Migrant Health Speakers

Ray Hachem, MD 

Dr. Ray Hachem is a Professor of Medicine and Director of Extramural Education Program in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Infection Control at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. Dr. Hachem earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his medical degree from the University of Santiago, where he also completed his internship. Dr. Hachem joined M. D. Anderson in March 1988 as a fellow and currently serves as Principal Investigator on a number of clinical trials. He has received numerous national scientific and professional honors. He is also a Co-Inventor on several U.S. patents which have been granted. Dr. Hachem has authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles published in prestigious journals such as Clinical Infectious Diseases, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Cancer, and New England Journal of Medicine. He is currently examining new strategies of coating catheters with unique antiseptic combinations for the prevention of device related infection.Dr. Hachem served as the chairman of the Division of Internal Medicine Research Committee. The national president of the American Lebanese Medical Association (ALMA).The director of the World Institute of Medical Education (WIME). He also serves on the Institutional Review Board (IRB), the Institutional Research Grant (IRG) Committee, the Infection Control Committee, and the Ad Hoc Committee of for the Prevention of Fungal Infections.  He is an active member of the Harris County Medical Society, Texas Infectious Diseases (TIDS), and American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). Dr. Hachem serves as the Vice president of Health Outreach to the Middle East (HOME) which he was the one of the founder in 1989.

Stephen Spann, MD, MBA

Stephen J. Spann, a family physician leader, educator and researcher, is currently Founding Dean of the new College of Medicine and Vice-President for Medical Affairs at the University of Houston. Dr. Spann has dedicated his career to improving health and health care around the world by training future health care professionals, contributing to the scientific knowledge base of primary care, leading medical school faculty, physician medical groups and hospital medical staffs, and striving to practice excellent, evidence- based family medicine. Dr. Spann has been active in the development of the specialty of Family Medicine both in the United States and abroad. He has served as a member of the Commission on Public Health and Scientific Affairs, the Task Force on Clinical Policies, and as member and chair the Commission on Clinical Policies and Research and the Task Force to Enhance Family Practice Research, of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). He served as a member of Task Force 1, and chaired Task Force 6 of the Future of Family Medicine Project, focusing on the development of the New Model of Family Medicine practice, now known as the Patient Centered Medical Home, and the development of financial models to predict its success. He served as the lead consultant to the AAFP planning process to develop a national practice resource center to support the implementation of the New Model, resulting in the development of Transformed, a subsidiary of the AAFP. He has served as a consultant to medical schools, residency programs, ministries of health, and health care delivery systems in many countries, focusing on primary care training program and clinical practice development and implementation.

Karla Fredricks, MD, MPH

Karla Fredricks, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and the Director of the Program for Immigrant and Refugee Child Health (PIRCH) at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital. She obtained her doctorate in medicine from Washington University in St. Louis, did residency in Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and completed a combined fellowship and master degree program in Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Fredricks began her career at Federally Qualified Health Centers with large immigrant populations, working as a primary care physician and medical director. She also volunteered with international organizations such as Doctors Without Borders to serve displaced populations affected by humanitarian crises across the globe. In addition to directing PIRCH, Dr. Fredricks provides clinical care for many newly arrived patients on the Texas Children’s Hospital Mobile Clinic for underserved children.