Brie Williams, MD, MS, a leader in medical care for older adults in the criminal justice system, will serve as the keynote speaker of the 7th Academic & Health Policy Conference on Correctional Health. With a focus on “Chronic Illness Management Strategies in an Aging Population,” the conference will be held from March 20-21, 2014 at the Hilton Houston North in Texas.
The conference, created by UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division, will be co-hosted in Houston by the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Williams is an associate professor of medicine and associate director of the Program for the Aging Century at the University of California, San Francisco. A clinician-researcher and educator in UCSF’s Division of Geriatrics, Williams collaborates with professionals in the criminal justice, correctional health and legal fields to apply the principles of geriatrics and palliative medicine in transforming the care of older adults in the criminal justice system.
The conference will also feature plenary speaker Ingrid A. Binswanger, MD, MPH, MS, an associate professor of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Binswanger, who conducts research on health and the criminal justice system, has used epidemiologic and qualitative methods to examine the health of prison and jail inmates and the transition from prison to the community. Her research also focuses on developing and testing interventions to prevent the medical complications of drug use, such as overdose.
A product of UMass Medical School’s Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health, the conference provides a forum for emphasizing the importance of connecting academic research and correctional health policy and showcases research and best practices in correctional health settings.
All professionals who work in the areas of criminal justice health are welcome at the conference, which draws an international audience of hundreds of researchers, clinicians, administrators, educators, policy makers and grant funding leaders to network and learn.
The conference is funded in part by a scientific meeting award from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It also sponsored by The Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation
For more information, including how to apply for scholarships and submit papers, visit the conference website.
