Clark Newhall is a physician, attorney, and activist from Salt Lake City. As an emergency physician, he often treats people cast off by the US health care system because they lack uninsurance. As an attorney, he represents people injured by the US health system, who can no longer obtain health care because of their ‘uninsurable’ status’ resulting from malpractice-caused injuries. As an activist, he founded HealthJustice, which widely promoted Medicare For All through TV ads featuring Mike Farrell (BJ Hunicutt in TV M*A*S*H) talking with doctors and nurses. In his spare time, Clark enjoys taunting health uninsurance executives and politicians with the immoral illogic of supporting a profit-driven health care system. He is the author of “Health Care Famine” and other articles explaining the basics of single payer Medicare For All.
James E. Alexander Jr., MD, FACS
Dr. Jim Alexander graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, board certified as a general surgeon by the American Board of Surgery, Board certified by the American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review Physicians (ABQAURP), and is a 1996 graduate of the InterMountain Health Care Advanced Training Program in Health Care Delivery Improvement. He is a Captain (O-6), United States Naval Reserve, Retired.
Dr. Alexander has been a healthcare issues consultant with HCM since January 2002.
He served for 5 years (1997 – 2002) as the Medicare Medical Director for the Texas Medicare program. In this full-time position he was responsible for the following: formulation of Medicare local medical policy for Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico Medicare Part A and Texas Medicare Part B. For more than 3 years prior to the above position Dr. Alexander was Associate Medicare Medical Director and additionally performed Associate Medical Director duties for the commercial health insurance division of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas. Prior to assuming these administrative medicine duties, he practiced clinical medicine and surgery as a general surgeon in the U.S. Navy for 7 years and in a private practice multi-specialty group for over 10 years.
Leonard A. Zwelling, MD, MBA
Dr. Zwelling is a Special Assistant to the Senior Vice President of Business Affairs and a Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. He was previously the Vice President for Research Administration at M. D. Anderson and is currently an active member in PNHP, The Metropolitan Organization, The Harris County Health Alliance, Doctors for Change and a member of the American Leadership Forum’s Med Class 2. He is a board certified internist and medical oncologist and a lab-based investigator. His primary interests in health policy are advancing the single payer system and improving access to life-saving clinical cancer trials.
Robert Funke, MD
East Tennessee, State of Franklin Chapter
Dr. Bob Funke is a family physician at Mountain Region Family Medicine in Kingsport, Tennessee, where he is a founding member and past president of the board of directors. He is also a member of the executive committee at Wellmont Holston Valley Medical Center. Dr. Funke received his medical degree from Tulane University and completed his residency at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem.
Raymond Feierabend, MD, FAAFP
East Tennessee, State of Franklin Chapter
Dr. Feierabend is professor and Director of Graduate Medical Education in the Department of Family Medicine at East Tennessee State University, Quillen College of Medicine. A native of Louisiana, he received his medical degree from Tulane University and completed his residency at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro, North Carolina. He established a rural National Health Service Corps practice in Dungannon, Virginia, before moving to the Quillen College of Medicine in 1982.
In Memoriam: J. I. Hudson Jr., MD
Middle Tennessee Chapter
Dr. Hudson was instrumental in starting the Middle Tennessee chapter of PNHP. His medical career included private practice in pediatrics, associate professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine, Associate Dean for Academic Medicine at the Univ. of Maryland School of Medicine, and associate at the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management. He participated in efforts to establish nation-wide networks for quality assurance for acute hospital care in The Netherlands and Peninsular Malaysia, and consulted on matters of health care quality with the U.S. Health Care Financing Agency, the Select Committee on Aging of U.S. Congress, and USAID-supported primary health care programs in West Africa and the Middle East. Dr. Hudson passed away in 2012.
James S. Powers, MD, AGSF
Middle Tennessee Chapter
Dr. Jim Powers is associate professor of medicine Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he is director of the Vanderbilt-Reynolds Geriatrics Education Center, director of the geriatric medicine residency program, and chief of geriatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Powers received his medical degree from the University of Rochester. He completed residencies at the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve and a fellowship through the US Public Health System.
Joseph A. Weinberg, MD
West Tennessee Chapter
Dr. Joe Weinberg, M.D. is a retired pediatric emergency medicine physician and an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences. He was Director of Emergency Services at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center, Memphis, Tennessee, and President of Pediatric Emergency Specialists, P.C. He has served on many local and state organizations related to emergency services and education. He believes that children should have access to appropriate health care regardless of their parents’ station in life or the whims of their parents’ employer. He is a long-time member of PNHP committed to the need to implement a universal, single payer health care system in the United States. Dr. Weinberg hopes that his experience in consulting on local political campaigns can help West Tennessee PNHP.
David Mirvis, MD
West Tennessee Chapter, TN Chapter Health Policy Adviser
Dr. David Mirvis will serve as the chapter’s health policy advisor. Dr. Mirvis received his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in 1970, and subsequently trained in internal medicine and cardiology at the National Institutes of Health and at the University of Tennessee. He joined the faculty of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in 1975, where he currently is professor emeritus. At UT, he was the founder and director of the University’s Center for Health Services Research.
His other academic appointments include positions as adjunct professor in the Department of Public Health, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Senior Research Fellow in the Methodist LeBonheur Center for Health Economics at the University of Memphis.
Dr. Mirvis’ research interests include health care delivery processes and health policy as well as electrocardiography. He has published over 200 manuscripts and books on these topics.
Peg Hartig, PhD, FNP, APN
West Tennessee Chapter
Dr. Peg Hartig is a professor and chair of the department of primary care and public health. She has been a College of Nursing faculty member since 1987.
Dr. Hartig has practiced as a family nurse practitioner since 1977 in a variety of primary care clinics, an endocrinology specialty clinic, a nursing home and a disease management service. She also provides health care services and monitors the quality of nurse practitioner services provided at the Bobbitt Health Station, the health clinic at Memphis International Airport.
In addition to conducting quality improvement research and teaching related content in the graduate program, Dr. Hartig has written and spoken to many groups about faculty evaluation activities and development of evidence-based practice. She is a member of the Academic Nursing Center Special Interest Group and faculty development committee of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties.
Joe Blythe, MD, FCCP
West Tennessee Chapter
Dr. Joe Blythe received his medical degree from the University of Mississippi and completed his postgraduate training at the University of Tennessee with a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in pulmonary diseases. He practiced in that specialty in Memphis until 2007, then became board-certified in palliative medicine and is currently practicing in that speciality. He is a fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and remains certified in that field. Dr. Blythe became interested in the work of Physicians for a National Health Program by witnessing the inefficiencies and shortcomings of our health care system in his practice.
Roger S. LaBonte
LaBonte, MD, FACP - President, West Tennessee Chapter
Dr. Roger LaBonte practices part time as a hospitalist at Rush Foundation Hospital in Meridian, Mississippi. He holds a volunteer appointment as a clinical associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), where he actively participates in the education of medical students and integrated programs with other medical disciplines.
Dr. LaBonte served 20 years in the US Navy and retired as a Master Chief Petty Officer. While in the Navy, he attended the University of Nebraska, where he received a BS in medical science. He received his medical degree from UTHSC. He completed his internal medicine residency at UTHSC and Baptist Memorial Hospital. Board-certified in internal medicine with a certificate of added qualification in geriatric medicine, he is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a distinguished fellow of the American College of Medical Quality.
