Meet Our 2025 Annual Meeting Presenters

Note: Presenters who have yet to submit their headshots and brief biographies to ACE--should still do so--and we will post here.
We want Annual Meeting attendees to have the most up-to-date information about the incredibly talented professionals who are presenting in Pasadena:

Implementation Science 101                                                                                                                                                            Brian Mittman, PhD, Kaiser Permanente

Qualitative Science                                                                                                                                                                        Title: Integrating Qualitative Approaches into Mixed Methods Research

Corrine Munoz-Plaza, MPH, is a Senior Research Project Manager in the Division of Health Services Research and Implementation Science, Department of Research & Evaluation, Kaiser Permanente Southern California. She also serves as the Qualitative Research Lead, providing consultative services, guidance, and support to research scientists and their study teams throughout the department and leads qualitative training focused on developing staff capacity in qualitative research design and methods. Ms. Munoz-Plaza has over 25-years of experience in program evaluation and implementing qualitative research activities with health departments, academic institutions, and community-based organizations, including conducting interviews/focus groups, coding, and thematic analysis

Jessica Vallejo is a seasoned qualitative researcher with over 20 years of experience designing and leading participatory research and program evaluations. She currently serves as a Senior Research Project Manager at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, where she directs multi-stakeholder clinical and operational studies to advance health equity and improve care delivery. Her expertise lies in qualitative methods and analysis, elevating community voices and ensuring research findings translate into meaningful action. Jessica has led numerous projects integrating academic rigor with real-world application, working closely with diverse populations, clinicians, and community partners to uncover lived experiences and address health disparities. She brings deep knowledge of social determinants of health, implementation science, and the evaluation of community-based programs.

Equity & Inclusion Committee Workshop                                                                                                                                        Title: Critical Thinking, Carcerality, and Public Health: A Framework for Epidemiologic Solidarity 

Dr. Bita Amani is the Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor of the Black Maternal Health Center of Excellence (BMHCE) and the Chair of the Charles R. Drew University Department of Urban Public Health (CDU DUPH). She is also an Associate Professor and currently serves as the Faculty Trustee on CDU’s Board of Trustees. She graduated from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and was a National Institutes of Mental Health HIV/AIDS Postdoctoral Scholar. She has founded and led numerous initiatives, such as the CDU Cuba Health Exchange and the UCLA-CDU COVID-19 Task Force on Racism & Equity. As a social epidemiologist, Dr. Amani’s teaching and research focuses on the intersections between community health, racism, politics, and disasters. With over fifteen years of local and global experience, her work investigates how social disinvestment (allocating fewer resources to a community) and state-sanctioned violence (criminalizing mental health) result in increased morbidity and mortality as well as public health crises. Dr. Amani’s background puts her in a prime position to advise on the training needs of a workforce ready and able to achieve a world without health disparities. To this end, she focuses on developing and strengthening solutions that expand community health infrastructure and increase the workforce committed to robust transformations in our existing health system. As a result, she understands the value of collaboration between community midwives, doulas, birth centers, hospitals, and maternity organizations in resolving the Black maternal health crisis.

Pasadena Health Dept Session                                                                                                                                                  Title: Boots on the Ground/How to Move Forward/Public Health Practice has changed/partnerships

 Dr. Prabhu Gounder is a medical epidemiologist with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health where he has conducted surveillance and outbreak investigations for viral hepatitis, healthcare associated infections, and respiratory diseases including influenza. During the COVID-19 pandemic response, Dr. Gounder led efforts to prevent and control COVID-19 in skilled-nursing facilities and non-case based surveillance activities, including genomic surveillance and wastewater surveillance. Prior to joining LA County in 2017, Dr. Gounder served for 7 years as a medical officer with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was first assigned to the New York City Department of Health and then to CDC’s Arctic Investigations Program in Anchorage, Alaska. His research while in Alaska focused on viral hepatitis, vaccine preventable diseases, and health disparities in Alaska Native people. Dr. Gounder is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and maintains clinical privileges at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.