Diversity and Health Equity Program
Creating and sustaining social justice, diversity, and inclusion.
From the Justice League to the Diversity and Health Equity Program
In the Fall of 2018, the Department of Family Medicine created a social justice, diversity, and inclusion working group called The Justice League.
Co-Founded by Cleveland Piggott and Dionisia de la Cerda, the goal of the group is to educate the Department of Family Medicine team on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), provide recommendations on how to make this department a champion of these issues, and disrupt systems of oppression. Since then, a lot has happened, and in 2023, we were awarded the University of Colorado's President's Diversity Award!
- For more about what we've done throughout the years, view our DFM DEIA Milestones.
We welcome clinicians, faculty, and staff to attend the group’s regular meetings, join our listserv, and contribute in any way that they can to move us all forward in the DEI mission. If you’d like to join or learn more, please don’t hesitate to email us!
If you want to be more involved in Diversity and Health Equity issues, please join our listserv by clicking here. Then, click “subscribe” on the right hand side, and enter your email.
Meet The Team
Gilbert Achay
Pronouns: (he/him/his/siya)
Gilbert Achay spent over a decade in local and national nonprofits, engaged in youth programs and health advocacy. For nine years he worked at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, serving the company’s philanthropic initiatives on health and racial equity. He is also a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant with the Sankofa Leadership Network.
Originally from Hawai’i, Gilbert grew up learning about his grandparents’ experiences as union workers in the sugarcane plantation fields. This spurred his interest in organizing and contributing to social causes that address power imbalances. He has a B.S. degree from the University of Minnesota, with concentrations in Child Development, Psychology, and Holistic Health, and is a graduate student in counseling psychology at Saint Mary’s University.
Angelo Alago, PsyD
Pronouns: (he/him/his)
New addition to the team acting as a liaison with DFM psychology team; has served as a facilitator for racial caucusing groups with clinical psychology interns identifying as multicultural in Colorado; interested in supporting efforts within the department to promote wellness and effective communication; interested in work around dismantling unhelpful power differentials that perpetuate and exacerbate inequalities in both healthcare and training and supervision of healthcare providers
Dr. Alago is a clinical psychologist at the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine and received his PsyD from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers before completing his internship here at CU-DFM. Dr. Alago is passionate about increasing access to exposure therapy for anxiety disorders—a highly effective treatment limited in large part by a lack of providers willing to accept insurance—and has pioneered a primary care anxiety clinic that has allowed him to offer this treatment to patients from traditionally underserved communities. Dr. Alago’s path to DEI work comes from a mixture of lived experience as a Latino, working with homeless men in Chicago during undergrad, and his training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. He attempts to practice what he preaches regarding dismantling power differentials by allowing all of his new patients to turn the tables and interview him at the end of their initial visits.
Heather Bleacher, MD, MPH
Pronouns: (she/her/hers)
Dr. Bleacher's primary role is supporting our family medicine practices to incorporate changes to advance equity in our patients' health and wellbeing through, staff and clinician training, focused quality improvement projects with an equity goal, changes to clinic policies/practices, adapting clinical practices to be more equitable, and other strategies that influence the day to day clinic operations. She is also interim director of the Department of Family Medicine's Community Engagement Program. In that role she is focused on supporting meaningful, mutually beneficial community engagement across all mission areas with the primary goal of advancing community health.
Dr. Bleacher is faculty at the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency. She teaches inpatient and outpatient clinical medicine and directs the residency's longitudinal community engagement curriculum.
Taryn Bogdewiecz
Pronouns: (Xe/Xem/Xyrs or They/Them/Theirs)
Taryn Bogdewiecz is a Research Services Senior Professional at the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine (DFM). Xyr primary role with the DFM Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Anti-Racism/Accessibility team is Communications. Xe manages the Disrupting the Status Quo Blog, and the Spotlight Program. Taryn has also offered LGBTQIA+ and Gender Equity trainings to clinics, and departments across Anschutz Medical Campus.
Taryn is currently working on a variety of projects including Engaging in Advance Care Planning Talks (ENACT) with a team in the Geriatric Department, 1302 Behavioral Health Integration and Learning Community with the Practice Innovation Program Colorado (PIPCO), and Caregivers Speaks with the Department of Family Medicine. Taryn is also a part of the Research Services Professional Leadership Team, LGBTQ+ Hub Advisory Committee, and helps to lead the DFM Gender Equity Committee. Outside of the University of Colorado, Taryn is an inclusive yoga instructor and offers trainings in adapting yoga instruction to create Body Positive and LGBTQIA+ inclusive spaces.
