Conference registration costs $75 per person, which includes lunch and conference materials. Samford students and faculty receive free registration. Contact Scott Bickel at cbickel@samford.edu for the promotional code. A Samford ID must be shown at registration.

Advanced registration is encouraged as seating is limited.

2024 Healthcare Ethics and Law Conference

Friday, Feb. 9, 2024

8:00 a.m.                              Welcome

The National Landscape

8:15 – 9 a.m.               Legal Aspects: An overview of guns and the law; Historical view of the Second Amendment

9:05 – 9:50 a.m.               KEYNOTE: Epidemic of gun violence / how health care workers can “step up”

9:55 – 10:10 a.m.               Break 

10:10 – 10:55 a.m.             Public Policy Aspects: An overview of mental health records and background checks

11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Pellegrino Award and Lunch:

Epidemiological Aspects:  An overview of the national problem and potential solutions

The Local Landscape

12:30 – 1:15 p.m.             Government Health Aspects: An overview of Birmingham initiatives regarding gun violence

1:15 – 2 p.m.               Counseling Aspects: Practical advice for health care workers when serving families and/or victims of gun violence

2 – 2:15 p.m.               Break

2:15 – 3 p.m.               Community Aspects: Community Engaged Violence Prevention to Improve Health Outcomes in Racial and Ethnic Minority Neighborhoods

3 – 3:25 p.m.               Panel Discussion:  Where do we go from here? (All speakers are invited to participate)

3:25 – 3:30 p.m.               Wrap-Up and Evaluation

Lori Bateman, PhD, RD is a medical sociologist with training and experience in community-based participatory research (CBPR), health promotion, and bioethics. She completed her PhD in Medical Sociology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Master of Arts in Religion and Master of Science in Education/Wellness Promotion at Baylor University. During the first part of her career she gained experience in program development, health education and individual behavior change. Currently, her interests have expanded to examine health and illness in the context of social structure, and she focuses primarily on racial/ethnic health disparities, how social determinants shape health (SDOH) and well-being, and community engaged interventions to ameliorate health disparities and improve health outcomes. Her current projects focus on developing, implementing and evaluating interventions that impact violence prevention in low-resource communities, obesity in African American women, colorectal cancer prevention and early detection in low-and middle-income countries, and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

David Cecil, PhD, LICSW, is a professor of social work in Samford University's Master of Social Work program. Cecil previously served on the faculty of Asbury University from 2009-16 and East Tennessee State University from 2004-09. Cecil is currently researching the global refugee crisis, which includes data collection in both Germany and Lebanon. He has also published on topics of cognitive-behavioral modalities, motivational interviewing, program and practice evaluation, teaching practice models, and technology use. He is a visiting professor of abnormal psychology at LCC International University in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Cecil is internationally certified with the EMDR-International Association (EMDRIA) for the treatment of trauma and stressor related disorders and maintains a private practice (Optimize Counseling and Therapy) where he specializes in anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety, obsessive compulsive, and panic disorders. He also does family counseling that includes areas of depression, substance dependence, and relational difficulty.

Cassandra Crifasi, PhD, MPH, is an associate professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions. She is also a core faculty member in the Center for Injury Research and Policy and the Center for Health Disparities Solutions. Crifasi’s research focuses on the intersection of public health and public safety including injury epidemiology and prevention, gun violence and policy, and attitudes and public opinion regarding gun violence solutions. She works to effectively translate her research into evidence-based policies and programs to save lives.

Brannon P. Denning, JD, is the Starnes Professor of Law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law.  He graduated with a BA in political science from the University of the South, a JD from the University of Tennessee, and an LLM from Yale University.  He is the author of Guns and the Law: Cases, Problems, and Explanation (with Andrew J. McClurg), Bittker on the Regulation of Interstate and Foreign Commerce, second edition, and the co-author of To Trust the People with Arms: The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment, among numerous other books and articles.

Griffin Edwards, PhD, is a professor of economics in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Collat School of Business. Prior to UAB, he taught at Southern Utah University and Spelman College while studying law and economics at Emory University in Atlanta. His research focus includes studies on policing, mental health laws, discrimination, and firearms and has published in law reviews such as Cornell Law Review, Texas Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review and Stanford Law Review, as well as economics outlets such as The Journal of Law and Economics and The Economic Journal. His research has also been covered by popular press outlets such as The New York Times, USA Today, the LA Times, Teen Vogue, and Fox News. When not teaching or researching, he enjoys consulting for local and national businesses and spending time outdoors with his wife and five boys.

David Hicks, DO, is a board-certified family medicine physician and serves as health officer at the Jefferson County Department of Health (JCDH). At JCDH he served as deputy health officer, Incident Commander for the organizat’on's COVID-19 response efforts, and was medical director of Adult Health & Family Planning. Prior to working at the health department, Hicks served as chief medical officer at a community health center overseeing five clinic locations. He also has provided medical care in various settings including urgent care clinics, correctional facilities and an academic health system. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, chairman of Alabama’s STD Medical Advisory Council, and a member of Alabama’s Rural Medical Service Awards Advisory Board. In 2021, he received the NAACP Metro Birmingham Branch’s Community Trailblazer Award. Hicks earned a Master of Public Health in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and was a National Institutes of Health Fogarty MIRT Program research trainee at the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He later earned his Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine from Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine and completed his Family Medicine residency at Christiana Care Health System where he also served as chief resident.