Past Conferences

2018 - Norfolk, VA

Featured Keynote Speaker:

C. Donald Combs, PhD

Donald Combs, Ph.D. serves as Vice President and Dean of the School of Health Professions at EVMS.  His responsibilities include direction of all EVMS health professions programs, academic planning, oversight of medical modeling and simulation, program development and accreditation liaison to Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.

Dr. Combs holds senior faculty appointments with the EVMS School of Health Professions and the Department of Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Engineering at Old Dominion University as well as the University of Paris-Descartes and the State Medical and Pharmaceutical University "Nicolae Testemitsanu," Chisinau, Republic of Moldova.  He has long-standing research interests in health and human services management, health workforce research, health professions regulation, organizational development, strategic planning, and medical modeling and simulation.  These interests are reflected in his professional publications and conference presentations; many consultancies with federal, state, and local agencies, non-profit service organizations and businesses, and $115 million in external funding.

He currently serves on several regional, state, and national boards and task forces that address national and international health policy.  Dr. Combs is active in the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, the Association of Academic Health Centers (AAHC) and in national policy discussions addressing health workforce planning, applied information systems and medical modeling and simulation.

In the international arena, Dr. Combs worked with colleagues at the Naval Postgraduate School to develop and implement the International Health Resource Management executive education program that has served some 20 nations.  He holds degrees received with distinction from South Plains College (A.A.), Texas Tech University (B.A. and M.A.), and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (Ph.D.).   He was also awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Moldova's State Medical and Pharmaceutical University in 2002 for his service in reforming its primary-care health system.

2017 - Arlington, VA

Featured Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Glenn W. Geelhoed

Dr. Glenn W. Geelhoed received his BS and AB cum laude from Calvin College and MD cum laude from the University of Michigan. He completed his surgical internship and residency through Harvard University at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital Medical Center. To assist in developing further volunteer surgical services in underserved areas of the developing world, Dr. Geelhoed completed master’s degrees in International Affairs, Epidemiology, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Anthropology, and a Philosophy degree in Human Sciences.
Dr. Geelhoed still works as a professor of surgery at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington D.C. and is a member of numerous medical, surgical, and international academic societies. He is an avid game hunter and runner. He has completed more than 135 marathons across the globe. Dr. Geelhoed is also a widely-published author accredited with several books and more than 500 published journal articles and chapters in books. He has two sons and five grandchildren.
Dr. Geelhoed has taken medical mission trips to points all over the globe for more than forty years. He and his team members provide health care and operations to some of the most destitute people of the world in some of the most desolate places on the planet. Dr. Geelhoed also provides medical training, both to his team and to representatives of the indigenous population, to guarantee the work done has a sustainable and culturally embedded future. Mission to Heal is an invitation to join him in his work to heal a wounded world.

2016 - New Orleans, LA

Featured Keynote Speaker:

Ruary O'Connel, MD General Surgeon

Dr. O’Connell is board certified in General Surgery and specializes in Esophageal and Gastric Bypass Surgery. He obtained a Medical Undergraduate Degree from University College of Cork/National University of Ireland and then interned at St. Vincent Hospital in Ireland. Relocating to the United States, he then completed a General Surgery Fellowship with the Harvard Medical School at Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

Dr. O’Connell has been a pioneer in many of the weight loss procedures currently being offered in the field of weight loss surgery and has performed nearly 5,000 surgical cases. He has special training in Laparoscopic and Robotic Morbid Obesity Surgery.

Dr. O’Connell is fluent in English and French, and holds an impressive passion for the history and lifestyle of New Orleans. He provided attendees with a crash course in the evolution of New Orleans, aka “The Big Easy, The Crescent City or The City that Time Forgot”. Founded in 1718 by the then French Governor of Louisiana, Bienville, and has been sold three times since on the International Market; first to the Spanish in 1763, then back to the French (1803), and finally to the United States that same year, as part of the immense Louisiana Purchase. This subsequently increased the size of the U.S. by 40%. The city prides itself on its value as a Port, via the Mississippi, its Creole traditions, Cuisine, and its value as a tourist destination. The history of this Grand Old City is full of intrigue, Voodoo and “Skullduggery”, and as such, welcomed everyone and assured them that NOLA is always well worth a visit.

2015 - Lexington, KY

Featured Keynote Speaker:

Scott D. Shapiro, Senior Advisor to Lexington Mayor Jim Gray

On behalf of Lexington, Ky. Mayor Jim Gray, Scott Shapiro manages large, strategic projects that include building a joint Lexington-Louisville economic-development initiative with the Brookings Institution, and making Lexington a gigabit city. Recently Scott led a major reform of Lexington’s long-troubled police and fire pension system. The effort saved the city $116 million, strengthened the fund that serves more than 1,000 retirees, and was called “the most effective reform the country” by a leading actuarial firm.
Graduating as Political Science major at New York University in 1995, Scott comes to the Mayor’s office having just earned a master’s in public administration degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he went, at age 40, to pursue a new career in public service. Prior to that switch Scott was largely in the private sector in New York City, where he built and sold a consulting company and was a senior executive in corporate communications with the publicly traded health care company Health Grades.
Scott is married to a high-risk obstetrician who practices at the University of Kentucky.

2014 - Washington, DC

Featured Keynote Speaker:

L.D. Britt, MD, MPH, FACS

L. D. Britt, MD, MPH, FACS, is a general and acute care surgeon from Norfolk, VA. A Fellow of the American College of Surgeons since 1989, Dr. Britt is the Brickhouse Professor and chairman, department of surgery, Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, VA, a position he has held since 1999. He is the first African-American in the country to have an endowed chair in surgery. Dr. Britt is currently also director of the American Board of Surgery.

Dr. Britt completed both a medical degree and a master’s degree in public health at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, respectively, in 1977. He undertook an internship in the department of surgery at the Washington University School of Medicine’s Barnes Hospital, St. Louis, MO.

Dr. Britt also completed an assistant residency, as well as a research fellowship in the islet transplantation laboratory, at Washington University School of Medicine. He served as a surgery resident at University of Illinois, Chicago, followed by a clinical fellowship in trauma and critical care at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Dr. Britt became a Diplomat of the American Board of Surgery in 1985, and, in 1987, he completed subspecialty certification in surgical critical care.

2013 - Norfolk, Virginia

Featured Keynote Speaker:

Richard V. Homan, MD

Richard V. Homan, MD, is Provost and Dean of Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in Norfolk, Virginia. He joined the school in 2012 after holding several senior leadership positions during 24 years in academic medicine.
Dr. Homan earned his undergraduate degree from Brown University and his medical degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine. He completed residency training and was Chief Resident at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center of Pennsylvania State University in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
In 1989, Dr. Homan began a 16-year affiliation with the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas. He took on a series of responsible roles, managing all operations of the Texas Tech University School of Medicine, the Office of Managed Care, the Office of Correctional Health, the faculty practice plan and served as chief executive and academic officer with an operating budget of over $300 million. Dr. Homan was Dean and Vice President for Clinical Affairs at the time of his departure.
Dr. Homan was recruited to the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia in 2005 as Senior Vice President for Health Affairs and Annenberg Dean. He was appointed President and Annenberg Dean of the College of Medicine in 2010. His oversight included 16 affiliated teaching hospitals and three regional academic campuses in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
A licensed medical physician and surgeon, Dr. Homan is a diplomat of the National Board of Medical Examiners and the American Board of Family Medicine. He also holds certificates of added qualifications in Geriatric Medicine and Sports Medicine.
He and his wife, Rita Homan, have three children.