Governance Board members

Dr. Helen Bellanca is a family physician who has been practicing in Oregon since completing her residency at Oregon Health & Science University in 1999. For most of that time, she has worked as a primary care physician in Federally Qualified Health Centers, serving primarily uninsured Oregonians and those on Medicaid. She was honored as Oregon’s Rural Health Practitioner of the Year in 2004. She currently provides clinical care through Northwest Permanente.

After completing a master’s degree in public health and a Robert Wood Johnson Fellowship, Helen became engaged in health policy and advocacy, first with the Oregon Public Health Institute, where she worked on the prevention of childhood obesity. She then was medical director for the Oregon Foundation of Reproductive Health, where she was the co-creator of the One Key Question initiative promoting pregnancy intention screening in primary care.

When the coordinated care organization model was created, she joined Health Share of Oregon and served as its associate medical director. Her focus there was integration of behavioral health services and physical health care, and she collaborated with partners to create Project Nurture, which integrates substance-use treatment and maternity care for pregnant and postpartum women. The success of that program led to statewide expansion as Nurture Oregon.

Helen has valuable experience working with complex systems and alternative payment strategies to help communities get the care they need, and she is committed to working for universal health care with a single-payer strategy.

Term ends: January 2027

Dr. Judy Richardson is a family physician and the academic program director in the Division of Management at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). She has practiced medicine in Oregon for the past 20 years and was active with the implementation of the Columbia Gorge Health Council and Clinical Advisory Panel. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she helped support the Oregon Health Authority as the deputy director for clinics and health centers in its COVID Recovery and Response Unit. She became involved with the economic evaluation of Medicaid through her role as a project manager in the evaluation of the Washington Medicaid Transformation Project at the Center for Health Systems Effectiveness at OHSU. She currently works full time in the Division of Management where she teaches courses in health systems, business strategy, and health economics.

Term ends: January 2025

Amy Fellows is a lifelong Oregonian living in Eugene. Amy has a master’s degree in public health and has spent much of her career working with safety net clinics supporting health information technology efforts. Amy has led We Can Do Better, a small health care civic engagement organization, since 2013. She has hosted civic engagement events focused on health equity and systems change and was instrumental in bringing OpenNotes to Oregon, which has allowed greater transparency for patients. Amy is passionate about disability justice and addressing systemic ableism and racism so all Oregonians can live their best lives.

Term ends: January 2027

Cherryl Ramirez has served as executive director of the Association of Oregon Community Mental Health Programs (AOCMHP) for 12 years. The association represents community mental health programs that manage and provide services for people with mental health and substance-use disorders and community developmental disabilities programs that provide case management services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The association also provides a wide array of trainings in the areas of mental health promotion and clinical services, suicide prevention and post-suicide intervention, and mobile crisis services, and it houses the Alliance to Prevent Suicide. Cherryl advocates for policies and resources to support and improve the community behavioral health and developmental disabilities systems in collaboration with behavioral health associations, human service advocacy organizations, and other system partners.

Cherryl served four years as president of the National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Directors Board and four years as its past president. She also represented the public behavioral health system on the Joint Task Force on Universal Health Care. Before her position with AOCMHP, Cherryl served as the executive director of the Association of Community Mental Health Authorities of Illinois for eight years.

Term ends: January 2028

Michelle Glass is the policy and advocacy coordinator at the Regional Health Equity Coalition of Southern Oregon. She is a community organizer with two decades of community engagement and grassroots policy experience at the local and state levels. Her experience includes working and volunteering with community-based organizations, chairing her local planning commission, serving on statewide rulemaking advisory committees, and participating in Oregon Health Authority advisory committees related to health and health care.

Michelle’s passion for expanding health care access to all Oregonians comes from lived experience with chronic health conditions and health care access barriers, as well as from years of working directly with communities experiencing these barriers. She is proud of the innovation and determination that Oregon is known for and believes our state can and must continue expanding access to affordable, high-quality health care as a key part of achieving health equity for all Oregonians.

Term ends: January 2026

Bruce Goldberg, M.D., is a professor at the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health and a nationally recognized health policy expert.

Over the past four decades, Bruce’s career has spanned leadership roles across a number of health care organizations in the public and private sector. He served two Oregon governors as the director of the Oregon Office for Health Policy and Research and the director of the Oregon Department of Human Services. He was also the founding director of the Oregon Health Authority.

Bruce and his team led Oregon’s nationally recognized health reforms, helping to transform Oregon’s Medicaid system to one based on a model of coordinated care. In addition, he established Oregon’s Healthy Kids program, which provided health coverage for all children and transformed the delivery of public human services to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. He recently chaired the Oregon Legislature’s Joint Task Force on Universal Health Care. His experiences include being the administrator of large complex organizations, a practicing clinician, a teacher/academician, a county health officer, the medical director for a Medicaid managed care organization, and the clinical director for U.S. Public Health Services in Zuni, New Mexico.

Term ends: January 2028

Chunhuei Chi is a professor at the Oregon State University College of Health and affiliated with its Health Management and Policy Program and Global Health Program. He completed his master’s degree in international public health from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston and holds a Doctor of Science in health policy and management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His doctoral research was focused on health system finance, health insurance coverage, and access to health care.

Chunhuei has helped promote universal health care in Oregon and the United States. He testified three times before the Oregon Legislature to support universal health care in the state. He also contributed to establishing Taiwan’s universal health care system and continues to serve as a policy advisor and give workshops in Taiwan. He continues to research the universal health care systems of Chile, South Korea, and Taiwan. He published peer-reviewed papers focused on community ownership and health governance, equity in health, health care, and the financial burden of health care in Bangladesh, Chile, Ecuador, and Taiwan.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chunhuei also developed expertise in international comparative pandemic control policies and was interviewed by U.S. and international media more than 400 times.

Term ends: January 2028

Debra Diaz was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Florida International University. She went on to graduate with a master’s degree in health sciences from The George Washington University Physician Assistant Program in Washington, D.C., in 2014. She worked in the emergency departments at The George Washington University Hospital, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and Washington Veterans Affairs Medical Center. She relocated to California and took a position at Stanford Hospital’s emergency department observation unit before relocating to Portland, Oregon, in 2018. In Portland, she worked at the emergency department at Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital in Northwest Portland before transitioning to its outpatient clinics. She is a member of the faculty at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Physician Assistant Program. She recently accepted a clinical position at OHSU’s Richmond clinic, a primary care clinic and Federally Qualified Health Center in Southeast Portland.

Her clinical experience has highlighted the gaps in our current health care system. She is committed to improving access to care in Oregon.

Term ends: January 2025