Course

Chinazo Cunningham, MD, MS is a physician, researcher, and public health professional who brings over 20 years of expertise in substance use treatment to OASAS. Prior to joining OASAS, she served as the Executive Deputy Commissioner of Mental Hygiene at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, was a practicing physician at Montefiore Health System, and a Professor of Medicine, Family and Social Medicine, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Cunningham has more than 20 years' experience in research, care, and program-development that focuses on people who use drugs. She has also partnered with community-based organizations to develop pioneering programs to promote the health of this population. Dr. Cunningham led one of the first clinics in New York City to integrate buprenorphine into primary care. She has trained hundreds of doctors to treat substance use disorders in primary care. She has also led several research studies and published numerous research articles that focus on treating substance use disorders.

Colleen Flanigan, RN, MS currently serves as the Director of the Bureau of Hepatitis Health Care and Epidemiology at the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute. Ms. Flanigan has been involved in hepatitis C-related work for two decades. She directs the hepatitis C programmatic and policy work and the hepatitis B and C surveillance activities for New York State. Ms. Flanigan is also responsible for the implementation and monitoring of the NYS Hepatitis C Elimination Plan.  

Christine Kerr, MD, AAHIVS, is an infectious disease specialist and a virtual clinician with Galileo Health. She is a Chair Emerita of the Guidelines for Treatment of Hepatitis C Virus for the New York State AIDS Institute/Johns Hopkins University and the Community Co-Chair of the New York State Task Force for the Elimination of Hepatitis C Virus. .

Annette Gaudino, consultant and former US and Global Health Policy Co-Director at Treatment Action Group (TAG), played a leading role in the initial drafting of HCV elimination recommendations, which helped catalyze the Governor’s Statewide HCV Elimination Task Force, where she served on the Data and Metrics working group. Annette served on the AIDS Institute Substance User Health Clinical Guidelines Committee, co-founded the Viral Hepatitis Diagnostics Working Group and is a member of the Hepatitis Appropriations Partnership. 

Nadine Kela-Murphy, MPH has been with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene since 2014 and has contributed to public health research and program implementation projects in viral hepatitis elimination, HIV/AIDS prevention, homeless services delivery, and reproductive health promotion. Since 2017, Nadine oversees quality improvement projects to expand clinical capacity of acute-care hospitals, community-based health centers and drug treatment programs for the screening and treatment of people with hepatitis B or C. Prior to joining the Health Department, Nadine worked for 7 years at Forest Laboratories (now Allergan) where she worked as marketing and policy analyst for prescription drugs used for the treatment of depression, hypertension, and Alzheimer’s Disease.

Amanda Clay is the HCV Program Associate at Vocal-NY. For the past three years her role at Vocal includes Hepatitis C testing and care coordination on an innovative model project in partnership with Mount Sinai. Amanda has a love and passion for helping people and has worked in a variety of different healthcare settings.

Benjamin Eckhardt, MD received his MD degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at NYU. After completing residency, he worked in Rwanda for Partners In Health/Inshuti Mu Buzimawith a clinical appointment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He returned to New York to complete his fellowship training in Infectious Diseases at Weill Cornell Medical College while concurrently receiving a MS in Clinical Epidemiology and Health ServicesResearch. He joined the faculty at NYU/Bellevue in 2016 with a clinical focus in HIV and hepatitis management.

Benjamin’s research interest focus is on studying models of care to improve health outcomes of people who inject drugs. His current work includes, evaluating low-threshold HCV treatment models specifically geared toward marginalized people who inject drugs, and understanding the injection risk behaviors associated with severe bacterial infections and improving their long-term clinical (infection and substance use disorder) and injection behavior outcomes.

Samara Touchton, FNP-C, CARN-AP, works as a provider for primary care and Addiction Medicine at REACH Medical. She also works with Cayuga Health Center as a hospitalist and in the development of an Addiction Medicine hospital based consult service. Samara also serves on the Tompkins County Health Department Advisory Board and has been a nursing clinical instructor in the surrounding communities.