Title V Funded Staff
Title V Director's Office
The Family Health Bureau (FHB) houses seven separate programs. The Bureau Chief/Medical Director/Title V MCH Director, Dr. Janis Gonzales, oversees all programs and works with each of the program managers who have direct oversight of each program. Dr. Gonzales is Board Certified in Pediatrics and has a master’s degree in Public Health. She previously spent nine years in private practice followed by work in hospice and in Early Childhood Developmental Screening before joining Children’s Medical Services (CMS)/FHB. She also had a daughter with special needs. For the past 11 years, she has served as Medical Director for the Title V CYSHCN program (CMS) in New Mexico. In addition, she has served as the Family Health Bureau Medical Director for the past four years. She was promoted to Bureau Chief and Title V Director in Feb. 2015. She is also the Vice-President of the NM Perinatal Collaborative and the President of the NM Pediatric Society (the NM Chapter of the AAP). She has a Deputy Bureau Chief, a Business-Operations specialist, and a Financial Specialist on her Administrative Team.
Katie Avery, MS, CNFP is the Maternal Health Program Manager, responsible for the High-Risk Prenatal Care Fund program, Midwifery Licensure & Regulation and the Maternal Health program. This Program is also the NMDOH coordinating lead for the NM Maternal Mortality Review Committee proceedings. The Child Health Manager, Gloria Bonner, was responsible for child health program activities with a focus on improving screening and referrals and parent education, as well as building partnerships throughout the early childhood system in NM. Under Ms. Bonner, the program has a strong collaboration with other agencies and community programs around the state. Until her retirement in July 2020, Gloria was the lead on the Early Childhood Systems Grant for many years and has recently been appointed as the CDC’s Act Early Ambassador to New Mexico for 2019-2021. The MCH Section is also strongly supported by Health Educator, Sabrina Curry and Administrative Assistant Jessi Sanchez. Sabrina Curry is serving as the acting Child Health Program Manager.
CYSHCN: Children's Medical Services
Susan Chacon, LCSW is the Title V CYSHCN Director. Ms. Chacon has 13 years of program management within the Children’s Medical Services Program. The Title V CYSHCN Director position is the Statewide Program Manager for Children's Medical Services (CMS), under which fall the CYSHCN Program, the Multidisciplinary Specialty Outreach Clinics, the Newborn Genetic Screening program and the Newborn Hearing Screening program.
The CMS state office staff consists of the Title V Statewide CYSHCN Program Manager, a Medical Director, two nurse consultants who work with Newborn Genetic Screening, the Newborn Hearing Screening Coordinator, a birth defects program coordinator, a clinic coordinator/Executive Secretary, a financial specialist, a training and development specialist, a Finance Manager, two general clerks, and a data manager for newborn screening. The CMS management team includes the statewide Title V CYSHCN program manager, the medical director, the field supervisors, regional program managers and key state office staff. The management team meets monthly to review policy issues related to the implementation of the CMS programs.
Brenda Romero, RN, is the State Genetics Coordinator and Carla Ortiz, RN, is the nurse consultant for screening; both have been with the program for over 13 years. Lydia Sanchez is the advanced clerk and has been with the program for over 16 years. She bills the managed care organizations for case management and the outreach clinics, which brings in revenues to the program. These revenues support staff salaries and have helped the program expand staff positions in underserved areas. The clerk specialist position that provides administrative support to the Newborn Screening Programs is currently vacant, and applicants are being recruited. Janice Gallegos brings financial expertise to the program and provides procurement and budgetary oversight.
Michelle Quintana, who has also been with the program for over 10 years, is the Training and Development Specialist. Susan Merrill, LCSW, is the birth defects coordinator and is heavily involved in the CARA (Comprehensive Addiction & Recovery Act) work with CYFD. Reanna Garcia is the data manager who oversees the data bases for the newborn screening programs. The CMS staff in the Public Health offices are licensed professionals and consist of regional program managers, social work supervisors, social workers, clerks and nutritionists who specialize in children with special needs. Fully staffed, CMS has about 90 personnel statewide. The program has had success recently in filling vacant positions and even creating new social work positions in high need areas, which has boosted morale and productivity. There are also several contractors in place that help to support the program, including an additional nurse who assists with follow-up on unsatisfactory bloodspots and several contractors who assist with follow-up on newborn hearing screens and evaluation of the newborn screening data base.
