ImageOn Friday, Dr. Dora Ann Mills, Vice President for Clinical Affairs at the University of New England, will be our featured speaker. Dr. Mills is a Maine native who was raised in Farmington, graduated from Mt. Blue High School, Bowdoin College, University of Vermont College of Medicine, Children's Hospital of Los Angeles Pediatric Internship and Residency Program, and the Harvard School of Public Health. She is a board-certified pediatrician who practiced as a hospitalist in Los Angeles (two years) and in a pediatric practice in her hometown of Farmington (four years). She also practiced medicine in several rural international locations, including Tanzania and Nepal.

For nearly 15 years, from 1996-2011, she served as Maine's State Health Officer, for the administrations of Governors Angus S. King and John E. Baldacci. As the Director of the Maine CDC (formerly Bureau of Health), she led Maine's public health agency of 400 employees and $120 million budget. Some of her priorities included: lowering Maine's tobacco addiction and obesity rates; addressing environmental health concerns such as mercury in fish and commercial products; improving health equity; developing a statewide public health infrastructure; creating Healthy Maine 2010 and other state health planning initiatives; working on health care reform to increase access to care, improve quality of health care, and reduce costs; addressing chronic diseases with comprehensive and coordinated strategies; controlling outbreaks and epidemics, including the 2009 H1N1 pandemic; leading the agency through several strategic planning processes and reorganizations to improve management, including using LEAN tools; leading the public health response to several emergencies such as major floods, a mass poisoning with arsenic, suspicious anthrax packages after 9/11/01, a major mercury spill, and the 1998 ice storm; and reducing Maine's teen pregnancy, infant and maternal mortality rates through a comprehensive approach to family planning and education. As part of her work she routinely and regularly wrote and delivered testimony before the Maine Legislature on numerous topics. She also developed non-legislative policy on a variety of issues.

Dr. Mills' work has been well recognized. Among her awards are: the 2007 American Medical Association's Dr. Nathan Davis Award for Outstanding Government Service; the 2003 National Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Award for tobacco work in Maine; the 2010 American Academy of Pediatrics Special Achievement Award for her work addressing the 2009 H1N1 pandemic by distributing vaccines through Maine's schools; the 2010 McCormack Award from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers for her national leadership during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic; the 2004 University of New England Deborah Morton Award; the highest awards by the Maine Public Health Association, the Maine Medical Association, and the Maine Development Foundation; and a 2011 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Maine Augusta.