At the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center, we have an Expert Work Group (EWG) comprised of national stakeholders that help us identify urgent and emerging issues in rural health and provide feedback on the projects we undertake each year. The goal of the EWG is to provide our center with strategic guidance, input on research questions and project design, connections to rural communities and stakeholders, advice on troubleshooting, feedback on research findings and implications, and support for effective dissemination and policy impact.
Our EWG members are helpful and kind, care about rural communities, and share our passion for equity. Among our staff, collaborators, and EWG members, we value the importance of diverse perspectives across multiple dimensions, including race and ethnicity, age, gender identity and sexual orientation, geography (e.g., Southeast, Plains, Southwest, Mountain West, Midwest, Appalachia, Northeast), and sector (e.g., health care services delivery/administration, policy, clinical care, community, etc.).
EWG Members
Family Physician, Bacani/McKenney Clinic
Dr. Jennifer Bacani McKenney is a practicing family physician who owns and operates an independent practice in Fredonia, a community of approximately 2500 people in southeast Kansas. She attended the University of Kansas School of Medicine and completed her Family Medicine residency at Via Christi in Wichita, Kansas. She provides outpatient, inpatient, emergency department, surgical, and endoscopic services to her community. Previously, she served as the resident member of the American Academy of Family Physicians and Society of Teachers of Family Medicine boards. She was recently elected secretary of the Kansas Academy of Family Physicians. She founded the Fredonia Area Community Foundation and serves as president of the local school board. She is heavily involved in practice-based improvement through the Aledade Kansas ACO. Her future plans are to continue local, state, and national leadership activities as well as focused local public health and community health improvement initiatives.
Director of Ambulatory Services, Plumas District Hospital
Lisette has a passion for rural medicine. She obtained her nursing degree from Chico State University with a rotation in rural nursing over 30 years ago. Lisette has a background in public health nursing serving high risk maternal and newborn patients. Other public health projects involved partnership with Plumas County public school district writing curriculum for a teenage pregnancy prevention program and starting Plumas County’s first interagency lactation coalition
In the last 27 years at Plumas District Hospital she has been actively involved in grant writing and management for a variety of clinical projects that support underserved and disadvantaged populations. A recent project involved adding mobile clinic services to improve outreach of Rural Health Clinic services in Plumas County.
Over her many years at Plumas District Hospital, she has served in multiple capacities, including Chief Nursing Officer and Chief Clinical Officer. Her clinical experience includes inpatient nursing departments, and twenty five years of obstetrical experience in the inpatient and outpatient setting supporting 10 years of Achieving the Recognition for Excellence in OB Award from Beta Healthcare Group for quality and safety. Lisette was a speaker at the international Philips OB conference in 2015 speaking on Obstetrics in a Rural Setting as the first facility to integrate Dragon Dictation with the Philips OB software.
Lisette is currently working as the Director of Ambulatory Services overseeing two Rural Health Clinics and the Dental Clinic. Lisette is actively engaged in the promotion of the Plumas Model, to gain support for legislative change to allow continued access to maternity delivery services in underserved rural areas.
Clinical Director, Chinle Comprehensive Health Care Facility
“I am inspired to be of service, to work with extraordinary people to limit health inequity, and to blunt the impact of centuries of inequities. My work is unambiguously towards a good.”
Christopher “Topher” Jentoft currently serves the Diné as Clinical Director at Chinle Comprehensive Health Care Facility after 10 years serving the White Mountain Apache Tribe at the Whiteriver Indian Hospital. He started as a full-spectrum family physician and later moved to full-time work in the ER. He initiated the local jail clinic and HIV/AIDS Ryan White Clinic. While at Whiteriver, he served as Acting and then Deputy Director of the Emergency Department, Medical Director of the local EMS agency, and the made-up job of “Covid Czar”, which included Coordinating the High-Risk Team during Alpha and Delta COVID-19 surges and Deputy Infection Control Officer during Omicron. His professional interests include blunting morbidity and mortality resulting from man-made inequities in health while working towards their ultimate resolution. His personal interests include reading and writing, listening to and playing music, outdoor misadventures, and spending time with his 10-year twin sons, occasionally communicating with his recalcitrant 15 year-old genius daughter, and lovingly and admiringly supporting his wife, who is, perhaps, the finest rural political organizer in the country.
