The Stakeholder Advisory Board meets quarterly and has representation from individuals and organizations throughout the state of Iowa. Our members bring a variety of perspectives and experiences to contribute and improve clinical and translational research at the University of Iowa.
Kara Boeldt
Founder & Director of EndPreeclampsia.org
After suffering a traumatic first pregnancy in which she developed severe preeclampsia, HELLP syndrome, and a silent placental abruption at 31 weeks gestation, followed by a NICU stay and subsequent surgeries for her infant daughter, she began seeking out others who had been through something similar. She realized that there was limited support available where women could share their experiences.
In order for no woman to feel alone, as she did after her preeclampsia experience, Kara and a small group of dedicated volunteers from across the world began operating Preeclampsia, Eclampsia & HELLP Syndrome Survivors Global Support Group. This is an evidence-based online community that has swelled to a membership of nearly 30,000 preeclampsia survivors and it is continually gaining new members. It truly has a group reach with members from over 110 countries. EndPreeclampsia supports the Butterfly Brigade, a group of women with lived experience who visit hospitalized antepartum mothers experiencing complications at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to provide support and essential supplies during long hospital stays.
Kara is a Certified Trauma-Informed Professional, a Patient Advisor for several organizations and research studies, including the Illinois Perinatal Quality Collaborative, Patient Advisor for the $10 Million HRSA Grant partnership between the University of Iowa Health Care and the Iowa Department of Public Health to improve maternal outcomes for women in Iowa, and is a member of the Institute of Clinical and Translational Science Stakeholder Advisory Board at the University of Iowa. She was the HOPE Award Recipient for Maternal Health Volunteer of the Year in 2009, and the Champions for Change Maternal Health Champion of the Year award recipient in 2019. She has led charitable giving initiatives raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Maternal Health causes over the last 15 years.
LaTasha DeLoach, BSW, LMSW
Senior Center Coordinator, Department Head, City of Iowa City, Senior Center - Older Adults
LaTasha DeLoach holds bachelors and master’s degrees from the University of Iowa School of Social Work. In her new position as the Director of the City of Iowa City Senior Center she is working to help keep older adults active, connected, and curious to maintain successful aging. She was previously a community projects specialist at Johnson County Social Services and the Johnson County Disproportionate Minority Contact coordinator and the Community Partnerships for Protecting Children coordinator for 10 years.
is a 2018-2019 National Juvenile Justice Network Fellow in the Youth Leadership Institute. She is the Vice Chair of the State of Iowa Disproportionate Minority Contact Committee and was recently appointed by the Governor to be a member of the Juvenile Justice Advisory Council. DeLoach advocates for families and is a fierce advocate for women and young women of color in Iowa.
She has been a member of many local and statewide boards and committees including the University of Iowa School of Social Work Professional Advisory Committee, State Disproportionate Minority Contact Subcommittee, Iowa Girls Justice Initiative Taskforce, Juvenile Justice Advisory Council, SMART on Juvenile Justice Leadership Team, City of Iowa City Council’s Ad Hoc Diversity Committee, and City of Iowa City Roundtable Discussions.
DeLoach is the co-founder of several organizations and programs for women and girls of color, including G! World, Sisters in Power, and Sankofa Outreach Connection, an emerging local organization with over 600 women of color members.
DeLoach was vice president of the Iowa City Community School District Board of Directors. She is also a committed community volunteer and coordinator of conferences, seminars, workshops, and events.
Jennifer Gross, MD
Pediatrician, Primary Health Care
Dr. Groos earned her medical degree from the University of Iowa College of Medicine and completed a pediatrics residency at University of Wisconsin Children’s Hospital in Madison, WI. She is a board-certified pediatrician with 16 years of experience. She founded the Healthy Kids Program at Blank Children’s Hospital. Dr. Groos practices general pediatrics at Primary Health Care, a Federally Qualified Health Center, in Des Moines, Iowa. She is active in community and legislative advocacy and health eating and active living promotion with many partners within the state. Dr. Groos currently serves as Lead Faculty for the National Childhood Obesity in Primary Care (COPC) Quality Improvement project led by the American Academy of Pediatrics Institute on Healthy Childhood Weight (IHCW). Dr. Groos leads the 5-2-1-0 Health Care Program in Iowa. She serves as the co-chair for the COACH network (childhood obesity advisor) for the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Obesity. She is a past-president of the Iowa Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, chair of the chapter committee on legislation, and founder and chair of the chapter committee on obesity. She received the 2018 Iowa Medical Society Physician Community Service Award for her statewide child health promotion work.
