As the Executive Director of Urban Health Partnerships, Anamarie Garces’,  prime responsibility is to secure projects for UHP, and craft talented teams to deliver high quality products to the clients, grantors, and community stakeholders. After earning a Master in Public Health degree, she has been instrumental in securing more than 27 million in projects for South Florida. The intersection between health and the built environment is the cornerstone of UHP and the focus of Anamarie’s career. In the past decade, she has held numerous leadership positions on committees with concentrations in public health monitoring and evaluation, traffic safety, injury prevention, crime and violence prevention, health and the built environment, policy development, access to healthy foods, health impact assessments, and regional planning. Immediately prior to this venture, Anamarie spent three years managing, and growing the Safe Routes to School WalkSafe and BikeSafe Programs at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Most recently she  identified  strategies and systems  to integrate health considerations into local decision making through changes in protocols, intervention deliverance, policies, and design guidelines.

Isabel Rovira holds a Masters in Public Health with experience in the public health sector, non-profit sector, and has also worked with governmental agencies. Isabel has experience in managing programs, grant writing and administration, and operations and administration for several organizations. She is a partner of Urban Health Solutions and Director of Operations and Finance for Urban Health Partnerships. Isabel has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, and with other health related organizations in South Florida. Isabel has extensive experience in meeting planning and educational programming. She currently serves as the Vice-President of the Public Health Alumni Association for the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Department of Epidemiology and Public Health.

Edith Patterson has a Masters in Public Administration and over 20 years of experience as a Human Resources Manager for both public and private companies as well as government entities.  In 2004, she received a Senior Human Resources Professional (SPHR) certification, which is the highest attainable in the field.  She has extensive experience in operations management as well as the Human Resources functions, including compliance with Federal, State & Local laws. Ms. Patterson has worked  for Palm Beach County,  The Palm Beach Post, a large architecture, engineering, and planning firm, a mortgage company and a medical practice. She is a member of the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), AARP, and the Sierra Club.

Mirine Dye is a Florida native and holds a Masters in Public Health with over 15 years experience working at the national, state and local level in maternal – child health as a program developer, project coordinator, trainer and infant mortality specialist. Currently , Mirine is the Program Manager for the UHP Transportation 4 Families project. She is currently working with both traditional health agencies and transportation and planning partners to assess health access and improved transportation routes. Mirine’s expertise includes public speaking and lectures, public safety, and vulnerable population health and safety research.  Her experience with both UHS and UHP includes project collaborations which cut across many other fields including school safety programs, community engagement and public transportation initiatives.

With experience working in both the public and private sectors, Patrice Gillespie Smith has been solving complex planning, transportation and public policy issues for more than 15 years. As the Complete Streets program manager for the Broward Complete Streets Initiative, she is currently working with Broward municipalities to implement new guidelines and policies. Prior to moving to Miami she served as the Community Relations Director for the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, where she handled government affairs and planning issues for a 300 member business organization; completed Downtown Next: The Vision for 2020; and launched numerous sustainable initiatives, including, the region’s first bicycle station and a car sharing program for residents and employees.  She also served as Chief of Staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation, where she managed implementation of Mayor Nickel’s aggressive transportation agenda in a 600 employee department with an annual budget of $200 million.  Prior to her time in Seattle, Patrice served as Senior Account Executive for Paul Werth Associates.  Patrice currently resides in Miami with her family.

Lauren Bello has been involved with the Broward Complete Streets Initiative since the spring of 2012. She became a full-time Project Coordinator in January 2013 and is on staff for several of UHP’ initiatives. She holds a Masters in Public Health and has a background in research and surveying as well as health education and promotion. Prior to joining UHP, Lauren worked as a member of a collaborative research team at the Moffitt Cancer Center’s Tobacco Research and Intervention Program conducting psychosocial research. Her non-profit experience includes serving as a health educator in the areas of reproductive andrespiratory health. Her health promotion efforts had an emphasis on food access and physical activity. Lauren’s areas of interest include community program planning and implementation related to the interaction between health and the built environment in order to support an active lifestyle across the lifespan.

