NH Citizens Health Initiative Annual Symposium

Bobby Kelly, MD, MPH is triple-boarded in Family Medicine, Preventive Medicine and Addiction Medicine and has worked in primary care, physician leadership and public health in New Hampshire over the last decade. After completing medical school at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia where he received the Academy of Family Physicians award, he trained at the NH Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency at Concord Hospital. Dr. Kelly completed his Leadership Preventive Medicine fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and received his MPH degree at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. He is currently a physician in the NH Seacoast area where he sees patients as a per-diem hospitalist and consultative physician in LGBTQ Medicine and Addiction Medicine. Additionally, Dr. Kelly serves as Medical Director of Quality Improvement & Innovation on the Population Health team at Core Physicians. He is one of the co-founders of the non-profit organization Articine whose mission it is to integrate the arts and medicine to help inspire empathy in healthcare providers, where he serves as the Clinical Adviser and Director of Education.  In all of his work, he is dedicated to health equity and is passionate about community partnerships and creative collaboration opportunities.  

Ori Harris is an interdisciplinary artist and recent graduate from Boston Conservatory at Berklee with a BFA in Contemporary Theater. While at the conservatory, he received a certification in unarmed stage combat and flourished from his training in Grotowski and voiceover work. Growing up in Chicago, he found a love for performance and movement through gymnastics, working with his dad as a clown, taking circus classes and acting out scenes with his siblings. Currently, Ori is a company member at VLA Dance and HYBRIDMOTION, assists in intimacy and consent direction and enjoys drawing and producing videos in his free time. He has also performed with the Ridiculous Project in Pandemic Plays as well as the Boston Pops Orchestra in Boston Pops in Love.

C. Robin Marcotte is a physical theatre artist and educator. He is an Associate Professor of Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Robin has served as the Executive and Co-Artistic Director of the award-winning Hotel Obligado Physical Theatre Company and was a company member of Mum Puppettheatre, both located in Philadelphia. In his 20 years of working in the professional world, he has toured nationally and internationally, performing, teaching and creating works of theatre. Robin has formal training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction from UMass Medical School and is a certified Standardized Patient Educator. He holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and is a graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre.

Janelle Abbott Staley is a dancer and educator based in southern Maine. She has performed nationally and internationally with dance companies, in theatre and film. In NYC, Janelle performed on Broadway stages, in Elton John’s The Red Piano, in Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Twelfth Night, with dre.dance, Slam, and Terra Firma, among others. Recently, she has worked with Boston-based artists Peter DiMuro, Lorraine Chapman, and Kat Nasti Dance. Janelle began her career with Michigan’s Grand Rapids Ballet and received a BFA in Ballet from the University of Utah. A certified Pilates instructor, she trained celebrity clientele at top studios in NYC and Boston, and has led dance and mind-body master classes around the country, including workshops for Audible and Amazon in Seattle. Janelle is a faculty member of The Dance Annex Studio for the Dance Arts, and serves on the board of Lila Dance Festival, an annual event showcasing New England-based dance artists. 

Amanda Whitworth, M.Ed is a dancer who curates cross-sector collaborative projects and visionary ideas.  She is a co-founder of Articine, an arts and health nonprofit that uses the creative arts to inspire and teach empathetic patient care for healthcare providers. Articine recently received the New England Foundation for the Arts: New Work New England Grant to build their touring work of physical theatre, The Anxiety Piece. She served as the Artist Laureate of NH as elected by the Governor between 2020 - 2022 and was the first dancer to be honored. Amanda is a professor at Plymouth State University serving students across campus in performing arts and the Habits of Mind Experience Program where she was the recipient of the Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award.  She has completed fellowships with New England Foundation for the Arts: Regional Dance Development Initiative - New England NOW and the National Arts Strategies: Creative Communities programs. Amanda was named one of NH’s “40 Under 40” young leaders by the NH Union Leader and awarded a Vermeil Medal from the Academy of Arts, Sciences and Letters in Paris, France. Amanda, continues a rigorous practice of dance making, working as a performer, choreographer and collaborator of dance and physical theatre nationally and internationally.

