Becker's Hospital Review

30 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP POPULATION HEALTH How the White House COVID-19 health equity director plans to tackle health disparities By Hannah Mitchell T he Biden administration's COVID-19 health equi- ty director, Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, is deter- mined to better understand underlying factors that cause health disparities for people in minority communities, she told NBC. "We have a complicated intersectional web that we are now coming to understand better," Dr. Nunez-Smith said. "Structural racism is real." Her approach to addressing disparities is two-pronged: 1. She questions why gaps in equity are so predict- able. "Why weren't my colleagues able to predict the disparate impacts that we now see in the pandemic?" she asked. 2. She intends to disrupt the predictability of what communities are always hit hardest. "I imagine a future for our children and their peers, where they look back at this time with historical inter- est, like: 'Oh my goodness, can you believe the pan- demic ravaged communities differently? That would never happen now,'" she said. "That's what I want them to inherit. I want our task force to work ourselves out of a job." n HCA names CFO of North Florida division By Kelly Gooch K ristin Dyer was named CFO of HCA Healthcare's 15-hospital North Florida division. Ms. Dyer brings more than 18 years of healthcare finance experience to the role, HCA said in a March 10 news release. Most recently, she was CFO of Chippenham and John- ston-Willis hospitals in Richmond, Va. She also previous- ly served as CFO of Capital Regional Medical Center in Tallahassee, Fla., and as controller of Portsmouth (N.H.) Regional Hospital. Ms. Dyer is a U.S. Navy veteran and holds a mas- ter's degree in healthcare administration from Ohio University in Athens. n Cardiologist to lead U of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' medical college By Mackenzie Bean L ittle Rock-based University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences tapped Susan Smyth, MD, PhD, to serve as executive vice chancellor and dean of its college of medicine, effective June 1. Dr. Smyth is a cardiologist and translational scientist who serves as chief of cardiovascular medicine and director of the Gill Heart and Vascular Institute at University of Kentucky College of Medicine in Lexington. She will succeed Christopher Westfall, MD, who will retire Aug. 1 after a 24-year career at the university. n CISO outlines additional cybersecurity challenges of working in a rural hospital By Hannah Mitchell A s the risk of cyberthreats in healthcare grows, a rural Vermont hospital faces additional challeng- es in navigating the cybersecurity landscape with limited resources. Kate Pierce, CIO and chief information security officer of Newport, Vt.-based North Country Hospital, told Beck- er's it is difficult to find enough cybersecurity experts and enough talent with the education to meet evolving trends in a remote location. North Country Hospital is a critical access hospital, and the community is very dependent on its facilities, as it owns nearly every practice in the area. Ms. Pierce said her team meets regularly to address secu- rity issues. However, competing priorities with COVID-19 and meeting telehealth needs, among other factors, have stretched her department thin. "How are we going to manage keeping up with the times with the resources we have available to us?" Ms. Pierce asked. "My No. 1 priority is ensuring that we are doing everything we can to protect our organization's ability to treat and care for patients," Ms. Pierce told Becker's. "Whatever we do, we do it with the mind that North Country Hospital needs to provide care to our patients and we need to make sure that our systems stay online so that we can do so." n

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