ABOUT
Access to healthcare should not be determined by where you live. Improving the health of tribal communities is not a mission statement. It’s personal. Our friends and families live in tribal communities and we are doing it for them, their children, and the next generation
Leadership Team
Justin Iwasaki MD MPH
Chief Executive Officer & Chief Medical Officer
Dr. Justin Iwasaki, MD, MPH has worked in multiple communities around the world developing innovative solutions to complex health system problems. He worked for almost a decade with the Lummi Nation in multiple executive level roles including Executive Medical Director and Director of Health System Design. He has designed and led projects with funding from the CDC, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation among others. His work in international development and the opioid epidemic has been developed into case studies by Harvard Business School and the Stanford Design School (d.school) respectively. He completed a family medicine residency at the University of Washington with concentrations in bioinformatics and global health, where he continues to hold a clinical faculty position. Prior to that he graduated from the University of Utah’s combined MD/MPH program, where he was involved in the start-up and impact investing community. He continues to be a practicing primary care physician in tribal communities, and in his spare time can be found chasing his young children around on their mountain bikes, or training for local adventure races with his superstar wife who is also a physician and former division I athlete.
Megan Ballew PhD
Director of Behavioral Health
Dr. Megan Ballew is an enrolled member of Cherokee Nation. She serves as the Director of Behavioral Health Programs and tele-psychologist for Tribal Health Connections. She has provided direct clinical services for Tribal and urban programs serving American Indian communities for over twenty years. Dr. Ballew previously served as the Director of Clinical Training and Director of Behavioral Health for the Indian Health Care Resource Center of Tulsa, the Director of the True-Blue Neighbors Behavioral Health Clinic at the University of Tulsa, and the Director of Behavioral Health for the Lummi Nation. In her administrative roles she oversaw multidisciplinary mental health and substance use programs, directed projects with funding from HRSA and SAMHSA, and developed training programs to encourage and mentor Tribal students seeking advanced mental health degrees. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Special Education from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and a M.S. and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Oklahoma State University.
Angad Singh MD
Chief Medical Information Officer
Angad Singh, MD is a dual board-certified family physician and clinical informaticist who serves as the Chief Medical Information Officer for Tribal Health Connections and the virtual technology expert for the Virtual Care Implementation ECHO. He has a passion for making technology more accessible and approachable for all, with a strong foundation in telehealth, creating The Telemedicine Toolkit in the early days of the pandemic. He is also the Associate Chief Medical Information Officer for Ambulatory Care and Health Equity at the University of Washington, where he is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine. He holds adjunct appointments in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education. An avid teacher, Dr. Singh is a core faculty member for the UW Clinical Informatics fellowship and is a regular lecturer in the UW School of Medicine. Outside of medicine, Dr. Singh loves photography, particularly capturing everyday moments and scenery with the convenience of his phone camera.
Chief Medical Information Officer
Jessie Whitfield MD MPH
Director of Education Virtual Care Implementation
Jessica Whitfield, MD, MPH, serves as the Director of Education for the Virtual Care Implementation ECHO which launched in 2021. She brings to this role several years of experience as a practicing psychiatrist using telehealth across a variety of settings, from outpatient specialty health to integrated primary care. She also has expertise in implementation science, having graduated from the Integrated Care Training Program Fellowship at the University of Washington, and currently serves as a Psychiatric Consultant coach at the Advancing Integrated Mental Health Solutions (AIMS) Center, a national leader in Collaborative Care implementation. She is an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where, along with Dr Bud Vana, she created a new psychiatry resident rotation at a tribal health center improving psychiatric training tailored to tribal communities. She has published review papers and chapters on Collaborative Care, including remote models, and regularly speaks nationally on telehealth and integrated care topics. She received her medical degree from Saint Louis University School of Medicine and her Masters of Public Health from Columbia University. She completed her residency in General Adult Psychiatry at Brown University.
Brenna Torres
Operations Manager
Ms. Torres is an enrolled Lummi tribal member who brings almost a decade of experience working in tribal government. She has worked in numerous social services sectors including education and health. She also is an experienced fisherwoman working on the family commercial fishing boat. She is actively engaged in furthering her formal education and plans to pursue an MBA.
