Staff

Carol Tobias, M.M.H.S., Director

Carol Tobias has directed the Health and Disability Working Group since 1996, including the group’s public policy work, program development, training, and technical assistance activities. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a national multi-site evaluation and support center on expanding access to oral health care for people living with HIV, the Catalyst Center: Financing Care for Children with Special Health Care Needs, and the PEER Center.

Tobias’s interest in disability spans the spectrum of disability and other special health care needs including physical disability, developmental disability, psychiatric disability, HIV and AIDS, substance abuse, children with special health care needs, children in state custody, frail elders, and people with multiple chronic illnesses. She has worked with public policy-makers at the national and state level, managed care organizations, health and social service providers, foundations, and consumer advocacy organizations to promote innovative health care services for people with disabilities and chronic illness. Tobias has a special expertise in health care delivery systems for people with disabilities, including the financing of care, the use of managed care tools to promote service innovation and flexibility, quality measurement, performance evaluation, and consumer involvement in system design and implementation.

Tobias is an Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. She has a Master’s degree in Human Services Management from the Heller School at Brandeis University.

Edi Ablavsky, M.A., Communications Specialist

Edi Ablavsky manages marketing and communications strategies and projects within HDWG. She has over ten years of experience creating and managing web and print communications, most recently at Fidelity Investments and before that at Stratus Technologies. Her areas of expertise include copywriting and editing, web usability best practices and website accessibility for visually and motor-impaired users. Ablavsky holds a B.A. in German and French education and an M.A. in English Language and Linguistics from the University of New Hampshire. She also served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal.

Through Boston University's Metropolitan College, Ablavsky is working towards an M.L.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies, with a focus on communications for nonprofits that address social disparities.

Sharon Coleman, M.P.H., Data Manager and Analyst

As Data Manager and Analyst at the Health and Disability Working Group, Boston University of Public Health, Sharon Coleman brings over three years of experience in epidemiological and public health research. She has served on the Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) Outreach Initiative sponsored by the HIV/AIDS Bureau of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) at The Fenway Institute/Fenway Community Health, Boston, MA. She spearheaded a supplemental project that consisted of giving telephone and mail interviews to HIV patients that had been lost to follow up at Fenway Community Health. Coleman received her Masters in Public Health at the Boston University School of Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She graduated as a Delta Omega Scholar, which is an honorary society that recognizes excellence in practice, research, education and academic achievement in the field of public health.

Coleman also holds a MSPT degree from Boston University and practiced clinical physical therapy for 7 years. She also holds a MPH that stimulated her interest in the determinants and distribution of disease.

Meg Comeau, M.H.A., Project Director

Meg Comeau is the Project Director for the Catalyst Center. She is responsible for direct day-to-day operations and management. Comeau has a master's degree in Healthcare Administration from Simmons College. She has earned several honors, including the Linda Roemer Award for Excellence in Community Service from Simmons College, a Young Investigator Award from the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies for her work with Elaine Meyer, R.N., Ph.D. on parental design preferences in the pediatric intensive care unit and the 2000 David S. Weiner Award for Outstanding Leadership in Child Health from Children's Hospital. Comeau is a member of the Upsilon Phi Delta Honor Society for healthcare management. Prior to joining the Catalyst Center in the summer of 2005, Comeau was a member of the Children's Hospital Boston Center for Families staff for seven years, where she was the coordinator of the Family Initiatives program. In that role, Comeau was responsible for facilitating family input into hospital policy and programming design. Her major projects focused on issues related to pediatric palliative care and bereavement support, health care quality and improving parent/professional communication. She was the parent co-chair of the Family Advisory Committee, chair of the Family Faculty program and a member of the Ethics Advisory Committee. Comeau continues to be a faculty member with the Program to Enhance Relational and Communication Skills (PERCS) at Children's. She is also the chair of the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Consortium for Children with Special Health Care Needs.

Jane Fox, M.P.H., Project Director

Jane Fox, MPH joined the Health and Disability Working group as the Project Director for Evaluation Center on HIV and Oral Health in August of 2007. She is responsible for direct day-to-day operations and management. Fox has a master’s degree in Public Health with a concentration in Health Education from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Fox has 15 years of experience in both HIV prevention and care dating back to the early 1990's when she started her career as the Executive Director of the Nevada AIDS Foundation. Throughout her career she has worked on community, state and regional levels to promote HIV prevention and care services for persons infected with HIV. Prior to joining ECHO, she worked closely with medical and oral health providers and other HIV professionals working in community clinics and organizations to conduct needs assessments and trainings on HIV issues at the Southeast AIDS Education and Training Center at the Emory University School of Medicine.