Sharon Guthrie, PhD, ARNP, CRNP, NCSN, RN-BC
Executive Director, Iowa School Nurse Organization
Pastor Bruce Hanson
Lutheran PAstor, Chaplain (certified: police, prison, & inland marine), Patient/advocate, consultant
Rev. Bruce L. Hanson is a retired rural parish pastor who served five rural parishes in Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. He was a caregiver for his late wife (Connie) for more than 47 years. Along with caring for his wife, a diabetic who experienced a kidney transplant, a stroke, breast cancer, and seizures, Pastor Bruce has participated in numerous volunteer opportunities such as being an Emergency Medical Technician for almost thirty years as well as a Hospital, Police and Prison Chaplain.
Pastor Bruce has volunteered and been a representative for various patient-centered organizations, such as the National Patient Advocacy Foundation (NPAF), which provides a patient voice in improving access to and reimbursement for high quality health care through regulatory and legislative reform at the state and federal levels. He has served on the Advisory Panel for Patient Engagement at the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), addressing disparities, patient engagement, improving health care systems, and assessment of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment options. Because of his special interest in rural health care issues, Pastor Bruce was a presenter for “The Power of Partnership in Research: Improving Healthcare Outcomes in Rural Settings” for PCORI.
Regionally, Pastor Hanson has been a member of the board at Chicago Partners Patient Engagement Cluster, and is also the Director of the Great River Patient Engagement Cluster (GRPEC), which he founded, and works to develop patient engagement in and through the various clinics and care facilities that are a part of the rural northeast Iowa, rural southwest Minnesota, and rural southwest Wisconsin areas.
On a national level, Pastor Bruce has served as a member with the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Committee on Critical Care sub-group, the Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG), a technical Expert for the 2018 Impact Assessment of CMS Quality and Efficiency Measures on the Technical Expert Panel (TEP), the Federal Assessment Steering Committee (FASC), among other projects. He has also actively participated in several national conferences such as the CareAlign Project for Hartford Medical School, as well as a conference on “Models of Care for High-Need Patients” at the National Academy of Medicine in Washington DC.
At the University of Iowa, Pastor Bruce serves as a member of the University of Iowa Institute for Clinical and Translational Science stakeholder advisory board and the HIT-PFCA that is working on the development of Open Notes and the Patient Portal.
Nancy Humbles, BA, MA
President, Cedar Rapids School Board
Nancy Humbles resides in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She has devoted her life to and career to the education of students as well as her community. She began her career as an instructor at the Marion Learning Center. She worked with high school students that had dropped out of school. She assisted them in completing their GED or returned backed to their home school. After leaving the Marion Center, she worked at the Jane Boyd Community House as the Activity Director. This community house served over a thousand children and provided educational and athletic activities.
Nancy joined the UI in 1990 as an academic planning counselor in Special Support Services and then as an advisor in the UI Henry B. Tippie College of Business. As the Assistant Director of advising at Tippie, she developed the Student Incentive Program, a summer program for minority and first-generation students. She also served as multicultural affairs coordinator and interim program coordinator for Opportunity at Iowa.
In 2007, Humbles became the director of the UI Center for Diversity and Enrichment. In this role, she coordinated outreach opportunities and resources for underserved students from diverse backgrounds, including students of color, first-generation college students, and students from low-income families.
As the founding creator and retired director of the UI Center for Diversity and Enrichment, Nancy was instrumental in establishing programs that provide a welcoming climate for students, faculty, and staff from marginalized communities. She also fostered meaningful personal connections with students who were navigating the ins and outs of college for the first time. She helped them succeed, and she took many of them under her wing, without fanfare, to help them maximize their personal potential and keep moving forward each day. Such guidance came naturally to Nancy, who earned a master’s degree in student development in postsecondary education from the UI College of Education while working at Iowa.
