Dr. Mark Ryan serves at the Department of Family Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center and is also a member of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media Advisory Board. Mark is interested in how social media can support development of collaborations and partnerships across distances, and how social media can be used to promote patient empowerment, health and wellness, increased access to medical care, and patient-centered care. He is an active participant in the #hcsm and #MDchat Twitter chats, and is a contributor to the Social Media Healthcare blog.

As an M3 and M4 student at VCU School of Medicine, Dr. Ryan was the first student to pilot the rural community preceptorship at the beginning of the International/Inner-City/ Rural Preceptorship (I2CRP) Program, experiencing practice in a rural underserved community. As an M4 student, Mark shared responsibility for teaching a Foundations of Clinical Medicine (FCM) small group. Dr. Ryan completed his residency at the rural Blackstone Family Medicine Residency Program. Following his residency, he practiced in a rural area in Keysville, VA, and served as VCU School of Medicine community affiliate faculty, supervising Family Medicine clerkship students and receiving very positive evaluations. At the same time, Dr. Ryan served as the coordinator for HIV/AIDS Awareness Programs in Central Virginia and pursued medical mission activities in Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

In 2007, Dr. Ryan joined the VCU Department of Family Medicine in a full-time position at the Hayes E. Willis Health Center. In this role, he cares for a medically and socially complex patient population; his fluency in Spanish is a great asset in this clinical setting. Additionally, he has been the Medical Director of the William and Mary/VCU Health Project in the Dominican Republic, traveling there twice each year for the past four years to coordinate clinical and medical outreach visits to the community. Dr. Ryan also serves on the board of the Virginia Academy of Family Physicians.

In 2009, Dr. Ryan, recognizing the lack of health care services targeted to Hispanic adults, reached out to pharmacy and nursing colleagues to start up Una Vida Sana, free health screening events at locations around Richmond with large Latino populations. Dr. Ryan oversees this interdisciplinary outreach program and provides medical students with an opportunity to become involved in the planning and implementation of the project. He directs patients in need of a primary care home to the “safety net” system of care in Richmond.
 

Dr. Miller received his doctorate degree in clinical psychology from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. He completed his predoctoral internship at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center where he trained in primary care psychology. In addition, Miller worked as a postdoctoral fellow in primary care psychology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. Currently, Miller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine where he is responsible for integrating mental health across all three of the Department’s core mission areas: clinical, education and research. He is also the Associate Director of Research and Primary Care Outreach for the University of Colorado Denver’s Depression Center.

Miller is a co-principal investigator and co-creator of the National Research Network’s Collaborative Care Research Network. He has written and published journal articles and a book chapter on enhancing the evidentiary support for collaborative care models and increasing the training and education of mental health providers in primary care. Miller often travels speaking on clinical, operational and financial components of integrating mental health and primary care as well as the policy implications for these models.

Professionally, Ben is actively involved in the governance of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) where he is a Board Member representing organizational partnerships. He has been active within the American Psychological Association for Graduate Students (APAGS) where he held the elected position of Member at Large – Practice Focus from 2006-2008. During his tenure in APAGS, he focused on assessing the needs of practice-focused students while attempting to raise students' awareness of the role of psychology within the larger health care system.

Ben’s research interests include models of collaborative care, health behavior interventions and primary care practice redesign. He remains active clinically providing services in primary care and teaches within the University of Colorado Denver’s Family Medicine residency.