Leadership

David L. Bell, MD, MPH, Board Chair and Co-Founder
Dr. Bell is the Medical Director at The Family Planning Clinic/The Young Men’s Clinic of New York Presbyterian Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics and of Population and Family Health at Columbia University Medical College. He is an adolescent medicine physician and works primarily with ages 12-24. The Young Men's Clinic is a unique adjunct to the Center's Family Planning Clinic, a school-based clinic program consisting of three middle schools and two high schools in upper Manhattan. Both are direct service components of the Center for Community Health and Education within the Mailman School of Public Health. He provides direct patient care for adolescent and young adult males and females within the Young Men's Clinic and the Family Planning Clinic. He supervises mid-level practitioners at the school sites, as well as residents and students in the Young Men's Clinic. Dr. Bell is currently on the board of directors for the Guttmacher Institute. He has consulted for the federal Office of Family Planning, and assisted with trainings on male health with Federal OFP Regions I, II, IV and VI, as well as with Engender Health (formerly AVSC). He has appeared on MTV, BET, and CBS, promoting male health issues. Dr. Bell completed a three-year adolescent medicine specialty fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

Jason Rafferty, MD, MPH, Treasurer
Dr. Rafferty is a Triple Board resident at Brown University, which is an interdisciplinary program leading to board eligibility in pediatrics, general psychiatry and child/adolescent psychiatry. He was a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar who received his M.D., M.P.H. in Maternal and Child Health, and Ed.M. in Child Development and Psychology from Harvard University. At graduation, he was recognized with the Intellectual Achievement/Faculty Tribute Award for dedication to scholarship that enhances academic life and positively impacts fellow students. He was a Charles A. Dana Scholar who graduated magna cum laude with honors in neuroscience and a concentration in philosophy from Bates College in 2005, and spent a year teaching in a public junior high school before starting graduate work at Harvard. In medical school, he has served in faculty positions as a clinical preceptor and Gross Anatomy tutorial and lab instructor where he was recognized by his students with an "Excellence in Tutoring" award. Pursuing interests in medical ethics, Jason served as vice-chair for the American Medical Association's Student Bioethics and Humanities Committee and is currently a member of the Ethics Committee at Rhode Island Hospital. Jason's interest in health policy has led him to China and Japan to study international health systems, and to numerous leadership courses at the Harvard Kennedy School. During his tenure at Harvard, he was elected to two terms as the Vice-President of Student Advocacy on the Harvard Graduate Council, the University-wide graduate student government. His aspirations are to care for at-risk adolescents and, for the past four years, he has collaborated with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in the design and implementation of a peer leadership intervention to increase adolescent male health literacy and utilization of school-based primary care services.

Thomas Beall, MHSA, Director
Mr. Beall currently serves as a social marketing and health communications consultant. For more than 25 years, he worked for Ogilvy Public Relations where he served as founding Global Managing Director of the agency’s industry-leading social marketing practice. He also co-chaired the agency’s Global Health Practice. He directed many of the agency’s largest public health and public education accounts, working over decades in support of such clients as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as major companies including Merck and Pfizer. His work focused on health promotion and disease prevention across the ages, with a recurring focus on sexual and reproductive health. This included leading Ogilvy’s award-winning support for CDC’s landmark America Responds to AIDS campaign, as well as related work for such clients as the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals and GlaxoSmithKline targeted primarily to adolescents and young adults. He served as Chair of Board of the American Sexual Health Association and was instrumental in the establishment of the National Coalition for Sexual Health, where he now serves as Co-Chair of the Coalition’s communications working group. He also serves as member and chaired the Board of the American Forest Foundation, reflective of his interest in the intersection of public and environmental health. He earned both his B.A. and MHSA. (Health Services Administration) from The George Washington University

Mary A. Ott, MD, MA, Director
Dr. Ott is a Professor of Pediatrics in the IU School of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at IUPUI. Dr. Ott is board certified in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and a Master’s trained pediatric ethicist. She is the fellowship director for Adolescent Medicine, and she provides adolescent health care at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health. Her areas of expertise are adolescent pregnancy and HIV prevention, adolescent ethics, and young men’s health. Her research includes implementation sciences approaches to community-based adolescent pregnancy and violence prevention, adolescent access to contraception and the ethics of research with vulnerable adolescent populations. Her work is funded by the NIH, the Society for Family Planning Research and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She is currently a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders. Dr. Ott consults on adolescent health policies and programs locally, nationally, and internationally. She is a member of the Adolescent Subboard for the American Board of Pediatrics, the executive committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section of Bioethics and the editorial boards for Perspectives in Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Journal of Pediatrics.

