents at the local and national levels. Project Access is a vehicle that engages physicians in how care is delivered and elevates them to a new level of leadership."
- Voice Mail: 828.771.3425
Karen Minyard, Ph.D.
Dr. Minyard is Executive Director of the Georgia Health Policy Center and associate research professor, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University. Dr. Minyard is an advocate for basic restructuring of local health care systems to focus on access to care and health status improvements.
"I participate in PIN because I have seen the importance of physician leadership. I also believe in the power of community. When physician leaders and communities decide to organize volunteerism to improve health and access, the possibilities are endless."
- Office: 404.413.0301
- Fax: 404.413.0316
James (Jim) B. Powell, II, MD
circa 1985, but still young and passionate about Project Access.
Dr. Powell is a clinical otolaryngologist head and neck surgeon. He was the Chairman of the Buncombe County Medical Society when it competitively won the initial Robert Wood Johnson grants leading to the evolution and maturation of Project Access and the founding of PIN. His passion is identifying and nurturing leadership at the community level, not only for physicians in Project Access, but also within the greater community. More recently he has served on the Board of Directors of Mission Hospitals System and on the board of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina (nine years, including four years as Chairman.)
"When success is not enough, how do we get from success to significance as individuals and as an Association? That even one patient should forgo needed care for want of funds disgraces us all. The heart of Project Access is the collective heart of all participating physicians invigorated by their rediscovery of their own inescapable altruistic ethos, 2500 years of inherited trust. Sometime over the past 25 years physicians allowed themselves to be transformed into providers. Project Access allows physicians to be physicians again. That is its definition and its message."
- Office: 828.274.1696