Dr. Rodney Hood, MD

After 40 years in medical practice in Southeast San Diego as a board-certified physician of Internal Medicine in Careview Medical Group, Dr. Rodney Hood recently merged his medical practice with San Ysidro Health Centers. He co-founded and became president of an Independent Physician Association (IPA), the Multicultural Medical Group, consisting of over 150 primary care physicians and 200 specialists managing health plan and provider contracts. The IPA managed health services to over 25,000 enrollees mostly from underserved communities. In 2012 Dr. Hood spearheaded a $1.2 million CMMI Healthcare Innovation Challenge Award that implemented a community-based social-clinical intervention strategy utilizing the “hot spotting” model referred to as the Patient Health Improvement Initiative (PHII) that focused on high utilizers of emergency rooms and hospitals. Dr. Hood is an honor graduate from Northeastern University School of Pharmacy, UCSD School of Medicine, UCSD Medical School Internal Medicine Residency, and is the Past President and Chairman of the board of the National Medical Association. Over the past 30 years Dr. Hood has researched and lectured extensively on the historic aspects of race, ethnicity, genetics, and racism in medicine and the impact on today’s health inequities.

Michelle Talley, LCSW

Michelle Talley is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker whose main area of focus is working with youth and families as it relates to Public Child Welfare. ther areas of interest are issues dealing with domestic violence, substance use, education, and attachment in youth and families. She currently works as a medical social worker and provides crisis intervention, supportive counseling, and grief counseling. As a field consultant with the Inter-University Consortium, a collaborative effort of Southern California, social work programs train social workers in child welfare, Ms. Talley works with first and second year MSW students placed in the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Ms. Talley has also provided training on various topics including psychosocial barriers to medical treatment and intervention, assessment, and intervention models working with system-involved populations, and sexual trauma. Ms. Talley has also worked as a mental health clinician dealing with children impacted by abuse and neglect within their family nucleus. Ms. Talley has also worked as an adoption social worker with the LA County DCFS. The focus was to locate families and individuals who were interested in providing a permanent home for children in the Child Welfare system.

Dr. Seth D. Hannah, PhD

Dr. Seth D. Hannah is a sociologist specializing in how race, ethnicity, and culture shapes the delivery of healthcare in the US. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Ethnic Studies and Sociology, with a minor in Political Science from UC Riverside. Dr. Hannah earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University in 2011 after completing a predoctoral training program in Inequality and Social Policy from the Kennedy School of Government and another in Medical Anthropology from Harvard Medical School. He is the co-author of the book Shattering Culture: American Medicine Responds to Cultural Diversity (2011) and numerous articles published in journals such as Transcultural Psychiatry and Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Currently, he's studying the dynamics of medical interpreting in community health settings, the different ways diversity impacts health care in the US, Switzerland, and Canada, and the experiences of fatherhood among formerly incarcerated African American men. Prior to joining the faculty at UCSD, Dr. Hannah was a Lecturer in Sociology at Harvard College, a Postdoctoral Associate in the Global Health Program at MIT, and a Lecturer in Sociology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is currently the Academic Coordinator for the MA in Global Health Program at UCSD.