Pamela E. Iron, MEd - Executive Director  (Cherokee/Laguna)

Ms. Iron has thirty years of experience in the Indian health field as a health administrator, health planner and health educator. Her work experience has varied from co-founder and director of the Tulsa Indian Health Care Resource Center, one of the first urban Indian clinics to Health Director of the Cherokee Nation Health Systems and then as a health management consultant working with tribal programs. She is well known to the tribes and to the urban programs and has assisted these entities with strategic planning, program planning and quality assurance, data analysis, health needs assessments, which included focus groups and proposal development and writing.

Contact Ms. Iron at peiron@niwhrc.org

Janie Dibble - Program Coordinator
(Cherokee)

Mrs. Dibble has twenty-two years experience in the Indian health field as a health administrator. As a former Associate Director of Medical Services for a tribe, Janie has work experience in health management and administration for outpatient primary health care facilities, emergency medical services, home health care and public health nursing. She has worked as a health management consultant with tribal programs throughout the Indian Health Service area performing quality assurance studies, management and implementation of contract health services and third party billing. As the Special Projects Coordinator she currently coordinates and moderates focus groups and provides training on the RPMS women’s health software package.

 Contact Mrs. Dibble at janie@niwhrc.org
 

Carol Young - Women's Leadership & Mentoring
(Pawnee/Kiowa)  

Mrs. Young has thirty years of experience in the educational field with a specialty in health education as it pertains to the AI/AN population. She was formerly the director of the American Indian Student Identification Recruitment Education program at Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, an institution recognized for having the highest Indian student enrollment of any four year university in the United States. In this capacity she taught the Indian Health Issues class for college credit. Included in the curriculum she presented HIV/AIDS education to AI/AN students. As the director of the Center for Tribal Studies at NSU she designed and coordinated conferences and programs for the general public as well as for tribes and tribal organization and administered numerous AIDS education programs in this capacity.

Contact Mrs. Young at carol@niwhrc.org

Mr. Cooper has worked as an Internal Revenue agent with IRS, a Financial Consultant with Merrill Lynch, and has held various financial and accounting positions in the corporate world. He received a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Oklahoma State University and a Master’s in Business Administration from University of Central Oklahoma. He is a Certified Public Accountant and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants as well as the Oklahoma Society of Certified Public Accountants. Jerry was a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Army’s Infantry Officer Candidate School and was a platoon leader of a paratrooper unit in Vietnam. He graduated from Ranger School and served over 10 years with a U.S. Army Reserves Green Beret Unit reaching the rank of major. He will be making several Financial Planning presentations such as “Reading Financial Statements”, “Retirement Planning”, “Estate Tax Planning”, “Selecting Investments in Your Retirement Accounts”, and “Personal Budgeting and Risk Management."

Contact Mr. Cooper at jerrylcooper@niwhrc.org
 

Kimberley Chaffin - Project Director
(Cherokee)

Contact Mrs. Chaffin at Kimberley@niwhrc.org.

Donita Oosahwee - Informatics Coordinator
(Three Affiliated/ Cherokee)

Donita Oosahwee  has worked at the National Indian Women's Health Resource Center for four years. Previously she was employed at Cherokee Nation in the Education Department, and in the Johnson O'Malley (JOM) Department. She also worked two years at the Cherokee Nation Housing Authority as a Cultural Specialist. She has worked at Grand View Elementary for three years and Briggs Elementary for one year in their After School programs. Miss Oosahwee also taught Adult Education Classes in Basic Computer Skills in the Briggs Continuing Education Program for one year.  In 2002, she  received her B.A. in English and will complete her M.A. in English in 2006.  She has served as a key staff person to assist the staff in travel arrangements, public relations, etc.  As the Informatics Coordinator  she will be taking on new tasks as well as the website.

Contact Miss Oosahwee at Donita@niwhrc.org.

Kimberly Baker - Program Director
(Cherokee)

Kimberly Baker has been employed in a management capacity since 1999.  She has worked with the Cherokee Nation Summer Internship Program as a summer youth intern in the marketing department where she assisted with preparations for the Cherokee National Holiday.  She also worked in the education department at Cherokee Nation as a teacher’s assistant in adult continuing education classes.  Most recently, she was employed as front office supervisor at Cherokee Casino and Resort in Catoosa, OK.  As program director, she will oversee the creation, implementation and replication of the curriculum and training materials for the “Circle of Positive Choices” grant.  She will also provide technical assistance for the participating communities.

