LeRoi S. Hicks, MD, MPH, FACP
Hugh R. Sharp, Jr. Chair of Medicine
Physician Leader, Acute Medicine Service Line
Physician Leader, Value Institute
Dr. Hicks graduated from Howard University in 1991 with a Bachelor’s degree in Medical Technology. He completed his Doctor of Medicine degree at the Indiana University School of Medicine in 1995 and earned a Master’s of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2001. After completing his residency and chief residency at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Hicks completed a fellowship in general medicine and faculty development at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he served as a researcher and hospitalist from 1999-2011 and was an Associate Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In 2011, Dr. Hicks became the chief of Hospital Medicine at the University of Massachusetts, where he also served as Associate Professor in Medicine and Qualitative Health Sciences.
In 2014, Dr. Hicks was appointed to serve as Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine and Section Chief of General Internal Medicine at Christiana Care Health System. In January, 2017 Dr. Hicks became the Hugh R. Sharp, Jr. Chair of the Department of Medicine and the physician leader for Christiana’s Acute Medicine Service Line. In July 2018, Dr. Hicks was appointed physician leader of the Christiana Care Health System Value Institute.
Dr. Hicks is the recipient of numerous clinical and research awards and is nationally known for his research on health care disparities. His research has been related to three areas: (1) The effects of patients’ racial and cultural background on the treatment and clinical outcomes of chronic disease; (2) the development and assessment of interventions aimed at improving quality of medical care and the reduction of disparities in care; and (3) community-based participatory research to identify and address healthcare disparities.
Alicia L. Salvatore, DrPH, MPH
Dr. Alicia Salvatore is the Director of Community-Engaged Research for the Christiana Care Health System Value Institute. She has expertise in public health, health promotion, community-engaged research, community-based participatory research and implementation science.
Dr. Salvatore’s research examines and addresses social and environmental determinants of health through mixed methods research and multi-level intervention. She has partnered with a wide range of collaborators and communities in the U.S. and internationally to develop and conduct research and translate findings into policies and programs. Dr. Salvatore’s research ranges from chronic disease prevention to environmental health and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and foundations. Her current research includes randomized controlled trials of interventions to promote healthy environments in child care, studies of teachers’ health and engaged research with Latinas and community health workers to address health disparities.
Dr. Salvatore has a bachelor’s degree from Franklin and Marshall College, a Master in Public Health in Health Behavior from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a Doctor of Public Health degree from the School of Public Health at the University of California Berkeley. She completed a NHLBI-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and was an Instructor at the Stanford School of Medicine and an Associate Professor of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center prior to joining the Value Institute. Dr. Salvatore looks forward to connecting with community organizations and partners to develop participatory research that will address community health priorities and advance health equity in her new state, Delaware.
Diane Chugani, Ph.D.
Dr. Diane Chugani a Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders, with a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, at the University of Delaware. Previously, she was Professor of Pediatrics at Wayne State University, Chief, Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, Founder and Executive Director of the University Pediatricians Autism Center, and Director of the Translational Imaging Laboratory at Children’s Hospital of Michigan.
Dr. Chugani is a neuropharmacologist, and her research over 23 years at Wayne State University focused on brain mechanisms (neuroimaging with PET and MRI) and therapy (drug trials) in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly autism and epilepsy, funded by NINDS and NICHD (including an NIH Autism Center of Excellence Network grant). Four years ago, Dr. Chugani was recruited as a CTR Scholar to Nemours/AI Dupont Hospital for Children with a joint appointment at University of Delaware.
Following her move in September 2018 to a full time faculty position at the University of Delaware, Dr. Chugani has been focusing more in depth on biological mechanisms in language development. She has been collaborating with the faculty at UD interested in language development to explore physiological mechanisms that may underlie different aspects of language learning. She is taking a team approach with colleagues in the Communication Sciences and Disorders program at the University of Delaware and an expert on immune response to chronic stress at UCLA to address the “word gap” problem by exploring potential biological underpinnings of language related to chronic stress in low socioeconomic status, minority families.
Lee Pachter, DO
Lee Pachter is the Director of Community & Clinical Integration at the Nemours/AI duPont Hospital for Children, a professor of pediatrics and population health at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University and a Clinical and Translational Research (CTR) Scholar supported by the ACCEL Program. He is also the director of the Health Policy program at the Thomas Jefferson College of Population Health. Prior to coming to Nemours he was Associate Director of the Children’s Center for Community Research at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.
Lee’s research has focused on the social, behavioral, & cultural determinants of child health & health care. He studied traditional folk therapies for asthma in a mainland Puerto Rican community, and also studied parenting beliefs and practices in different cultural groups. He received a career development award from the NIH to study racism and discrimination in children. This led to the development of the Perceptions of Racism in Children and Youth (PRaCY) questionnaire, a psychometrically valid and reliable instrument to assess experiences of racism in youth. His present work expand this scope of investigation to other psychosocial stressors that influence child health & development, including an expanded approach to studying adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) from a lifecourse and intergenerational perspective.
Lee is the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, a position he was named to after serving as Associate Editor for 18 years. He’s served on the Board of Directors of the Academic Pediatric Association, and is a member of the American Pediatric Society (elected), Society for Pediatric Research (elected), and the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. He created and directed the APA New Century Scholars program—a national mentorship program developed to increase workforce diversity in academic pediatrics, and is also a founder and co-chair of the Philadelphia ACEs Task Force. He is a member of the steering committee of Trauma Matters Delaware, and a consultant to First Lady Tracy Quillen Carney’s Trauma Informed Delaware initiative.
Addie Middleton, DPT, PhD
Addie Middleton combines her clinical experience as a physical therapist with her health services research training to conduct research focused on demonstrating and further improving the value of physical therapy care. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Division of Physical Therapy at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Middleton is a South Carolina Clinical & Translational Research Institute KL2 Scholar (KL2 TR001452 & UL1 TR001450) and a Clinical and Translational Research (CTR) Scholar supported by the Delaware CTR- ACCEL Program.