Steering Committee
Our Steering Committee members are dedicated to advancing the Massachusetts Asthma Action Partnership. Their diverse backgrounds enable MAAP to achieve statewide improvement in the environment, education and quality of health care as they relate to asthma.
Linda Barros
Program Manager, Self Help Inc. Healthy Homes Program
Eugene Barros has worked for the Boston Public Health Commission for 19 years. Eugene worked in “Lead Code Enforcement” for 8 years and for the last 11 years has been working for the Asthma/Healthy Homes at the Commission. Under the Healthy Homes Division Eugene has contributed to three federally funded Healthy Homes grants as the Project Inspector, and as the Interim Manager for the Healthy Pest Free Housing Initiative, a multi-million dollar grant funded by Kellogg and EPA to address asthma, health and pesticide reduction in BHA. Currently Eugene is the Division Associate Director, for the Healthy Homes and Community Supports. The Division includes: Asthma, Healthy Homes, Tobacco Control and Injury Prevention. Eugene is also the Project Manager for a three year HUD Healthy Homes Demonstration grant.
The Healthy Homes Initiative is an integrated, comprehensive program that addresses the multiple of safety and health hazards that are found in the home environment. These home-based safety and health hazards include lead poisoning, severe asthma and allergy responses, carbon monoxide poisoning, radon, chemical sensitivities resulting from building product off-gassing, toxic poisoning from outdoor ground or air pollution and electrical, mechanical, and structural hazards due to improper maintenance.
Stacey Chacker
Director, HRiA Environmental Health and Asthma Regional Council
Stacey Chacker serves as the Director of HRiA’s Environmental Health Department, as well as Director of the Asthma Regional Council of New England (ARC). Stacey has over twenty years experience in community development, community organizing, coalition building and leadership development. Prior to joining joining HRiA in 2008, Ms. Chacker led community-driven efforts to address environmental and social justice issues, open space development, and youth organizing in East Boston. Ms. Chacker received a B.A. in Urban Social Geography from Clark University.
ARC is a New England-wide multi-disciplinary coalition comprised of health, housing, and environmental leaders that seeks to tackle the environmental and clinical aspects of pediatric and adult asthma, and a program of HRiA. HRiA - Health Resources in Action is a national non-profit public health and medical research organization in Boston.
John Eastman
Director, Self Help Inc. Environmental Housing
John Eastman is the Director of Environmental Housing Programs and has administered a HUD funded Healthy Homes Program for Self Help, Inc. for the past four years. Mr. Eastman has twenty-five years of experience in the lead hazard reduction field, first as a parent of a lead poisoned child then as a deleading contractor and lead paint inspector. Mr. Eastman worked for six years for the Mass. DPH’s CLPPP as a Master Code Enforcement Inspector. His primary responsibility as Director of Environmental Housing Programs is to coordinate services and direction of all environmental housing programs including Lead Abatement, Healthy Homes Program, NSP, asthma and lead coalitions.
Self Help Inc.’s mission is to determine which barriers exist in the communities that it serves and to ensure that opportunities are available for all residents to obtain health services, education, housing, employment and financial stability. The Healthy Homes Initiative is an integrated, comprehensive program that addresses the multiple of safety and health hazards that are found in the home environment. The Self Help Lead Abatement Program has provided over a million dollars in grants and low interest or deferred loans to property owners in southeastern Massachusetts to abate lead hazards in homes where children under the age of six years reside.
Tolle Graham
Coordinator, MassCOSH Labor and Environment
MassCOSH (Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health) brings together workers and allies to organize and advocate for safe, secure jobs and healthy communities throughout eastern Massachusetts. Through training, technical assistance and building community/labor alliances, we mobilize our members and develops leaders in the movement to end unsafe work conditions.
Katie King
State Director, American Lung Association of New England Health Promotion & Public Policy
Katie King is the Massachusetts Director of Health Promotion and Public Policy for the American Lung Association of New England. In this capacity, she advocates for local, state, and federal policy changes and implements educational campaigns and programs to improve lung health and prevent lung disease. Katie holds a BA in Sociology from Boston University and is a Master’s Degree candidate at the Boston University School of Public Health with a concentration in Health Policy and Management.
The American Lung Association in New England serves Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. Its focus today is on healthy air, tobacco control and all lung disease, including asthma and COPD. Its mission is to save lives by improving lung health and preventing lung disease.
Elise Pechter
Occupational Health Surveillance Program MA Department of Public Health
Elise works at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and has been involved in industrial hygiene, public health and worker protection for twenty years. She has been involved, specifically, in prevention of work-related asthma as part of NIOSH funded state-based surveillance of occupational injuries and illnesses. She has interest in the use of cleaning products and disinfectants as occupational health hazards, and their relation to occupational asthma. Other projects include work-related exposures to chemicals by teens at work, chemical exposures and safety hazards at vocational schools, work-related traumatic fatalities related to carbon monoxide and other chemicals, work-related lead poisoning and other sentinel surveillance projects at the Occupational Health Surveillance Program. She is a member of MassCOSH, SEIU (NAGE) and is active in the APHA Occupational Health and Safety Section.
The overall mission of the Occupational Health Surveillance Program is to promote the health, safety and quality of life of working people in Massachusetts by: collecting, analyzing, interpreting and disseminating information about work-related injuries, illnesses, and hazards in Massachusetts; using this information to target intervention activities, guide the development of prevention programs and policies, and raise public awareness of workplace risks; educating workers, employers, and health care providers to address identified occupational health and safety problems, placing special emphasis on reaching under served worker populations; and integrating occupational health into other ongoing public health activities at the state and local levels.
