Board of Directors
Tom Engle
ChairTom Engle, MN, RN is mostly retired. His past work history includes County Health Director, County Mental Health Director, and Community Liaison Director Oregon Health Division. He was the chair of the organization of county health departments in Oregon for 10 years. He is on the board of the Oregon Public Health Association, Co-Chairs the Oregon Action Future of Nursing group, is on a County health department advisory board and the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health advisory board. He is on the APHA Governing Council. He has been on the board of the Association of Public Health Nurses. He facilitated passing the first local tobacco ordinances in Oregon. He was an early chair of the Oregon Breast and Cervical Cancer Coalition, and was an early scholar of the National Public Health Leadership Institute.
Tammy Davis
Tammy Davis, BS, RN currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama and has been a Registered Nurse for 12 years. She specializes in clinical research- electrophysiology, cardiovascular surgery and stroke. Tammy is currently the Regional Coordinating Center Manager for StrokeNet at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Tammy has a passion for community service. She is a Girl Scout Lifetime Member, a member of the Birmingham Black Nurses Association (BBNA) and a Health Coordinator for her Faith Family. In BBNA she has served as the Continuing Education Coordinator and on the Heart Health Initiative with the American Heart Association. Tammy has also planned and organized two HIV education programs: one for college students and the other for Clergy. As several areas in Alabama are in environmental crisis, she is excited for the training the fellowship will provide so she can serve her community better.
Azita Amiri
Dr. Azita Amiri, PhD, RN is an Associate Professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, College of Nursing, and a Bloomberg Fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Amiri is a nurse scientist with an interest in Public Health and Environmental Justice. She reaches out to environmental justice communities and educates them about potential environmental exposures and ways to mitigate the exposure. Furthermore, she measures indoor air quality in residential and occupational settings and studies the common indoor air exposures, their concentrations and sources, and their impact on pregnancy outcomes, child health, and well-being of the elderly.
Anabell Castro Thompson
Anabell Castro Thompson, MSN, APRN, ANP-C, FAAN, FAANP is a Nurse Practitioner and Senior Vice President of Health Equity at Equality Health.
A Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, Anabell’s leadership exemplifies sustained commitment towards improving healthcare for vulnerable and underserved communities, especially Latino Communities. Determined to bridge health care disparities, she is responsible for building and managing innovative programs and strategic initiatives around Cultural Care Models and the Social Determinants of Health.
Anabell is passionate about principles of environmental justice and climate equity and had the enormous pleasure to participate with Jane Fonda’s Fire Drills Friday’s – Climate and Health Session in December 2019.
Anabell is Immediate Past President of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN) and serves on multiple national boards, including ANHE and ecoAmerica Health Leadership Circle. She has been honored as a distinguished alumni by both her alma maters—the University of Arizona and Arizona State University.
Kathy Curtis
Kathleen Curtis, LPN, Team Leader of the Cumulative Impacts/Mandatory Emission Reductions team at Coming Clean, has 35 years of experience in the environmental health movement and is a widely recognized national leader whose policy expertise is in high demand. Her leadership has guided enactment of several local, state and federal policies regulating toxic chemicals. She is a founding Board member and co-coordinates the Policy and Advocacy Forum of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments. She is Founding Emeritus Executive Director of Clean and Healthy New York. She was Senior Development Consultant at Healthy Building Network, co-coordinator of the JustGreen Partnership. co-leader of the Coming Clean Collaborative’s Policy Workgroup, and Executive Director at Citizens’ Environmental Coalition, where she was an author of Building Green without Going in the Red. Previously, she was Outreach Director at Environmental Planning Lobby (now Environmental Advocates of NY) and worked as a nurse.
Kathy is the recipient of Health Care Without Harm’s 2015 Charlotte Brody Award, Coming Clean’s Outstanding Leadership Award, and the Children’s Environmental Health Champion Award from the NYS Children’s Environmental Health Centers. She is an author of numerous reports, including Is It In Us? Toxic Trespass, Regulatory Failure and Opportunities for Action; and Hazardous Chemicals in Health Care – A Snapshot of Chemicals in Doctors and Nurses. She is on the steering committees of the New York Sustainable Business Council, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, and Rotterdam Conservation Advisory Council.
Elizabeth Schenk
Elizabeth Schenk, PhD, RN, FAAN is the Executive Director of Environmental Stewardship for Providence, a health system with over 50 hospitals and 1000 clinics. She is instrumental in helping advance the organization toward its goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030, through the conservation of resources, education, and research.
Beth is assistant research professor at Washington State University College of Nursing. She led the development of CHANT: Climate and Health Tool, measuring health professionals’ awareness and engagement with climate change and health. CHANT has been translated to several languages and used in over 30 nations. She developed the WE ACT Framework (Waste, Energy/water, Agriculture/food, Chemicals, Transportation) to organize the extensive range of environmental stewardship, while motivating action.
As a board member of the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, she hosts the Nurses for Healthy Environments podcast. She is on the boards of Montana Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate and Climate Smart Missoula.
Beth has been honored with the Charlotte Brody Award, as a distinguished alumnus from the University of Montana, and as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.
LaTiana Ridgell
LaTiana Ridgell, BSN, RN, MPH is a dedicated public health professional with a passion for environmental health issues. With a background in nursing and a degree in public health, she has a strong foundation in both healthcare and policy. Over the past 5 years, she has been actively involved in advocating for environmental health issues. She has participated in various activities, including meeting with state representatives to discuss water quality standards, educating colleagues and clients about the importance of lead testing, testifying before city council in support of a lead-free bill, and providing feedback on a report about lead in school drinking water.
Kelly Jones
Dr. Kelly K Jones, PhD, RN is passionate about ensuring that all neighborhoods are safe places to live, grow, and thrive. She brings to nursing research a background in both engineering and development, and unwavering faith that people, science, and hard work can build incredible things.
Kelly conducts environmental exposure research in the Neighborhood and Health Lab of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health*. She has particular expertise in the measurement of exposure at the individual level, and her work is currently focused on the inequitable effects of climate change across urban spaces.
Kelly is a graduate of the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the Colorado School of Mines. When not engaged in nursing research, she can be found hiking with her dog or cooking delicious meals with her partner.
Dr. Jones is serving in her personal capacity.
Aaron Salinas
Aaron Salinas, DNP, APRN,FNP-BC,PMHNP-BC, NRP is an Assistant Professor and the BSN Program Coordinator at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg Texas. He has been in Academia for 7 years. In addition to his role with the School of Nursing . Dr. Salinas is a Nurse Practitioner with Board Certifications as a Family Nurse Practitioner and a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. He is part of the UT Health Rio Grande Valley Team and sees patients at the University Health Center and does consultation work with a local psychiatrist and a pediatrician in the Rio Grande Valley. He is involved in many organizations at the local, state and national level where he serves on many of the organizations as a board member.