Our Team

Charles E. Allen III, MSPH
Board Director

Charles Allen is President of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association (HCNA). Founded in 1981, the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association is a neighborhood organization in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, whose mission is to improve the living conditions and serve the needs of its residents, preserve cultural and architectural heritage, serve as a clearinghouse for information, and actively represent the interests of the neighborhood with city, state and federal agencies, private businesses, community organizations, and individuals, for the purpose of improving the community. As HCNA President, Mr. Allen has helped to spearhead multiple restoration and recovery efforts in the Holy Cross/Lower Ninth ward community. Mr. Allen has been an active REACH NOLA partner since its inception in April 2006. Mr. Allen co-leads the Sustainability Workshop Project and sits on the Health and Resilience Project Council.

Katrina Badger
Intern, MSW/MPH

Katrina Badger is an intern with REACH NOLA and an MSW/MPH student at Tulane University. Ms. Badger has been working with the Latino immigrant community, providing Spanish-English medical interpretation for the past several years. Ms. Badger spent a year in Thailand doing research with the HIV positive lay health workers. She brings her experience in these two areas to REACH NOLA, as she hopes to improve healthcare access and community organization among the Latino community in New Orleans.

Brittany Butler
Director of Partnership Initiatives

Brittany Butler graduated from Yale University with a BA in Psychology in 2004. She has been involved in Community Based Participatory Research since then, and has been active in REACH NOLA since April 2007. Prior to relocating to New Orleans, Ms. Butler worked with communities in Los Angeles on health programs to increase quality of care, and decrease stigma around mental health. She is currently the Director of Partnership Initiatives for REACH NOLA, Program Manager of the Health and Resilience Project, and Project Council Member for the Video Voice Project. She is also employed by RAND Health as a Research Assistant.

Larry Campbell
Board Director

Larry Campbell is a minister of Israelite Baptist Church in the Central City community. Founded in 1945, Israelite Baptist Church of Central City New Orleans has generated a wealth of resources and initiatives aimed at improving the quality of life for residents in the Central City community including after-school tutoring, computer literacy, mentoring, counseling, recreational activities for children, health classes, feeding the hungry, health fairs, referrals to other agencies and outreach programs. Through his ministry at Israelite Baptist as well as a strong personal commitment to seeing positive change in his neighborhood, Reverend Campbell has forged strong, lasting partnerships that honor the diverse perspectives of Central City residents and strive to meet community needs. Reverend Campbell has been an active REACH NOLA partner since its inception in April 2006. Currently, he is a Board Director and co-leads the Health and Resilience and New Orleans VideoVoice Projects.

Shawna Herbst, GSW, MPH
Project Coordinator of Health and Resilience Project
Co-lead of New Orleans VideoVoice Project

Shawna Herbst received a dual master's degree in social work and public health from Tulane University in 2006. Ms. Herbst's social work internship focused on disaster recovery efforts with the American Red Cross. Prior to graduate school, Ms. Herbst taught English as a second language to adult immigrants in California and worked as a high school teacher in Cape Verde, West Africa with the Peace Corps. Currently, Ms. Herbst is a Social Worker at Tulane Community Health Center at Covenant House, a grassroots community health clinic dedicated to improving the health of New Orleans residents by providing continuous high-quality, holistic, accessible, community-centric care. Ms. Herbst served as a REACH NOLA Board Director until September 2008. She is the Project Coordinator for the Health and Resilience Project and leads the New Orleans VideoVoice Project.

Paul Koegel, PhD
Board Director

Paul Koegel received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California in Los Angeles. As an Associate Director of RAND Health, he is a nationally recognized leader in research on homelessness and mental illness. His research examines how marginal populations adapt to contemporary urban settings and how the systems of care mandated to help them either facilitate or hinder that adaptation. He co-directed the NIMH-funded Course of Homelessness Study, a large prospective examination of homelessness among mentally ill and non-mentally ill homeless adults. More recently, he has focused on participatory approaches to research that promote collaboration between researchers and community partners to solve community problems. He has worked closely with Healthy African American Families on the Witness for Wellness initiative, a South Los Angeles participatory research effort that is mobilizing community members to implement quality improvement strategies targeting care for depression and diabetes.

Diana Meyers, RN
Board Director

Diana Meyers, is Community Wellness Director of St. Anna's Medical Mission (SAMM), a healing endeavor of St. Anna's Episcopal Church of New Orleans. In November 2005, several months after Hurricane Katrina and levee failures caused massive flooding in New Orleans, St. Anna's Episcopal Church purchased an RV to operate as a mobile medical unit. The goal of the medical unit is to provide free physical, behavioral, and preventive services directly to poor and working class people, who are recovering from the disaster in Greater New Orleans. St. Anna's Episcopal Church Medical Mission began protocol design, wellness screenings and partnership building in January 2006. By the summer of 2006 the St. Anna Mobile Medical Unit began serving neighborhoods throughout Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard parishes and by the end of 2006 had documented 1635 client visits. Mrs. Meyers has contributed thousands of hours to the oversight, coordination, management, and direction of all aspects of St. Anna's Medical Mission. Mrs. Meyers has been an active REACH NOLA partner since its inception in April of 2006 and is a Board Director.

Antor O. Ndep MPH, DrPH (c), CHES
Board Director

Antor O. Ndep, is Executive Director of the Common Ground Health Clinic (CGHC), a free Primary Care Clinic located in Algiers. The Common Ground Health Clinic started on September 9th, 2005 just days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. The clinic was set up in a mosque (Masjid Bilal) as a first aid station but with the arrival of doctors, nurses, herbalists, massage therapists, and community organizers, it became a full functioning clinic operating day and night, doing house calls, and providing services to whomever walked through its doors. Common Ground Health Clinc's mission is to provide free quality health care for the greater New Orleans community, and develop and provide programs to address community health care needs through collaborative partnerships. She oversees staff and volunteers and works collaboratively to promote sound working relationships, clinical services, outreach programming, cooperative arrangements with other health care entities, funding sources, community groups and grassroots organizations. Ms. Ndep has worked with REACH NOLA since September 2006 and is a Board Director.

Benjamin Springgate MD, MPH
Board Director

Ben Springgate is a founder of REACH NOLA; Clinical Instructor at Tulane School of Medicine; Adjunct Scientist at RAND Health; and Medical Director of the St. Anna Medical Mission. Dr. Springgate has been active with REACH NOLA since its inception in April of 2006. He co-leads the Health and Resilience Project, and co-leads the Mental Health Infrastructure and Training Program.

Ken Wells MD, MPH
Board Director

Ken Wells is Professor-in-Residence of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA Semel Institute & Resnick Hospital and of Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health, and a Senior Scientist at RAND. He is a psychiatrist and health services researcher. Dr. Wells is the Principal Investigator of the UCLA/RAND Center for Research on Quality in Managed Care as well as Community Partners in Care, a community-partnered initiative to improve depression care in the community and agencies that serve populations in Hollywood and South Los Angeles. Both are funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Wells directs the UCLA-Semel Institute Health Services Research Center, which focuses on improving quality of care for mental health disorders across the lifespan. He also is a Co-Director of the UCLA Clinical Scholars Program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Wells has been actively involved in REACH NOLA since its inception in April 2006 and is a Board Director.