Margaret Reid
Director, Boston Public Health Commission Division of Healthy Homes and Community Supports
Margaret Reid, RN/ADN, BA is the director of the Division of Healthy Homes and Community Supports at the Boston Public Health Commission. The division includes the Asthma Prevention and Control Program, the Tobacco Prevention and Control Program and the Injury Prevention Program. The efforts of the division in asthma prevention, injury prevention and tobacco control have received national recognition and the division has received extensive public and private funding to implement demonstration projects and engage in policy, systems and environmental change.
The Division of Healthy Homes and Community Supports is committed to protecting the health and well-being of Boston individuals and families, across the lifespan, in homes and communities. The Division focuses on Boston’s most vulnerable populations including children and the elderly, Black and Latino residents, low-income residents and communities and residents of public and affordable housing.
Elaine Rosenburg
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, New England Chapter
AAFA’s New England Chapter serves the six New England states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. Since 1979, it has assisted thousands with asthma and allergies to live safer, healthier lives in many ways, including, helping parents develop school plans for their food allergic children, training childcare providers, nurses and respiratory therapists, publishing a newsletter and other educational materials, and providing telephone information and referral services.
Matthew Sadof
Baystate Health High Street Health Center Pediatrics
Dr. Sadof is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Tuft's University School of Medicine, and a member of the faculty at Baystate High Street Health Center Pediatrics in Springfield, MA. Dr. Sadof chairs the Pioneer Valley Asthma Coalition and has served as Co Chair and Chair of MAAP from 2006- 2009. He has worked with MADPH to publish the CDC funded 2009-2014 Strategic Plan for Asthma in Massachusetts and provider consensus statement on Asthma in 2008. He currently is directing a community health worker intervention for children with asthma at Baystate Children’s Hospital in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MADPH) and its Asthma Disparity Initiative and Boston University School of Medicine. He founded and directs a sustainable Medical Home program for Children with Special Health Care Needs at Baystate Children’s Hospital and chair the Western Massachusetts Medical Home Work Group that represents over 80 community agencies and is an active participant in the EOHHS funded Patient Centered Medical Home Initiative. Dr. Sadof is the director of School Based Health at Baystate Children’s Hospital, oversees three school based health clinics, and is the consultant physician to the school department of the City of Springfield.
Baystate High Street Health Center - Pediatrics is part of Baystate Health's board certified team of pediatricians, many of whom are nationally recognized for their expertise in patient care, clinical research, and medical education. Its physicians serve on the faculty of Tufts University School of Medicine.
Megan Sandel
Medical Director, National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, Boston Medical Center
Dr. Megan Sandel is the National Medical Director with the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership. In 1998, she was the first medical director of the Family Advocacy Program. Dr. Sandel is an assistant professor of Pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine, the Director of Pediatric Healthcare for the Homeless at Boston Medical Center, and a nationally recognized expert on housing and child health. She served as a general academic fellow at Boston Medical Center with a concentration in environmental health in children, earning a Masters of Public Health with a dual concentration in environmental health and epidemiology and biostatistics in 2002.
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership supports the expansion, advancement, and integration of medical-legal partnership by providing technical assistance to partnership sites, facilitating the MLP Network, promoting leadership in law and medicine and coordinating national research and policy activities related to preventive law, health disparities, and the social determinants of health.
Dave Turcotte†
Research Professor, Department of Economics Center for Family, Work, and Community Institute for Housing Sustainability, University of Massachusetts Lowell
David Turcotte is director of the Lowell Healthy Homes Program and a research professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has administered several environmental health, housing and environmental projects, including an EPA funded initiative to protect children from environmental health risks and a previous HUD funded Healthy Homes Demonstration Program grant. David also chairs the Massachusetts Asthma Action Partnership’s Healthy Housing Committee and the City of Lowell’s Green Building Commission. He holds a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in Work Environment Policy/Pollution Prevention/Cleaner Production.
The Lowell Healthy Homes Program is a three-year program funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that examines the connection between housing conditions and childhood asthma. By adopting a coordinated, comprehensive and holistic approach, the Lowell Healthy Homes Program aims to reduce the burden of asthma, improve the quality of life for asthmatic children and their families, and create safer home environments.
Evelin Viera
Coordinator, Greater Lawrence Family Health Center Asthma Program
Evelin Viera is a native of Lawrence, born to Puerto Rican parents, Evelin speaks fluent Spanish and proudly holds firsthand knowledge and experience within the Caribbean Latino culture. Evelin has been a Public Health Nurse for the past 15 years, working in ambulatory care. Evelin began specializing in patient education nine years ago when she became a diabetes educator. In 2006, with Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation grant funds, Evelin began work as the Coordinator of the Asthma Self Management Education (ASME) program out of the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center. Evelin is nationally certified in diabetes and asthma education. Evelin is also trained in Healthy Homes and Tobacco Treatment. Most recently, Evelin facilitated the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center’s Asthma Care Team (A Multidisciplinary Quality Improvement Team). Evelin also serves as Co-Chair of the city of Lawrence Mayor’s Health Task Force- Environmental Working Group. In her spare time, Evelin enjoys spending quality family time with her two young children, both of whom have asthma.
GLFHC makes a difference by offering preventative care, health education, integrated clinical and social services, and affordable quality medical care. Its programs are designed to address the needs in our community and eliminate existing health disparities.
Jean Zotter
Director, Asthma Prevention and Control Program MA Department of Public Health
† Committee Chair