Our Team - Latino Center For Health

Community Member - at large | Former President, Molina Healthcare

Peter Adler, MS, has served as the president of Molina Healthcare of Washington since 2014. As a managed care organization, Molina is the state’s largest Medicaid plan with over 400,000 members and is ranked the top Medicaid plan in the state by the National Committee for Quality Assurance. The healthcare organization serves low-income Medicare recipients and participates in the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, which provides healthcare coverage to many of Washington’s Latino communities. Molina operates primary care clinics and arranges services for low-income individuals and families who are eligible for government-sponsored programs in eleven states, including Washington, Molina’s largest health plan. Prior to joining Molina, Mr. Adler served as chief strategy officer at PeaceHealth, where he played an instrumental role in the organization’s growth and affiliation strategy in the Northwest.

Marcos Martinez

Community Member - at large

Marcos Martinez has worked in nonprofits serving Latinx communities since relocating to Seattle in 2007. Most recently he served as executive director of Casa Latina, which offers practical programs and services to low-income Latino communities and advocates for policy change that affect Latinos directly. Services include day labor dispatch, ESL classes, job skills and safety trainings, and community organizing. Mr. Martinez also served as the executive director of Entre Hermanos, a community-based non-profit that serves the Latino LGBT community of Seattle and King County. The organization was created to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Latino community, and to provide advocacy and support. Mr. Martinez has served on the state of Washington’s HIV Prevention Planning Group; on the steering committee for the National Latino AIDS Action Network; and as co-chair of the University of Washington Center for AIDS Research Community Action Board (CFAR CAB). He also served on the board of the Public Defenders Association, the Minority Executive Directors Coalition, and the Citizens’ Telecommunications Technology Advisory Board. Mr. Martinez first gained interest in working with non-profit organization after working 20 years in community radio in Albuquerque New Mexico.

Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola

Director, UC Davis Center for Reducing Health Disparities Professor, Clinical Internal Medicine

Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, M.D., Ph.D. is an internationally renowned expert on mental health in diverse populations. As on-site principal investigator of the Mexican American Prevalence and Services Survey, the largest mental health study conducted in the United States on Mexican Americans, he identified the most prevalent mental health disorders in communities with Mexican-origin in California’s Central Valley; showed that the rate of disorders increases the longer the individual resides in the United States; and demonstrated that children of immigrants have even greater rates of mental disorders. From this study, he developed a model of service delivery that increased access to mental health services among the Central Valley’s low-income, underserved, rural populations.

Dr. Aguilar-Gaxiola conducts cross-national epidemiologic studies on the patterns and correlates of psychiatric disorders in general population samples. He is the coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Health Organization’s Mental Health Survey and coordinates the work of the National Mental Health Institute surveys in Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica and Portugal. He also develops culturally and linguistically appropriate diagnostic mental health measures and translates mental health research into practical information for consumers and their families, health professionals, service administrators and policy makers.

Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney

Community Member - at large | Retired. Former Representative, WA State House of Representatives, 46th District

Phyllis Gutierrez Kenney was born to migrant farm workers and grew up in the Yakima Valley, where she began her career as a community activist. Ms. Gutierrez Kenney was appointed to the Washington State Legislature where she served for 16 years in the House of Representatives. She chaired and served on multiple committees that addressed issues of housing, education and healthcare access. This led to her appointment by the governor to serve on the Governor’s Aerospace Council and the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education.

Ms. Gutierrez Kenney is a former small business owner and has served on local, state, and national boards and commissions regarding education, economic development, and national and global health. She has always championed higher education efforts by supporting programs and funding streams that provided educational opportunities for minority students. In 2005, Ms. Gutierrez Kenney sponsored a bill that allows branch campuses to offer four-year degrees and another that offers undocumented students in-state tuition for their education. She was instrumental in getting the REAL Hope Act (aka Dream Act), paving the way for Opportunity Grants that provide training for low income students in high demand fields, and the I-BEST Program that helps ESL students learn a trade while learning English, which was nationally highlighted as a model program by President Obama.

Ileana María Ponce-Gonzalez

Clinical Faculty, Department of Health Services, University of Washington

Ileana María Ponce-Gonzalez, MD, MPH is a clinical faculty member in the Department of Health Services, School of Public Health at the University of Washington. Her work has spanned from academia, clinical services, local and state government, and public health administration, where she has extensive experience working with diverse segments of the community in three different countries: Nicaragua, Chile and the United States. Her areas of interest include infectious diseases, community health and public health administration. In Nicaragua, she directed the Infectious Disease Prevention Program, focused on the prevention of STDs, HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, and other tropical illnesses found in rural communities of Tipitapa, Managua. In the U.S., Dr. Ponce-Gonzalez’s work has focused on developing health care programs and outreach initiatives for underserved communities, building collaborative networks, performing needs assessments, and devising technical assistance and training programs for community health workers. Currently, she is the Executive Director and founder of the Community Health Worker Coalition for Migrants and Refugees (CHWCMR), a passionate group of volunteers dedicated to the promotion, empowerment, leadership, continuing education and integration of community health workers into the health care system to improve the quality of life of underserved communities.