Michael C. Reichert, PhD, Director
Dr. Reichert is an applied psychologist who has studied and worked with children in a variety of contexts for over 30 years. His research focuses on developmental resources and on helping schools and organizations overcome historic myths and biases that confound children's possibilities. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives, a research center comprised of independent schools in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania, employing a participatory action research model. He has consulted to and conducted research on behalf of schools, for-profit and non-profit organizations, especially to inform programs with perspectives more grounded in the actual experience of participants, and has written numerous publications related to this work, including "Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Lessons About What Works - and Why," published in 2010. He is also the author of the forthcoming The New Boyhood: The Power of Connections to Build Good Men.

Judith Siegel, MSW, LICSW, Director
Ms. Siegel is a licensed clinical social worker at the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine, Children’s Hospital Boston. She is the Director of Mental Health Services within the division and the Director of Social Work Training for the Boston LEAH (Leadership Education in Adolescent Health) grant. She is a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She has had a longstanding interest in provider/patient communication with young men and has recently produced a training module, "Effective Clinical Interviewing for Adolescent Boys and Young Men," available on Pedicases. She coordinates a health website for adolescent boys www.youngmenshealthsite.org and chairs the Young Men’s Health Initiative in Adolescent Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. Over the years, she has worked with adolescents and adults in a variety of settings, including residential and inpatient programs, community clinics, college counseling centers and private practice.

Niobe Way, Ed.D., Director
Dr. Way is Professor of Applied Psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. She is also the Co-Director of the Center for Research on Culture, Development, and Education at NYU and the past President for the Society for Research on Adolescence. She received her doctorate from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology and was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow in the psychology department at Yale University. Dr. Way's research focuses on the intersections of culture, context and human development, with a particular focus on the social and emotional development of adolescents. She is interested in how schools, families, and peers as well as larger political and economic contexts influence developmental trajectories. Her work also focuses on social identities, including gender and racial/ethnic identities, and the effects of gender and racial/ethnic stereotypes on adjustment and on friendships. Dr. Way is a nationally recognized leader in the field of adolescent development and in the use of mixed methods; she has been studying the social and emotional development of girls and boys for over two decades.

Dr. Way is the author of numerous books and journal articles. Her sole authored books include: Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers (NYU Press, 1998); and Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard University Press, 2011). Her co-edited or co-authored books include: Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities (NYU press, 1996); Adolescent Boys: Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood (NYU Press, 2004) and Growing up Fast: Transitions to Adulthood among Inner City Adolescent Mothers (Erlbaum Press, 2001). The latter co-authored book (with Bonnie Leadbeater) received the Best Book Award from the Society of Research on Adolescence (2002). Her current research projects focus on the influence of families, peers, and schools on the trajectories of social and emotional development among adolescents in New York City and in Nanjing, China. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, The National Science Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, The Spencer Foundation and by numerous other smaller foundations.

Noah Weatherton, DNP-PMHNP, Director
Dr. Weatherton is a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner at Valley Cities Behavioral Health Care in the Seattle metro area. He is a 2018-2019 Fellow in the University of Washington LEAH (Leadership Education in Adolescent Health) program, focusing on understanding the negative mental health effects of "traditional masculinity" on cisgender adolescent boys and young men. His healthcare career began in 2010 as a "street medic," volunteering to provide emergent care on the front lines of political protests and long-term encampments.

Since 2017, Dr. Weatherton has been the Program Operations Specialist for the Doorway Project, at the University of Washington's Harm Reduction Research and Treatment (HaRRT) Center. The Doorway Project is an innovative community-campus research and design project that is works to improve service provision for young people experiencing homelessness in Seattle's University District.