Betsy Burtis, M.Ed., is the Chief Officer for Integrated Health and Community Engagement at Amoskeag Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center in Manchester, NH. For 30 years, Betsy has been employed in multiple healthcare settings and at each has worked to advance health equity and be an advocate for underserved and underrepresented patients. She has witnessed the evolution of health equity from the early days when it equated to simply providing language interpreters to the current outcomes-driven work that is combined with social justice advocacy to ensure everyone has an equitable opportunity to live healthy lives.

Megan Detweiler BSN, RN, CARN is a mental health and substance use nurse with over 15 years of experience.  She is the former Director of Nursing at the Chittenden Clinic, where she oversaw a team of 25 nurses and a program of nearly 1,000 clients. As a Certified Addiction Registered Nurse (CARN), she is an active member of the International Society on Addiction Nursing (IntNSA) and serves advisory boards for the University of Vermont’s Center of Biomedical Research Excellence and the Center on Rural Addictions.  Her background has primarily focused on outpatient community care, first in central Pennsylvania, Baltimore City, and for the last 10 years in the greater Chittenden County area of Vermont. Ms. Detweiler has developed nursing policy on evidence-based holistic care and harm reduction as part of nursing leadership at the Howard Center’s Chittenden Clinic, the first methadone clinic and largest hub in VT. She is interested in seeing both new and experienced nurses grow in their knowledge of substance use disorders, especially via education that reduces stigma in the healthcare setting and has a particular interest in supporting survivors of sexual violence access and be successful in their treatment and recovery.   She currently is a nurse in an alternative, therapeutic high school setting supporting prevention and early intervention for teens and substances.

Marianne Jackson, MD, MPH is a retired Ob-Gyn who has an MPH with an emphasis on quality who came out of retirement to become the Executive Director of the Gibson Center for Senior Services in North Conway, NH.  With others she helped create the 12 town Mount Washington Valley Age-Friendly Community bringing the AARP model to the region to work on improvements in Housing, Health, Transportation, Outdoor Spaces and Community Connections. She is committed to expanding senior services to engage elders in internet access, training, programming and Telehealth.  She is also passionate about reframing aging to include demonstrations of older adults being a community’s assets rather than liabilities which is a major truth in the county that is 30% over age 65.  She is excited to be a part of this important series. 

Bobby Kelly, MD, MPH is triple-boarded in Family Medicine, Preventive Medicine and Addiction Medicine and has worked in primary care, physician leadership and public health in New Hampshire over the last decade. After completing medical school at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia where he received the Academy of Family Physicians award, he trained at the NH Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency at Concord Hospital. Dr. Kelly completed his Leadership Preventive Medicine fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and received his MPH degree at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. He is currently a physician in the NH Seacoast area where he sees patients as a per-diem hospitalist and consultative physician in LGBTQ Medicine and Addiction Medicine. Additionally, Dr. Kelly serves as Medical Director of Quality Improvement & Innovation on the Population Health team at Core Physicians. In all of his work, he is dedicated to health equity and is passionate about community partnerships and creative collaboration opportunities. 

Marie Ramas, MD, FAAFP is a board-certified family medicine physician with over 13 years of clinical experience in service to both rural and urban historically under-resourced communities. She serves as regional Medical Director for Aledade Inc., and for GateHouse Treatment Center in Nashua.  Dr. Ramas also launched MedRizon Consulting as a conduit to promote, what she calls, the foundational health through wellness and equity.  Whether it is healthy individuals, organizations or systems of care, health begins with embracing these principles.  Her writings have been featured in the American Academy of Family Physicians, as well as the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.  Dr. Ramas has been featured in both mainstream and news syndications, in the US and abroad speaking on the interface of public health on individual experiences. Her vision is to motivate, inspire and transform others by reframing equity within a relational context.