Beti Thompson

Member and Associate Program Head, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Professor, Department of Health Services, University of Washington

Beti Thompson, PhD, MA is a full member and Associate Program Head in the Cancer Prevention Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch) and a full professor in the Department of Health Services, School of Public Health at the University of Washington (UW). She earned her Masters and Doctorate at Western Michigan University. Over the past 33 years, she has been Principal Investigator (PI), Co-Principal Investigator (co-PI), or co-Investigator on more than 30 NIH funded grants at the Fred Hutch. Dr. Thompson has a national and international reputation in community and health disparities research. Her current research focus includes disease prevention through lifestyle change, such as dietary practices, physical activity and smoking behavior, as well as encouraging populations to participate in disease screening activities. She is committed to a community-based participatory research approach to interventions, working directly with community members and organizations, in order to provide the most effective solutions to address health issues. She utilizes that strategy whether dealing with an entire community or neighborhood, a worksite as community, or a subpopulation group as a community.

Sandra Benavides-Vaello

Assistant Professor, College of Nursing Washington State University

Sandra Benavides-Vaello, MPAff, PhD, RN, earned her degrees from the University of Texas in Austin, TX. She currently works as an Assistant Professor at Washington State University, College of Nursing in Spokane, WA. Her work focuses on Latinos and under-served communities in the areas of chronic disease prevention and maintenance, quality of life and depression, diabetes, substance use, healthy food access, physical activity, healthcare access, and migrant farmworker health to name a few areas. Her responsibilities include research, instruction and mentorship to current nursing students. As a Latina, she is a lifelong advocate for higher education in Latino communities and healthcare access.

C. H. Hank Balderrama

Clinical Director, Comprehensive Life Services

C. H. Hank Balderrama, MSW, LICSW, co-founded and was the first executive director of Consejo Counseling and Referral Service in Seattle in 1978, which still serves Latino community members with culturally competent direct behavioral health services. He has worked extensively in organizational cultural competence to promote increased access and positive service outcomes for Latino communities. Mr. Balderrama co-chaired a SAMHSA national panel responsible for developing mental health standards of care for Latinos. He advocated for Latinos and other under-served groups as a senior administrator at the Washington State Mental Health Division, from 1989 to 2013. His professional responsibilities and experiences include developing policy; creating training curricula; and providing consultation at division headquarters, state hospitals, regional mental health authorities and mental health centers. His areas of expertise include client services, community engagement, training and education, technical writing, contracting, and program administration. His motivation for being a Latino Center for Health advisory board member includes continued advocacy for the Latino community, especially in the implementation of the national initiative of primary behavioral health care integration.

Carolina Lucero

Community Member - at large | Retired. Former Senior Vice President, Sea Mar Community Health Centers

Carolina Lucero, MSW, has worked with Sea Mar Community Health Centers for the past 33 years. Her service has provided her with expertise in primary care clinics, preventive health services and care coordination, community-based senior care services, and facility service lines for nursing and assisted living personnel. Her responsibilities have spanned from direct service provider, to management, to her current role in senior leadership. Currently, Ms. Lucero has oversight of the long-term care coordination services in several primary care clinics located in diverse communities throughout Western Washington. She is involved in many of Sea Mar’s community outreach projects and has advocated over the last 38 years for underserved communities, specifically in the areas of health and education.

Ms. Lucero has been instrumental in addressing gaps in nursing education and shortages of bilingual and bicultural nurses in Washington State. She is a member of technical advisory committees for a number of institutions of higher education in the area, including the University of Washington, South Seattle Community College, Bellevue College, and sits on the President’s Advisory Council at Lake Washington Institute of Technology.

In Memoriam – Adrian Dominguez

Scientific Director, Urban Indian Health Institute | Member, Seattle Indian Health Board

Adrian Dominguez, MS, hailed from Los Angeles California and had over 25 years of experience in work spanning academic research, the government sector, and non-profit work. He received his Master of Science in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the School of Public Health at the University of California at Los Angeles and he was awarded the Harvard University Health Professionals fellowship and attended Harvard University to study neurology, which introduced him to the field of public health. Over the course of his career, Mr. Dominguez worked with academic institutions and communities on topics that include pediatric lead poisoning in low-income areas, HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, diabetes, breast and cervical cancer, social determinants of health and health equity, and community health assessments and evaluations. He was the Scientific Director for Urban Indian Health Institute, Seattle Indian Health Board and serves as a board member for the Washington State Public Health Association and the University of Washington Latino Center for Health. In 2015 Adrian was inducted into Eastern Washington’s Upsilon Phi Delta Honor Society for his work and contributions to public health in the state of Washington.