MERGE Annual Conference

8:30 AM – 9:30 AM MERGE 2025 Welcome Address 

• Presented by Kalli Varaklis, MD, MaineHealth, Designated Institutional Official, Principal Investigator for the MERGE Collaborative 

 

9:30 AM – 10:15 AM Keynote Address: “Building Teams to Care for Communities” 

• Presented by Amy Madden, MD, HealthReach Community Health Centers, Chief Medical Officer 

 

10:15 AM – 10:30 AM Break

 

10:30 AM – 11:15 AM Breakout Session: “Understanding the Impacts of Rural Health Challenges on Vulnerable Populations” 

• Amber Kennedy, Recovery Community Center Manager, INSPIRE Recovery Center, Healthy Acadia
• Lauren Sachs, PROSPER Health Navigator / Recovery Response Coordinator, Healthy Acadia 

• • In this session, you will learn about the challenges of delivering healthcare in a rural setting as it relates to some of the most vulnerable populations; those with Substance Use Disorder, mental health challenges, and those experiencing homelessness. Through the lens of peer navigation and community health work, this session will touch on some of the most significant barriers to care as well as some of the ways healthcare professionals can positively impact the members of these populations. 

 

10:30 AM – 11:15 AM Breakout Session: “Community-Engaged Research” 

• Annie Derthick, PhD, Central Maine Medical Center Family Medicine Residency, Director of Behavioral Health, Associate Program Director 

• Selected Interns from the MERGE Community-Based Research Internship 2024 and 2025 

• • A panel of MERGE Interns will discuss their community-based research projects. Interns spent four weeks living in rural communities across the state learning about a variety of different health conditions from a local, population health perspective directly from the people and agencies engaged in the work. They will share how they used the Maine Shared Community Health Needs Assessment and local health data to generate a research question, how they collaborated with community stakeholders to discover the answer to that question and developed a policy brief for leaders in their communities. Please also take time to visit their posters displayed outside the session room during the lunch break. 

 

11:30 AM – 12:15 PM Joint Session: “Preparing the Future Workforce for Collaborative Practice” 

• Moderator: Dr. Shelley Cohen Konrad, PhD, LCSW, FNAP 

• Panelists: 

• • Dr. Kelley Harmon, MaineGeneral Medical Center 

• • Dr. Jim Jarvis, Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center 

• • Ann Curtis, DNP, RN, Director of Interprofessional Education, Maine College of Health Professions 

• Preparing the future workforce for collaborative practice involves training students with skills for effective team-based practice, interprofessional communication, and patient-centered care. Such preparation includes competencies that ready graduates to be team players across settings and with colleagues from various health professions. This session hosts a panel of clinicians and educators with expertise in establishing, implementing, and assessing interprofessional education in their rural health sites.  

 

1:15 PM – 2:00 PM Plenary Address: “iPACE: Creating Optimal Clinical Learning Environments Through Interprofessional Bedside Rounding” 

• Dr. Sarah Hallen, Assistant DIO, MaineHealth 

• • Dr. Sarah Hallen is the Assistant Designated Institutional Official for Graduate Medical Education at MH MMC. Dr. Hallen is also the Program Director for the Geriatrics Fellowship and a co-director of the Internal Medicine-Geriatric Medicine combined residency and fellowship. She served as the PI of an AMA Reimagining Residency Grant from 2023 – 2025. The aim of this grant was to spread the iPACE, an interprofessional care and educational model, throughout the MH health system. Her research interests draw directly from her clinical experience caring for older adults. She is particularly interested in the Clinical Learning Environment and the intersection between quality improvement, patient safety, clinical care, and interprofessional education. 

 

2:00 PM – 2:15 PM Break  

 

2:15 PM – 3:00 PM Breakout session: “Rural Obstetric Education Consortium: Patients, Curriculum and Faculty Engagement 

• Presenters:
  • Dr. Jeannette Andrews, Co-Chair of the Rural Obstetric Education Committee 

• • Carrie Sullivan, MPH, Research Navigator for Community Engagement & Outreach, NNE-CTR and the Center for Interdisciplinary and Population Health Research (CIPHR) at MHIR

• • Dr. Kalli Varaklis, PI for the Rural Obstetric Education Committee (ROEC) 

• In 2024, HRSA funded the MERGE Collaborative to create a “Rural Obstetric Training Initiative” to help address the rural Obstetric access crisis in Maine.  In this session, leaders of this initiative will describe their process in addressing the needs of rural patients, physicians and learners. Updates will be provided on the development of the rural obstetric curriculum and results of three community engagement studios with rural obstetric patients. 

 

2:15 PM – 3:00 PM Breakout Session: “Standing Up for Our Team Members: Responding to Patient Bias and Discrimination” 

• Dr. Kelly A. Kieffer, Associate Professor of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education, Department of Medicine; Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth 

• • Patients or their family members sometimes express bias against a member of the health care team on the basis of personal identity characteristics such as race or gender. Clinicians may hesitate to respond to patients who make comments that seem discriminatory or rooted in unconscious bias out of concern for creating conflict or causing harm to their relationship with the patient, or because they lack the necessary communication skills. Colleagues and supervisors who witness bias may also be uncertain how best to engage with and support members of the team in navigating these uncomfortable and often distressing situations. This interactive presentation will discuss approaches to communicating with patients to effectively address their use of biased language, and to support learners or other members of the health care team who are the recipients of patient bias.

 

3:00 PM – 3:15 PM Break

 

3:15 PM – 4:00 PM Special Workshop (reservation only): “Artwork and Observation: Improving Understanding and Communication with Deep Looking” 

• Anthony Shostak, Bates College Museum of Art, Education Curator 

• Morgan Hough, Bates College Museum of Art, Assistant Education Curator 

• • In this workshop, we will explore works of art from the collection of the Bates College Museum of Art to make critical analysis based on observable pictorial facts. Participants will gain experience with  suspending judgement to allow thorough, unbiased observation looking past surface-level observation for more subtle clues communicating with colleagues to refine observations and expand interpretation. 
  • This session will start registrations with a cap of 20 participants