Dionisia de la Cerda, MPA
Pronouns: (she/her/hers)
Dionisia de la Cerda has worked for the University of Colorado for almost 2 decades. She began as community college transfer student working as a student tutor in the Math learning Center at the Colorado Springs campus. She has worked in Student Success, Corrections, K12 STEM education research, and for the last 6 years with the Department of Family Medicine’s Practice Innovation program. She recently began working at the Vice Chancellor’s Office of DEI and Community Engagement as a Data and Evaluation Specialist. She co-founded the Diversity and Health Equity program with Cleveland. Her passions are data and community. She is committed to evaluating our work, and creating opportunities for our department to work alongside the community.
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Natalie Hamilton, MD
Pronouns: (she/her/hers)
Dr. Hamilton is a recent graduate of the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency. She is currently obtaining specialized training as a Junior Faculty Fellow where she will be focusing on Disability Medicine. Her background includes working as a home health care aide for Special Olympics athletes and she has worked on population health projects for improving healthcare disparities for patients with disabilities. Through the DEIA team and her fellowship she hopes to improve transitions of care for patients with disabilities and develop residency and clinical opportunities to decrease disparities for this population.
Stephanie Mitchell
Pronouns: (she/her/hers)
Stephanie Mitchell is a Program Assistant at the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine (DFM). Stephanie has been with the university for 21 years and serves as a Senior Administrative Support Coordinator; she provides administrative support to the DEIA team, especially regarding Cleveland’s schedule, as she is his administrative assistant. She also supports a lot of separate groups and individuals here at the DFM, including our I.T. department and our H.R. director. As a person of color, Stephanie understands the importance of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) in her personal life, as well as her everyday work life, and she is striving to make changes within the DFM where she can.
Cleveland Piggott, MD, MPH, FAAFP
Associate Professor; Vice Chair, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
Pronouns: (he/him/his)
Dr. Piggott is a family physician at the University of Colorado Department of Family Medicine (DFM). He received his MD and MPH from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and completed his residency training at the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency. As a faculty member, he co-founded the Justice League, a working group on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at Colorado's DFM, and is now the inaugural Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Family Medicine. He still sees patients and spends most of his time in medical education. His passion for social justice stems from his life experience as a person of color and a child of immigrants. His DEI expertise is in holistic recruitment, incorporating DEI into organizational structures, and leadership development in underrepresented groups. He finds creating systems and a culture that have equity at the core to be as rewarding as it is challenging.
Alicia Wong, MD, MPH, MA
Pronouns: (she/her/hers)
Dr. Wong's work with the DEIA Leadership Team is focused on developing a disability health equity initiative to improve the accessibility of clinical care and the professional climate for disabled students and trainees. This includes providing medical education to DFM residents and faculty, running a support group for trainees with disabilities, and inclusive mentorship.
Dr. Wong is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado. She earned her BA at Bowdoin College and received her MD and MPH from Boston University. She completed residency training at the University of Colorado Family Medicine Residency and stayed on as a Faculty Fellow the following year. She is now one of the lead physicians of Denver Health’s Adaptive Primary Care clinic and does health services research focused on the provision of communication accommodations in primary care and on documenting disability in the electronic medical record. She also serves as Medical Director of the Disability Equity Collaborative.
Support from Student Assistants
Ash Bedore (They/Them/Theirs)
Ash assists with survey building and management. They also help create and edit manuals and procedures to support standardization across all our work. They are working towards my graduate degree in Sociology at CU Denver.
Maria Gifford (She/Her/Hers)
Maria attends DEIA meetings, takes meeting minutes and helps our team stay on task. She also assists with survey management and problem solving with survey and data collection updates. Maria is currently working on a American Indian and Alaska Native Health Certificate.
Maria attends DEIA meetings, takes meeting minutes and helps our team stay on task. She also assists with survey management and problem solving with survey and data collection updates. Maria is currently working on a American Indian and Alaska Native Health Certificate.
Contact:
DFM Diversity
DFM.DEI@cuanschutz.edu