Dr. Weatherton's research interests include creating pathways for communities (parents, teachers, coaches, healthcare providers) to better engage young men on the subject of healthy masculinity development. In 2019, he created Masculinities Hub, an online project aiming to be an evidence-based, centralized resource for developing healthy masculinities via social media engagement and accessible online tools. As a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Dr. Weatherton practices in the community mental health setting, and advocates for more socially just health promotion programs and policies at state, local and federal levels.

Jesus E. Fernandez, Youth Representative Director
Mr. Fernandez is currently an undergraduate student attending City College of New York pursuing a Social Science degree. Alongside his duties as a full-time student and full-time employee in the financial industry, he is currently a volunteer in the emergency department of New York Presbyterian Hospital. The New York Presbyterian Hospital is in first place in the New York City metropolitan area and is ranked sixth in the United States. NYP is among the largest hospitals in New York City and one of the world’s busiest and best hospitals. As a volunteer, his duties include enhancing the personal dimension of genuine concern and compassion to patients and their families. After obtaining his undergraduate degree in Social Science, he intends to continue his education and attend a medical school.

Randy Palacios, Youth Representative Director
Mr. Palacios was born in San Salvador, El Salvador where violence and family separation drove him to migrate as an unaccompanied minor to the United States at age twelve. He is a DACA recipient and a Montgomery College alumni. He uses empathy and compassion as the primary values driving cultural change. He uses the principles of Non-Violent Communication (NVC) and Permission Marketing to connect the disconnected. His work focuses on family reunification of unaccompanied children who have been separated from their families at the border. He teaches NVC and conflict resolution to strengthen family relations. He is an activist leader at United We Dream where he advocates and advises politicians in Washington, DC for family inclusive immigration reforms. He hopes to continue to tell compelling immigrant stories that resonate and make change happen.

Dennis J. Barbour, JD, President and CEO
Mr. Barbour is Co-Founder and President/CEO of The Partnership for Male Youth. He also serves as the editor of the Health Provider Toolkit for Adolescent and Young Adult Males. An attorney with over 30 years' experience in the nonprofit health field, he has served as a CEO and advisor to national and international organizations composed of physicians and other health care providers, patients, researchers, academicians and caregivers in the fields of primary care, dermatology, reproductive health, preventive medicine, HIV/AIDS, addiction, geriatric and end of life care.

Among other appointments, he was the executive director of the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine and legislative counsel to the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American Occupational Medical Association and Meharry Medical College. In recent years he served as the president and CEO of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals and interim CEO of the Alpha 1 Association, the Society for Credentialed Addiction Professionals and Americans for Better Care of the Dying, as well as strategic planning consultant to AIDS Action and the National Peace Foundation. He also served as principal editor of the American Academy of HIV Medicine’s inaugural core curriculum for credentialing of HIV physician specialists. He has been the author of legal briefs and numerous articles on health care issues. His most recent prior appointment was CEO of the Society for Investigative Dermatology.

Barbour attended Georgetown University and the Washington College of Law, where he graduated with a JD. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the Bar of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and the US Supreme Court Bar

Susan J. Wysocki, NP, FAANP, Medical Director
Ms. Wysocki, a women’s health nurse practitioner, is a nationally recognized figure in the field of reproductive health. She served as the first President and CEO of the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health (NPWH) for 25 years. She is the women’s health columnist for the Journal for Nurse Practitioners. She was the Editor in Chief of Women’s Health Care: A Practical Journal for Nurse Practitioners. She also serves on the editorial boards of American Nurse and Contraceptive Technology Update. She has authored numerous articles about issues in women’s health and has been a video blogger for Web MD. Among other awards, in 1999, Ms. Wysocki was selected by the Nurse Practitioner Journal for a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2000, she was chosen as a charter Fellow of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. She has served as the chair of the National Alliance of Nurse Practitioners and was the founding President of the American College of Nurse Practitioners (ACNP). In 2003, she was presented ACNP’s Sharp Cutting Edge Award for her leadership and an award from the Nurse Practitioner Journal for political activism. In 2005, she was awarded the Alan Guttmacher Lectureship by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.