The regional staff meet monthly to keep up to date on program initiative and procedures. Trainings relevant to cultural competency and social work practice and interwoven into the monthly meetings. The social work staff must maintain Certificates of Education (CEUs) including six hours of cultural competency training every two years as part of professional licensure. This year CMS held a statewide training which gave staff time to interact as a program and receive training to improve skills and sensitivity to working with families with CYSHCN.
Working within the program are several parents who have children with special health care needs and others who were children/youth with special health care needs or had sisters or brothers with special needs. In addition, the Title V CYSHCN program contracts with Parents Reaching Out (the State F2F), EPICS (Educating Parents of Indian Children with Special Needs) and Hands & Voices to provide support and training to diverse parents in the state who have CYSHCN and these agencies provide feedback and partnership to the program on family-centered care and family professional partnership. In this way, the program has internal and external family expertise to guide its policies.
Maternal & Child Health Epidemiology
Currently, there are three epidemiologists on staff in addition to the Section Manager (also an epidemiologist), two vacant epidemiology positions, a data manager, and two FTE data collection staff. Eirian Coronado, MA, is the Section Manager with over 16 years working in public health. She fills the role of Principal Investigator for the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), HUGS (longitudinal follow up to PRAMS) and the State Systems Development Initiative (SSDI). Christina Brigance, MPH, coordinated the Title V Block Grant & Needs Assessment but left her position in March 2020. Nicholas Sharp, MPH, is a program evaluator and was hired in January 2019. Dorin Sisneros is a Management Analyst-Supervisor and provides fiscal oversight to the program. Carol Hust, Data Collections Clerk and Javier Rotunno, Financial Specialist joined the team in 2019. The MCH Epidemiology program supports data collection, data management & analysis for Children’s Medical Services (CMS) in newborn hearing and newborn genetic screening programs. They provide data from PRAMS to support WIC nutrition program evaluation, and they analyze client data for WIC and the Family Planning Title X Program.
Office of School and Adolescent Health
There is one staff member in the Office of School and Adolescent Health (OSAH) that is supported by Title V funds. Tessa Medina-Lucero, MPH, is the Adolescent Health coordinator which belongs to the Population and Community Health Bureau within the NM DOH. She works in the Peer-to-Peer Youth Empowerment Program, coordinating all aspects. She also supports work in the NM Adolescent and Young Adult CoIIN. Ms. Medina-Lucero is a leader among school and positive youth development in NM. Her adolescent leader teams are active in suicide prevention and anti-bullying efforts.
Office of Injury Prevention
John McPhee was the Childhood Injury Prevention Coordinator for NM DOH in the Office of Injury Prevention until April 2020. He worked many years to implement and coordinate prevention programs and education for unintentional and intentional childhood injury. His work covered a broad range of safety trainings to service providers and parents, assembling and distributing safety information statewide, as well as providing media interviews, press releases and articles specific to child safety. His training topics include safe sleep, helmet safety, and car seat safety. His position also entails maintaining membership and actively supporting the state Safe Kids Coalition. Rachel Wexler heads the Office of Injury Prevention and is working to fill this important position for Title V. Ms. Wexler also coordinates with Title V staff in safe sleep education, shaken baby syndrome policy and to address violent death and suicide surveillance.
The Family Planning Program (FPP)
Susan Lovett, the Title X Director in the State Office, manages the statewide Family Planning Program including oversight of budget, personnel, and federal grant requirements. The Clinical Team consists of the Medical Director Christopher Novak, MD, MPH; Georgina Gomez-Lieberman, Nurse Practitioner Consultant; Veronica Trujillo, Nurse Consultant; and, Tina Sanchez, Nurse Consultant. The Education Team consists of Kate Daniel, an Epidemiologist, Julie Maes and Mercedes Gonzales-Clay, who are both Educational Project Officers. The program is bringing on a Medical Director and works closely with regional staff to provide family planning services in public health clinics.
The FPP staff and MCH Epidemiology program staff work with the Human Services Department (Medicaid Assistance Division) to evaluate pregnancy intention trends, accessibility of contraceptive methods, provider training, and to recommend policy in clinical settings.
MCH Workforce partners
Family Health Bureau Title V Programs interface with many partners to make up the MCH workforce in NM. Home visitation program staff and former case management staff from the Family Infant Toddler Program and Families FIRST perinatal case coordination programs continue to interface with FHB/Title V staff. Title V programs participate in or collaborate with professional medical associations including the NM Pediatric Society and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
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