September 27, 2012 –
Left to right: Lane Terwilliger, attorney for Center for Medicaid & State Operations, Elliott A. Milhollin, attorney/partner with Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker LLP, Jay Steiner,representative of National Indian Urban Board, Ken Lucero, co-chairman of the Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee (STAC), and Steve Ortiz, co-chairman of STAC and PBPN chairman. The group participated in the National Indian Health Board’s 29th Annual Consumer Conference on Sept. 26.
MAYETTA: PBPN Chairman Steve Ortiz travelled to Denver this week to participate as one of the speakers of the National Indian Health Board’s 40th Anniversary and 29th Annual Consumer Conference.
The conference revolved around activities including Tribal Consultations conducted by federal agencies like the Health Resources and Services Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies. There were also workshops and some of them were on Federal Tribal/State Relations, Public Health Issues, Diabetes, Health Information Technology, Behavioral Health, and Medicare/Medicaid Changes. In addition, other activities at the four-day conference included a pow-wow and the 2nd Annual Native Youth Track.
Chairman Ortiz has been active in health issues at the national, state, and tribal level and was selected to the Health and Human Services (HHS) STAC in 2010 and as co-chair in 2011. Since that time he has attended several STAC meetings in Washington, D.C. He is also on the Department of Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal Consultation Committee and the Local Government Advisory Committee of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is under the direction of Lisa P. Jackson, administrator of the EPA.