President & CEO, Stratis Health
Jennifer Lundblad has served as President and CEO of Stratis Health for nearly 20 years. Dr. Lundblad has an extensive background in leadership, organization development, and program management in both non-profit and education settings. Her doctoral dissertation research was Teamwork and Safety Climates in Small Rural Hospitals, and she has published articles in peer reviewed journals on topics related to health quality and organizational change. She has expertise in change management, dissemination of innovation, process and workflow analysis and redesign, rural-specific quality measurement, and organizational culture improvement across the continuum of care. Dr. Lundblad is a member of the national RUPRI (Rural Policy Research Institute) Health Panel, the University of Minnesota’s Rural Health Research Center Expert Workgroup, the NRHA Age-Friendly Interest Group, the Partnership for Quality Measurement Pre-Rulemaking Measure Review (PRMR) Hospital Committee, and serves on various other national and local boards and in committee leadership positions. She has an adjunct assistant professor appointment at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
Chief Operations Officer, National Rural Health Association
Brock joined NRHA in 2008. He has administrative responsibility for all areas of member services, including membership, communications and meetings/exhibitions.
He was a rural hospital administrator for more than 21 years and has served on the board of the National Rural Health Association and the regional policy board of the American Hospital Association. Brock specializes in rural health system development that encompasses population health and the varied payment programs moving rural providers into value-based purchasing models. He serves on the Board of Commissioners of Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) and Board of Directors for the Pennsylvania Rural Health Redesign Center Organization (RHRCO).
Brock is the 2015 recipient of the Calico Quality Leadership Award of the National Rural Health Resource Center, received the American Society of Healthcare Pharmacists (ASHP) Board of Directors’ Award of Honor for 2018 and the NRHA’s President’s Award in 2023.
Brock earned a master of public health degree in health administration from the University of Oklahoma and is a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives.
Vice President of Policy, California Hospital Association
Peggy Broussard Wheeler serves as Vice President of Policy at the California Hospital Association (CHA). She is responsible for developing, advocating and executing public policies, legislation and regulations on behalf of CHA member hospitals at the state and national levels.
Peggy serves as the Issue Manager for Health Equity, Workforce, Housing and patients experiencing Homelessness, Social Determinants of Health, Telehealth, Language Access, Criminal Justice and Hospital-Prison issues. In addition to the topical focus areas listed above, Ms. Wheeler has an extensive background and knowledge of rural healthcare and is the lead staff of the California Critical Access Hospital Network (CCAHN).
Previously, Peggy served as health policy analyst for the California Legislative Rural Caucus where she conducted research and provided analyses of relevant issues that affect individuals, families and communities in rural California.
Peggy holds a master’s of public health degree in program/clinic administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
Director, Office of Community Health Improvement, Mississippi State Department of Health
Dr. White is the director of the Office of Community Health Improvement at the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH), overseeing the bureaus of Healthy Aging, Injury and Violence Prevention, and Community and School Health. Dr. White is the principal investigator for multiple federal grant programs and serves as the state lead for the Age-Friendly Public Health Systems Initiative with Trust for America’s Health. Under Dr. White’s leadership, MSDH achieved exemplar status as the third US-recognized Age-Friendly Public Health System in May 2023. Strategic efforts are underway for the expansion of age- and dementia friendly communities, universities, and health systems to advance the development of Mississippi’s age friendly ecosystem.
Dr. White is a published author and serves on the National Rural Age-Friendly Initiative Interest Group, the National Center to Reframe Aging Advisory Board, and the Global Alzheimer’s Platform Foundation Inclusive Research Initiative Advisory Committee. She formally served on the board of advisors for the UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Center for Brain Health Equity, the NYU BOLD Public Health Center of Excellence on Early Detection of Dementia, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Equity Advisory Group. Dr. White has been selected to participate in the 2024-25 Milbank Memorial Fund’s Emerging Leaders Program. She is a board-certified fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (FACHE) and currently serves as Regent for the state chapter of the ACHE of Mississippi. With more than 20 years of healthcare leadership experience, Dr. White is an equity strategist and change agent with a sincere passion to increase equitable access to care and improve community health outcomes
for underrepresented populations.
Dr. White holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the University of Southern Mississippi, a Master of Health Services Administration from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and a Doctor of Public Health in Health Policy and Management from Jackson State University. In addition, she has completed a two-year NIH-R25 Clinical and Community-Based HIV/AIDS Research Training fellowship at Brown University. Dr. White is an alumnus of the Mississippi Economic Council’s Leadership Mississippi program. She is an adjunct faculty member at Belhaven University in Adult, Graduate, and Online Studies. Dr. White is also a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.