Carrie Sampson-Samuels, BS | Sasha Jones, BSW | Valerie Dobiesz, MD, MPH

Carrie Sampson-Samuels, is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation located in Eastern Oregon. Carrie has an early background in nursing providing patient care in long term and clinical care settings. Carrie then furthered her education in community health and health studies at Portland State University, later advancing her education in healthcare management at Oregon Health and Sciences University while serving in leadership and executive management for a Tribal health organization as the Community Health Director. Carrie has served Tribes from Oregon to Montana and the Treaty 7 Blackfoot Confederacy in Southern Alberta. As the Community Health Aide Project Director for the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board, Carrie has provided leadership, advocacy and project management for expansion for the Behavioral Health Aide and Community Health Aide Program under the umbrella and direction of the Tribal Community Health Provider Project. This work has led to the expansion of Tribal Community Health Providers in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Carrie is responsible for leading partnerships with the education institutions, key Tribal partner sites, contract experts and advisory workgroups. This includes development of education infrastructure, education curriculum, recruitment strategies, tools for integration of providers into tribal health organizations, and working with state partners to develop policy and infrastructure for provider reimbursement. Carrie manages and writes multiple grants that support all aspects of this work and provides technical assistance support to the Portland Area CHAP Certification Board. Carrie is the proud mother of 4 daughters and resides on a small ranch on her Tribal homelands.

Sasha Jones, is a citizen of the Shoshone Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. Sasha has a bachelor’s degree in Social Work from the University of Nevada Reno and is working to obtain her Master’s in Public Health from the University of Nevada Reno. Sasha has many years of experience serving tribal health organizations. Sasha is passionate about being of service to indigenous communities. ​Sasha has three children and a husband of 19 years. In her spare time, she enjoys long walks, being outside, gardening and foraging traditional foods and medicines, practicing traditional crafts, and attending ceremonies.

Valerie Dobiesz, MD, MPH, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, is an emergency physician working clinically at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Tséhootsooí Medical Center in Fort Defiance and serves as the Director of the Front Line Indigenous Partnership (FLIP) Program which is dedicated to improving AIAN health and eliminating existing health disparities. She is a core faculty in the BWH department’s Office of Inclusion Diversity, Equity and Social Justice and a core faculty member of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) where she directs programs on Indigenous Health Disparities and Medical Education in War and Conflict. She is nationally recognized for her emergency medicine courses for medical professionals in the areas of simulation education, women’s health, gender equity, pediatrics, orthopedics, and wilderness and expedition medicine. To address the lack of a sufficient AIAN healthcare workforce she partners with Tribal leaders on developing and supporting multiple pathway programs for Indigenous youth to pursue healthcare careers including the Ohiyesa Premedical Program, Saint Michael Indian School Premedical Society, San Carlos Apache Premedical Summer Program, North American Center of Boston Medicine Ways Pathway Program, and the relaunching of the National Native American Youth Initiative program in collaboration with the Association of American Indian Physicians. She has presented over 200 national and over 100 international lectures on a variety of subspecialties in emergency medicine in Peru, India, Nepal, Tanzania, Antarctica, Cuba, the Philippines, Haiti, Galapagos, Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam, Fiji, New Zealand, Bhutan, Ukraine, and Argentina.