IHFDA Announces Two New Executive Board Members

IHFDA is proud to announce two new executive board members beginning their terms on January 1, 2019. Please take the time to congratulate them on their new positions. Thank you to all the great applicants who  made the selections very difficult. This is but another step to make IHFDA an even better organization as we all move forward together.

Derek Empey, R.Ph.

Qualifications: Since October 2017 – Clinical Pharmacist, Clinical Informatics Analyst, Drug Diversion Specialist at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, NY.  Graduated Albany College of Pharmacy in 2000, and from Louisiana Tech with MS in Health Informatics in May 2017.  From a diversion perspective, responsible for creation and oversight of diversion prevention program with regard to reporting, research, committee chair, education, compliance and auditing.  Leading up to my current position, I’ve performed in various roles ranging from retail pharmacy, district operations management, and extensive long term care experience.  I thrive in the team environment, bringing to the table my attention for granular details and analytic vision, as well as a friendly easy-going personality and altruistic attitude. 

Dr. Pamela Talley, M.D.

Dr. Talley received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, her medical degree at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and did Family Medicine residency training at the University of Iowa where she served as chief resident. She practiced Family Medicine for 20+ years in inpatient and outpatient settings before turning towards public health. She obtained a mid-career Master of Public Health at the University of Colorado School in Epidemiology, followed by a prestigious two year applied epidemiology fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer stationed at the Minnesota Department of Health.

Dr. Talley has devoted significant effort over the last two years towards increasing awareness of drug diversion generally and more specifically focusing on the underappreciated risk of bloodborne pathogen transmission and bacterial infections when tampering and substitution of injectable medications occurs. She has engaged various stakeholders in Tennessee including the Tennessee hospital Association, the state health licensing boards and their investigators, the provider assistance programs for physicians and other licensed healthcare professionals, the state healthcare facilities licensing agency as well as the state’s multidisciplinary taskforce dedicated to the raging opioid epidemic in Tennessee. She has been an invited speaker on the subject for several groups including the Chief Medical Officer’s Quality and Patient Safety group of the Tennessee Hospital Association and has met one-on-one with others. She is repeatedly surprised at the lack of awareness that innocent, vulnerable patients are being infected during what should be healing encounters with the healthcare system.

Dr. Talley is a member of IHFDA, the Society of Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), whose mission is to improve the public’s health by working at the state and local level to influence public health programs and policy based on science and data. She participates actively in CSTE’s Drug Diversion workgroup and contributed to a recently completed toolkit for the public health investigation of injectable drug diversion events. She also knows and works frequently with CDC leaders in this field such as Dr. Joe Perz.   She would like to contribute to IHFDA’s continuing success by providing a public health perspective and contributing to state and national policy discussions around the prevention, detection and response to drug diversion.