Tarpon Springs, FL, once known for harboring the nation’s largest sponge-harvesting industry, today boasts a new designation: it may be the first city in the country to declare itself a trauma-informed community.
Lawrence E. Kline is a commissioner for the United States-Mexico Border Health Commission, a binational organization working to optimize health and quality of life along the U.S.-Mexico border. Kline is board-certified in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, critical care medicine and sleep medicine. After serving as director of intensive care and assistant chief of medicine for the U.S. Public Health Service in New York, he joined Scripps Clinic Medical Group in 1978.
Jean M. Ross is the founding executive director of the California Budget Project, a policy organization working to improve public policies affecting economic and social well-being of low- and middle-income Californians. The CBP presents research findings and policy analyses to state and local policymakers in the form of testimony, written reports, and briefing materials.
E. Richard Brown, Ph.D. is the founder and director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and a professor at the UCLA School of Public Health. Professor Brown has studied and written extensively on disadvantaged populations' access to health care. His studies of health insurance coverage, the uninsured and eligibility for public programs have been used by California's governors, legislators and advocates in crafting health insurance legislation and programs.
Christopher Perrone is deputy director of the California HealthCare Foundation's Health Reform and Public Programs Initiative. Previously, he was senior program officer for the foundation's Public Financing and Policy Program, which works to develop solutions to problems in publicly funded health care and safety net programs, including Medi-Cal and Healthy Families. Perrone was the director of the foundation's Medi-Cal Policy Institute, which has now been folded in to the Public Financing and Policy Program.