Contact Ms. Baker at Kimberlybaker@niwhrc.org.

Ms. DeRoin is a health consultant with NIWHRC. Her background as a family physician and pubic health educator provides a holistic perspective on health issues for Indian women. She spent eleven years as a primary physician to students at Haskell Indian Nations University. During her family medicine residency in Seattle she worked with the Seattle Indian Health Board, both as a board member and a physician volunteer in the clinic, giving her experience providing health care to Indian people in a variety of settings. Dee Ann has experience in developing and supervising health education programs, data collection and analysis and report writing.

Charlotte Hewitt, BA
(Navajo/Ute)

Ms. Hewitt has 24 years of experience working as a Health Educator for tribal health programs and a Health Educator Administrator for Indian Health Service. During those years she worked as a Health Services Director for an Inter-tribal Council serving seven tribes for 10 years providing grant writing, resource development, planning, and guidance to nursing, substance abuse, mental health, health education, nutrition, environmental health and contract health services. Char served as the Chairperson for the National Indian Women's Steering Committee and has continued as an active participant in women's health issues for the past decade at the national level.

Maisie MacKinnon

Ms. MacKinnon's twenty-two years as a journalist, photographer and graphic designer led her to the fortunate position of managing the northwest bureau (Lacey, Washington) of Indian Country Today, then the nation's only independent Native American newspaper. When the paper sold to the Oneida Nation, she worked as the communications officer at South Puget Intertribal Planning Agency (SPIPA), writing The Intertribal News, as well as developing multi-departmental brochures, annual reports, and posters, and establishing the media outreach data base system. Presently she primarily serves the National Indian Women's Health Resource Center. Her assignments include writing, designing and doing the photography for culturally relevant health brochures, booklets, posters, presentations, magazines and training manuals for the organization's funding agencies. Maisie also works with numerous other organizations in Indian Country.
 

Mim Dixon

Ms. Dixon worked with tribes as a health care administrator, policy analyst, researcher, and facilitator. In 2001, she and Dr. Yvette Roubideaux co-edited Promises to Keep: Public Health Policy for American Indians and Alaska Natives in the 21st Century, published by the American Public Health Association (APHA). She is also the author of two books, including Managed Care in American Indian and Alaska Native Communities (APHA 1998). Her experience in tribal health care management includes serving as Executive Director of the Division of Health Services for the Cherokee Nation, the second largest tribe in the country. She was Health Center Director for Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center, a tribally-operated ambulatory care clinic that serves 12,000 Alaska Native people in Fairbanks and 35 villages in Interior Alaska. As Policy Analyst for the National Indian Health Board (NIHB), she was the principal investigator in a number of studies, including: Indian Health in Nine State Medicaid Managed Care Programs (1998); Tribal Perspectives on Indian Self-Determination and Self-Governance in Health Care Management (1998); Case Studies of Managed Care in Indian Health (1997); Factors Affecting Tribal Choice of Health Care Delivery Systems (1996); and Factors Affecting Consumer Choice of Health Care Providers (1996). She has collaborated with American Indian organizations working on health promotion in the fields of heart disease prevention, breast cancer, domestic violence, mental health, and alcohol and substance abuse. In 2003, she was invited by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to testify about health care financing provisions in the proposed reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. Dr. Dixon earned her BA in economics Washington University (St. Louis, MO) and her MA and Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL).
 

Linda Burhansstipanov
(Cherokee)

Ms. Burhanssitipanov is the Executive Director of Native American Research (NACR) a Native-owned and operated non-profit corporation. She completed both graduate degrees from UCLA (M.S.P.H. in 1972 and Dr.P.H. in 1974) She taught full time at California State University Long Beach for 18 years (promoted to full professor in 1988) and part-time at UCLA for 6 years. She developed and implemented the Native American Cancer Institute (NIH) from 1989 – 1993 (IPA and “Expert positions). Her work focused on Native American cancer research since 1988.