Sheila Phicil, M.P.H., PEER Center Program Assistant

Sheila Phicil is helping to develop the Train the Trainers toolkit, which will be used to train HIV positive individuals to become peer educators. She holds a B.A. in Biology from Rollins College with a minor in International Business and received a MPH in International Health and Health Policy and Management at BU. Phicil has experience in for-profit work and is the Vice-President of Variety Printing and Sales, Inc, a small business providing promotional products and advertising services. She is certified in non-profit management and served as the founder and executive director of Children In Action, Inc, a faith-based initiative whose mission is to inspire disadvantaged children and youth to explore their talents through exposure and unique opportunities.

Phicil has served as a member of the Haitian Action Committee whose purpose is to connect local community groups and families in Orlando, FL with resources to provide support for incarcerated youth. Phicil has also served as a volunteer with Healing Hands for Haiti, providing translation and clinical support to a rehabilitation project in Port-au-Prince. Her passion is working with disadvantaged youth and improving health systems in developing countries.

Denae Phillips, M.P.H., PEER and Catalyst Center Project Assistant

Denae Phillips helped to develop the PEER Center’s Capacity Building Toolkit, “Building Blocks for Peer Program Success,” which provides organizations/agencies with information and resources for developing or enhancing programs that integrate HIV-positive individuals as peer educators for HIV care and treatment services. She is also assisting with webpage development for the Catalyst Center. She holds a B.S. in Individual Concentration (Public Health and Epidemiology) and received an MPH in Health Policy and Management from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Former public health experience includes internships at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health-Division of Primary Care and Health Access and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-Office on Disability in Washington, D.C. Her current interests are HIV/AIDS and Disability Policy. Her volunteer experience includes working as a project assistant for international donations and volunteer recruitment for the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, and becoming a peer mentor for youth with disabilities for the Boltwood Project. Past awards include the Kathryn F. Furcolo Award for Outstanding Intern, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Class of ’43 ‘Making a Difference’ Scholarship, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Community Scholars Award.

Serena Rajabiun, M.A., M.P.H., Senior Evaluator

Ms. Rajabiun holds Master's Degrees in Public Health and International Relations from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Hygiene and Public Health and School of Advanced International Studies. She is currently a Senior Evaluator on HRSA-funded Center for Outreach Research and Evaluation.

Rajabiun’s areas of expertise include maternal/child health and nutrition and HIV/AIDS. She has over eight years’ experience working on these issues in the United States and other countries. As the Maternal/Child Health Specialist for USAID’s Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project, Rajabiun worked with non-governmental organizations and host country governments in Peru and Bolivia to improve maternal/child health and nutrition programs. She has also assisted the Government of Peru in developing a national nutrition strategy while an employee of Tufts University. In Malawi, she conducted research on nutritional issues for persons living with HIV/AIDS and worked with donors, governments, and community-based organizations to develop policy and program guidelines for nutrition and HIV/AIDS.

Additionally, Rajabiun has worked in programs in Bolivia, El Salvador and Guatemala to promote improved health and nutrition practices, conducting qualitative research and designing and implementing training and education programs for health workers and communities on improved health and nutrition practices among pregnant women and young children under age 5 years. Rajabiun is trained as an HIV counselor, and has previously worked as a women’s health and HIV counselor for Thundermist Health Center in Rhode Island.

Affiliated Staff and Faculty

Sara S. Bachman, Ph.D, Director of Research

Sara S. Bachman is the Director of Research for the Catalyst Center and co-Principal Investigator of the SPNS Innovations in Oral Health Evaluation and Technical Support Center. Bachman is Associate Professor in the Research Department at the Boston University School of Social Work. She has twenty years' experience with health policy research and program evaluation, especially in the area of state health policy for youth and adults with disabilities or complex health and social conditions.

With Dr. Deborah Allen, Bachman directs a project to develop a research infrastructure to investigate disability issues with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health; the project has a special focus on youth transitioning to adulthood. With Ms.Carol Tobias, Bachman previously completed a NIDRR funded study to examine health care access issues for persons with disabilities as well as a Robert Wood Johnson funded grant about state approaches to providing substance abuse treatment services to Medicaid recipients with disabilities who are enrolled in managed care plans.

Bachman is currently Co-Principal Investigator of two program evaluations sponsored by SAMHSA's Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. One is an evaluation of an outreach and case management program for injection drug users at risk for HIV and the second is an evaluation of an outreach and case management program targeting men who have sex with men. Her work includes surveys of consumers with disabilities, surveys of providers who offer health care to people with disabilities, and interviews with state policymakers who establish systems of care for people with disabilities. Previously, Bachman also led an MDPH-funded project to study physician perceptions about care provision and care coordination for young people with disabilities who are in transition.

Bachman has an M.S. in Epidemiology from the University of Massachusetts School of Public Health, and this perspective has informed her approach to understanding disability and public health issues. Bachman received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University's Florence Heller School where she was a Pew Health Policy Fellow. Bachman teaches Research Methods to Master's and Doctoral students at the Boston University School of Social Work. She chairs the School's Program Assessment Committee, and serves on the Boston University Institutional Review Board. She has been nominated by students three times to receive the School's Teaching Excellence Award.