ALF and NCSC Plenary Speakers

Friday, May 4, 2012, 11:45 a.m. - 1:15 p.m.

J.R. is an actor, spokesman and retired soldier. In March of 2003, J.R. was deployed to Iraq and less than a month into his deployment, the Humvee he was driving hit a landmine. Three other soldiers with J.R. were ejected from the burning vehicle, but he was trapped inside and suffered severe burns to more than 40 percent of his body. He spent 34 months in recovery and underwent 33 different surgeries.

During his time in recovery, a nurse asked J.R. to speak to a burn patient, who had just seen his body for the first time and had become withdrawn. After an approximate 45-minute visit, the patient opened the curtain letting light in his room and his heart. J.R. then understood the impact he had on this patient and decided to use his experience to help others, visiting with several of the patients in the hospital, sharing his story and listening to theirs.

While J.R.’s experience was certainly life-changing, amazingly he claims this is actually a change for the better. “I discovered it is what is inside a person that matters most and I wouldn’t change anything…absolutely anything!” states J.R. “I do believe everything happens for a reason, and I’m extremely grateful for that day because it led me into this life!”

J.R. Martinez and dance partner Karina Smirnoff are the winners of season 13 of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”

For more than 40 years, Dr. G. Gayle Stephens has been a central figure in the evolution of family medicine as a specialty.

Stephens attended the University of Missouri School of Medicine and graduated from Northwestern University Medical School with distinction in 1952. After completing a rotating internship at Wesley Hospital in Wichita, Kansas, in 1953, Dr. Stephens served two years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps before entering general practice in Wichita in 1955, and soon became part of a national debate over the future of the generalist in American medicine. In 1967 – two years before family practice was approved as the 20th specialty in American medicine – Stephens returned to Wesley and transformed the existing general practice residency into one of the country’s leading family medicine programs.

Stephens went on to become the founding dean of the University of Alabama’s new School of Primary Medical Care at Huntsville, and later chaired the University of Alabama’s Department of Family Practice.

Though he retired from full-time employment in 1988, Stephens remained active as a professor emeritus of family practice, received numerous awards for his work and activism, and wrote two books of essays about medical practice and medical education. His collection of publications is housed at the Center for the History of Family Medicine at the AAFP Foundation Archives.

Friday, May 4, 2012, 4:45 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Harold D. Miller is the Executive Director of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform and the President and CEO of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement. He also serves as Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. Miller is a nationally-recognized expert on healthcare payment and delivery reform, and has given invited testimony to Congress on how to reform healthcare payment. He has authored a number of papers and reports on health care payment and delivery reform, including “From Volume to Value: Better Ways to Pay for Healthcare,” which appeared in the September 2009 issue of Health Affairs, the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform’s reports How to Create Accountable Care Organizations and Transitions to Accountable Care, and the American Medical Association’s report Pathways for Physician Success Under Healthcare Payment and Delivery Reforms. He is currently helping Regional Health Improvement Collaboratives and state governments in a number of states to design and implement payment and delivery system reforms.