The National Osteoporosis Foundation Appoints New Members to its Board of Trustees

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF) today announced the approval of three new members to its Board of Trustees. The new trustees include: Blair Childs, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs for Premier, Inc.; Michael Cook, Co-Leader, Health Law Practice Group for Liles Parker Attorneys and Counselors at Law and Chris N. Sciamanna, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences and Chief, Division of Population Health Research and Development for Penn State College of Medicine.

"We are thrilled to welcome three respected and committed individuals from the business and medical communities to join our Board of Trustees," said Amy Porter, Executive Director and CEO, National Osteoporosis Foundation. "Their leadership skills and specialized backgrounds will help NOF move toward its goal of reducing the two million broken bones that occur every year due to osteoporosis."

About NOF's New Trustees:

Blair Childs is the primary spokesperson and communications strategist for Premier on key issues impacting healthcare cost and quality. He serves as liaison to the U.S. Congress, White House, healthcare policymakers, and other major bodies involved in healthcare policy and regulation. Based in Washington D.C., Childs leads Premier's Advocacy, Communications, Safety, and Thought Leadership units and serves on the company's Executive Team.

For more than two decades, Childs has been at the center of policy issues in Washington, D.C. and played a leading role on issues impacting medical devices, pharmaceuticals, insurers, and hospitals. Childs has been responsible for organizing and leading public policy advocacy programs at the state and national levels on some of the nation's most visible and complex issues, including tort, Medicare, and healthcare reform. He is a respected and well-recognized expert on health policy and advocacy, has appeared on all major television networks and been quoted in most national publications.

Michael Cook has more than 35 years experience representing a wide variety of healthcare related clients in regulatory, compliance, coverage, reimbursement, policy, strategic planning, government relations, and business matters.  His experience includes managing the healthcare practices of several large national law firms. Cook began his career representing the Federal regulators of the Medicare and Medicaid programs as an attorney with the Office of General Counsel of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. He also has extensive experience representing clients before the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and numerous State agencies.

Cook has a significant familiarity with health reform legislation and its implementation, having advised candidates for public office on its progress and implementation and his clients on the law, its implications and strategic planning with the incentives under the law.  Additionally, Mr. Cook served on the Long Term Care Work Group of the Health Reform Commission for a former Governor of Virginia and on the Health Care Transition Teams for the current and a former Governor of Virginia, and currently serves on the Board that oversees the Virginia Medicaid program. Cook has been included in numerous editions of Who's Who in American Law, Who's Who in the World, and Who's Who in America. In 1996, he was selected by McKnight's Long-Term Care News as one of the 100 most influential people in long-term care. He has also received the highest possible ratings from Martindale-Hubbell and AVVO.

Dr. Chris Sciamanna is a general internist with a Masters in Public Health degree. He has spent the past 20 years developing and testing the impact of interventions, both online and face-to-face, for smoking, physical inactivity, stress reduction and obesity. He has published over 75 peer-reviewed papers, has been the PI of four NIH-funded clinical trials. He is now the PI of a 2,100 person PCORI-funded pragmatic trial to test the impact of Band Together, including strength, aerobic and balance training - on recurrent fragility fractures among seniors. For nine years, he was previously the Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Penn State College of Medicine and is now the Chief of the Division of Population Health Research and Development, whose goal is to develop, test and disseminate highly cost effective and social interventions to improve the small number of key health behaviors that contribute to the deaths of nearly half of US adults each year. He has his own panel of primary care patients, who are the inspiration for the type of programs he develops as well as how he crafts the user experience of his interventions to be something patients truly look forward to participating in.

About the National Osteoporosis Foundation
Established in 1984, the National Osteoporosis Foundation is the nation's leading health organization dedicated to preventing osteoporosis and broken bones, promoting strong bones for life and reducing human suffering through programs of awareness, education, advocacy and research. For more information on the National Osteoporosis Foundation, visit www.nof.org.

Contact: Claire Gill
(703) 647-3025
[email protected]

SOURCE National Osteoporosis Foundation

Related Links

http://www.nof.org