| Chair | Fernando Holguin, MD, MPH | Aurora, CO |
| Vice Chair | Neeta Thakur, MD, MPH | San Francisco, CA |
| Committee Member | Raolat M. Abdulai, MD | Waltham, MA |
| Committee Member | Christian Bime, MSc, MD | Tucson, AZ |
| Committee Member | Robyn T. Cohen, MD, MPH | Newton, MA |
| Committee Member | Maureen R. George, PhD, RN | New York, NY |
| Committee Member | Drew Harris, MD | Charlottesville, VA |
| Committee Member | Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, MD | New York, NY |
| Committee Member | Yolanda N. Mageto, MD, MPH | Dallas, TX |
| Committee Member | Loretta G. Que, MD | Durham, NC |
| Committee Member | Kristin A. Riekert, PhD | Baltimore, MD |
| Committee Member | Katherine Rivera-Spoljaric, MD | St Louis, MO |
| Committee Member | William Rodriguez, MD, ATSF | San Juan, PR |
| Committee Member | Sunil Sharma | Cherry Hill, NJ |
| Committee Member | Sunita Sharma, MD | Aurora, CO |
| Committee Member - PAR Representative | Ginger Spitzer | Chicago, IL |
| Committee Member | Adrian Velasquez, MD, MPH | Newport, RI |
| Committee Member | Juan P. Wisnivesky, DrPH, MD | New York, NY |
| Staff | Gary Ewart | Washington, DC |
The Health Equality and Diversity Committee serves as a resource to the ATS Executive Committee and Board of Directors on issues related to health equality and diversity within our membership and leadership. This committee is charged with promoting diversity and inclusion within the organization and with creating a plan for addressing health equality and diversity issues through cross committee collaboration and the ATS at-large.
Benchmarks for 2017-2018:
• Foster diversity of the workforce through encouraging non-majority groups to enter the fields of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine;
• Monitor health equality and diversity initiatives throughout the ATS organization can we be more specific about about what we are going to monitor and who is going to do this: also is this a continuous process?, serve as a resource for committees collaborating on projects related to health equality, promote diversity within ATS membership related task forces, committees, special projects and overall leadership; and periodically report progress of ATS health equality and diversity initiatives to the Executive Committee and Board of Directors;
• Explore methods to advocate for Medicaid expansion and for the maintenance of the Affordable Care Act;
• Publish and encourage publications related to lung health in vulnerable populations;
• Evaluate and improve the new fellowship program to develop ATS leaders in health equality and in advocacy;
• Raise awareness about health equality and diversity issues through ATS publications, the ATS annual meeting, and other approaches.
