Vaccine Mandates: Health Care Organizations' Internal Vaccine Carrots & Sticks

Speaker Bios

Faye Sheppard has over 30 years of experience in patient safety and risk management. She served as legal counsel for over 15 years in a pediatric healthcare system and for 10 years as the System Director of Risk Management in a large acute care health system. Currently, she is providing risk management and patient safety services for Patient Safety Resources and serves as vice-chairman of the hospital trustees in her community hospital. Faye has been active in the American Society of Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM) for many years. She has been chairman of the Patient Safety Task Force and led the effort to create ASHRM’s “Patient Safety Risk Management Playbook” and the RCA facilitator and member guides. She served on ASHRM’s Board of Directors for 6 years and was ASHRM’s 2018 president. Currently, she serves as a member of ASHRM’s ERM faculty, the Leadership Task Force and Advocacy Committee. From 2013-2017, Faye was a member of the Board of Advisors for the National Patient Safety Foundation and served as a subject matter expert for its publication “RCA2 : Improving Root Cause Analyses and Action to Prevent Harm.” She is a frequent speaker and writer on risk management and patient safety topics.

Associate Professor Denise Hill, JD, MPA brings 25-years of health care legal, policy and mediation experience to the classroom, practice of law, and community. In addition to teaching fulltime at Drake University, she continues to mediate and practice health and employment law with the Whitfield & Eddy law firm in Des Moines, Iowa. Denise is a sought-after speaker, author, and thought leader on a variety of contemporary health law and ethics topics. For many years she has advised health care organizations, written, and presented on public health and vaccination law issues, as well as pain and opioid-related compliance issues at the state and national levels. She also helped to draft the Public Health Disaster Emergency provisions of Iowa law and has presented about legal, ethical, public health, and policy aspects of the “next great pandemic” for over two decades. She brings this expertise to bear on the current COVID-19 global pandemic and ongoing opioid epidemic. Previously, Denise was the Director of Health Law Programs at Drake Law School; was an Associate Professor in the Colleges of Medicine, Podiatry, and Health Sciences at Des Moines University; and also taught for the University of Iowa’s Executive MHA program. In addition to her work in private practice and academia, Denise was an Attorney/Manager of Public & Regulatory Affairs with the Iowa Medical Society and a State of Iowa labor relations attorney. Denise M. Hill, JD, MPA is passionate about the importance of practical patient-centered opioid and pain management compliance and has been presenting, publishing, teaching and advising health care clients about these issues at the state and national level for over a decade. This presentation also builds on her extensive expertise and years of experience teaching and presenting on public health and emergency preparedness law, ethics and compliance. Denise is a full-time Associate Professor of Public Administration Practice at Drake University where she teaches MPA, MBA and law students. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa College of Public Health and clinical guest lecturer at Des Moines University. From 2007 to 2015, Denise was an Associate Professor and the primary attorney on faculty at Des Moines University, where she had a joint appointment in the Colleges of Medicine, Health Sciences, and Podiatric Medicine. She has been the recipient of multiple faculty awards; including MPH and MHA Professor of the Year awards at Des Moines University. Denise maintains a part-time legal practice as an attorney with the Whitfield & Eddy law firm in Des Moines, practicing primarily in health and administrative law. She is also an experienced Mediator trained by the American Health Lawyers Association and the International Academy of Alternative Dispute Resolution. Prior to entering private practice at Whitfield & Eddy, Denise was an In-house Attorney and Manager of Public & Regulatory Affairs at the Iowa Medical Society, and a Labor Relations Attorney with the Iowa Department of Personnel. Denise graduated with honors from Drake Law School and received her Master in Public Administration from the Drake College of Business & Public Administration. Her undergraduate degrees were from Wartburg and Waldorf Colleges.

Brian Dean Abramson is a leading expert on vaccine law, and is the primary author of Vaccine, Vaccination, and Immunization Law, the most comprehensive treatise written with respect to this field of law, published by Bloomberg Law in cooperation with the American Health Law Association in November 2018, and regularly updated thereafter. A second print edition will be forthcoming in late 2021 to early 2022. Brian previously worked for Bloomberg Law, for whom he authored the vaccine injury claims chapter of Court of Federal Claims: Jurisdiction, Practice, and Procedure, and for whom he wrote extensively in the fields of health and international privacy law. Brian was a law clerk for the Honorable Pauline Newman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where he took an exceptional interest in the court’s vaccine injury docket. Prior to this, he interned with the Honorable Susan G. Braden of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and practiced intellectual property law with the firm of Lott & Friedland in Coral Gables, Florida. He received an MA in Comparative Sociology from Florida International University, followed by his JD, summa cum laude, from the Florida International University College of Law, and an LLM in intellectual property law with highest honors from the George Washington University Law School.