Since retiring from the UI in 2014, Humbles has widened her reach as a community volunteer. She was elected as the first African American to serve on the Cedar Rapids Community School District Board of Education in 2009 and was re-elected in 2013 and 2017. Currently, she is the President of the Cedar Rapids Community School Board of Education and President of the African American Museum of Iowa. Through her steady guidance and unwavering belief in personal potential, Nancy has impacted many people in the Cedar Rapids community.
Peter L. Larsen, Ph.D.
Research Administrator, MercyOne North Iowa Medical Center
Peter Larsen is in his third year as the research administrator at MercyOne North Iowa Medical Center in Mason City, Iowa. In this role he works to promote and support research and scholarship for graduate medical education - residents, fellows, and faculty. He has a long-term interest in K12 STEM education and served on the executive board for STEM-Forward (Rochester, MN) for approximately 6 years before coming to Iowa. Peter is a graduate of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Kansas, was a Humboldt Fellow at the Max Plank Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry, and was a member of the faculty at the University of Minnesota - Rochester for 10 years before moving to MercyOne North Iowa.
Clarke Pietruszka
Treasurer and board member, TRIPP Foundation
Clarke Pietruszka moved to Iowa City after earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia to work with the Perioperative Services administrative team at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics where he currently serves as a manager. He later earned an MS in business analytics from the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business. His work across the hospital connected him with Alisha Loy, founder and COO of the TRIPP Foundation- a non-profit organization supporting both children and families impacted by chronic and acute kidney disease. He was eager to dive further into the Iowa community and eventually came to serve as both treasurer and board member with the TRIPP Foundation. Outside of work you can often find Clarke at the gym, riding his bike or working on improving his golf game.
Michael Piplani, MD
Chief Medical Officer, Iowa Health Plus and Siouxland Community Health Center
Dr. Piplani is Chief Medical Officer of Siouxland Community Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center in Sioux City, Iowa. He takes pride in being on the leadership team that lead the health center to be a HRSA National quality leader across multiple domains for 2019 and 2020. In 2020 the health center’s quality metrics were 10’th out of 1384 health centers in the United States. He also serves as Chief Medical Officer for Iowa Health Plus, a Medicaid Accountable care organization representing Iowa Community Health Centers. Before joining the Siouxland Health Center, he had relocated back to Iowa, to be Chief Medical Officer at Community Health Centers of Southeast Iowa in West Burlington and Columbus City, Iowa. He enjoys welcoming refugees and immigrants to the Siouxland Community- his Great Grandparents were Norwegian immigrants to Sioux City at the turn of the century, and his Father was one of the first Asian Indian students at the University of Iowa. Dr. Piplani is the 3’rd of 5 generations in his family with a connection to the University of Iowa or its Hospital.
Jimmy S. Reyes, PhD, DNP, AGNP, RN
Associate Director of Practice and Education, Iowa Board of Nursing
Dr. Jimmy A. Reyes is the Associate Director of Practice and Education at the Iowa Board of Nursing. In addition, he has served in the deanship and professorship capacity at Kirkwood Community College and the University of Iowa College of Nursing. His research interests include the development and evaluation of community-based, family-centered, and collaborative diabetes self-management programs to treat diabetes in community dwelling Latino elders. Furthermore, he has worked on testing the efficacy of innovative training models to promote and foster the use of best practices/evidence-based diabetes practices, knowledge transfer, and sustainability.
He has received a Doctor of Nursing Practice in organizational leadership from the University of Iowa, a Master’s of Science in nursing and adult/gerontological nurse practitioner degrees from the University of Iowa as well as the Bachelor of Science in nursing. Currently, he is completing a PhD in Gerontology at Concordia University Chicago.
Debra Sellers
Director of Human Sciences Extension and Outreach
Associate Dean in the College of Human Sciences at Iowa State University
Dr. Sellers' primary area of interest is adaptive living for people with aging-related limitations or disabilities and their families and caregivers, with an emphasis on supporting functional abilities through access to services and technology. She has more than 15 years of experience serving adults with disabilities, older adults, and families in a variety of settings, including long-term care facilities, retirement communities and government agencies. She was voted as one of her city’s most admired people in Manhattan, Kansas, and is a volunteer puppy raiser for Canine Companions for Independence®.