Kristin Palbicke holds a Masters in Public Health from New York University with a focus in Community and International Health. She brings five years of diverse experience in community development and public health. Ms. Palbicke served for two years in Community Based Organizational Development in Thailand developing and implementing programs and health promotion initiatives with local hospital and health clinics. She was awarded fourteen grants during her time for development projects including health, green housing, curriculum development, alternative energy and biogas, HIV/AIDS education, and environmental programs. While Ms. Palbicke was in New York, she held a Research Fellowship with the Prevention Research Center in which she contributed to the development of the EL BRONX project creating data instruments, intervention programming, facilitating focus groups, and analyzing data as well as translating. She also collected data for the New York City Department of Health for comparative analysis of their water jets initiative. In 2011, Ms. Palbicke worked as a research associate for an NGO specializing in Road Traffic Incidents in Tanzania where she managed the research team and did data collection, statistical analysis, and informed program design. In 2012 Ms. Palbicke participated in a Global Health in India course that focused on the Jamkhed Comprehensive Rural Health Care model teaching integrative model approaches to healthcare. Ms. Palbicke is most interested in comprehensive community development and health programming.

Ms. Pabon has a Masters in Public Health from Florida International University and a Bachelor’s in Neuroscience from Smith College. Ms. Pabon is currently pursuing a Doctor of Education in Curriculum and Instruction with a Specialization in Learning Technologies at Florida International University. Ms. Pabon has 7 years of experience in instructional design and public health. She is currently an Instructional Design Specialist with Carnival Cruise Lines and was previously with AvMed Health Plans. Her passions are with online education, curriculum design, and health promotion.

Dr. Ahnalee Brincks has a Master’s in Education and a Doctorate in Bio-Behavioral Statistics. Her areas of expertise include applied quantitative methods (statistics), hierarchical linear modeling, and structural equation modeling. She is currently a research analyst in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Coming Soon!

Karla Utting completed her PhD in Sustainability in 2008 and has spent the last four years working as an independent methodology consultant and Program Coordinator with the non-profit sector. During her time in academia, she published peer-review publications of her research findings in internationally recognized Journals and acquired research and analysis skills grounded in qualitative and participatory research methods and impact assessments. In South Florida, she has helped to implement public health and sustainable initiatives and programs at the community level, developed organizational guidelines and tool kit manuals, and is a collaborator of Urban Health Solutions and Urban Health Partnerships. She currently works for Dream in Green, a Miami-based non-profit organization, as a program Coordinator helping elementary and secondary schools implement the Green Schools Challenge Program and develop environmentally friendly practices.

With Master’s degree in Community Planning, Ms. Mishkovsky’s areas of expertise includes sustainability, community development, and healthy neighborhoods. She has worked extensively with local government leaders, developing strategic communications and educational resources. She also has experience in policy research/writing and workshop planning and facilitation. Her specialties include sustainability, smart growth, active living, aging in place, brownfields redevelopment. She is a member of the Consortium for a Healthier Miami Dade: Health and Built Environment Committee, sits on the City of Coral Gables Senior Citizens Advisory Board, and a member of the Smart Growth Network. She is particularly interested in Health Impact Assessment and how it relates to planning and land use issues.

Kim Ogren brings extensive public interest management, planning, and evaluation skills to UHS. Kim has worked at the forefront of the planning field for 20 years on innovative and complex initiatives at the local, state and national levels. She is adept at translating concepts into action and outcomes, designing systems to enhance decision-making, supporting creative policy analysis, and bringing diverse interests together. She has served as a program director for the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities and comprehensive planning manager in the Florida Keys. Kim now works as an independent consultant to public and nonprofit sector clients. She is a member of the Miami-Dade County Planning Advisory Board and serves on the Professional Advisory Council of the University of Florida’s Department and Regional Planning.

Anthony Olivieri, the founder of FHEED (Food for Health, the Environment, Economy and Democracy) has a Masters in Urban & Regional Planning from Florida Atlantic University (2011) with a specialization in community food systems and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Currently, Anthony is working on the Broward County Food Environment Assessment with the Broward Regional Health Planning Council’s (BRHPC) TOUCH Initiative. The Food Environment Assessment consists of a GIS analysis of the County’s diet-related health disparities, as well as a policy analysis of the County’s major planning agencies.

The quality and placement of life resources such as transportation, food destinations, and medical services are not evenly distributed over space, or time. As determinants of health, these spatial-temporal disparities shape community health improvement strategies.  Anthony will help develop geographic representations of data and resources for the Transportation Access throughout the Life Course Initiative. These quantitative maps will provide the Initiative with a “geostrategic” approach for aligning transit, the built environment and health resources.