Off the Clock: On to New Adventures!

I met Kerri Lopez while working for the Portland Area Indian Health Service. We were in a Tribal Consultation and Workgroup meeting in Reno, NV, where we had a strategic work session on the Re-Authorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (IHCIA).

From there, I worked with Kerri at NPAIHB during her time as Health Resources Coordinator in the program operations department of the board. As the Tobacco Prevention Project Coordinator and Health Resources Coordinator, Kerri has worked on implementing internal organization policies.

Board internal policies:

• NPAIHB coverage for family members through

• Group medical plans

• Wellness time leave for employees

• Parent/Child bonding time where employees could bring their infant child to the workplace from sixweeks to 6 months of age

• Wrote the grant for NPAIHB’s first staff retreat through the Black United Fund

In addition, during Kerri’s work, she was part of many government-to-government relations with tribes, states, regional and national policy change, development, and implementation that was instrumental in getting funding designated to tribal tobacco programs through Oregon tax Measure 44 and the current tobacco funds for tribes NARA and NPAIHB through measure 108 tax.

Written by Chandra Wilson

About sixteen years ago, CAPT. Thomas Weiser arrived at the Portland Area Indian Health Service on an IHS assignment as the Portland Area’s Medical Epidemiologist. Dr. Weiser, while not new to the Public Health Service (he served as IHS Medical Officer in Whiteriver, Arizona, from 1998-2005), epidemiology (completed the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service from 2005-2007), or even the Northwest (he grew up up up up in Southern, OR), he was new to the northwest Tribes but quickly became a loved member of our NPAIHB family.

Dr. Weiser supported many of our maternal child health, public health, and research efforts led in our NW Tribal Epidemiology Center. Dr. Weiser also served as the Co-Chair of the Portland Area IHS Institutional Review Board for seven years, both protecting northwest Tribal communities but also encouraging and supporting research led by Tribal communities, Tribal research, and those currently serving Tribal communities. Nationally, Dr. Weiser served on the IHS Heroin, Opioids, and Pain Efforts (HOPE) Committee from 2018-2021 and was the IHS ex-officio representative to the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). In addition, it was Dr. Weiser’s qualitative inquiry as to why we were seeing falling vaccination rates among Tribal children that led to early conversations and collaboration with the Executive Director of Boost Oregon Executive Director and led to what is now NPAIHB’s Native Boost Project.

Dr. Weiser also established an Epidemic Intelligence Service Field Site through the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service(EIS), where he mentored four epidemiologists who completed their EIS fellowships serving our Tribal communities.

But as much as it was, Dr. Weiser was valued for sharing his epidemiological expertise; he was also appreciated for the way he shared his kind words, his sense of humor, and the lives of his family with us. His family joined us in the board-wide events in the office and on the road. He took time to get to know us and to know our families. This made him a good fit for the NPAIHB and Indian Country. While he may be retiring this month from IHS, he plans to continue to pursue working on efforts with NW Tribes, the first of which will be teaching an MCH Epidemiology course for the NW NARCH Program this fall.

Written in by Tam Lutz