About

   Dawn is passionate about improving health and health care delivery. Her areas of expertise include primary care medical home transformation, behavioral health integration, value-based payment & contracting, quality improvement, health policy, and patient experience of care surveys. 

Dawn has more than 17 years of experience in a variety of settings including state government, an independent physician’s association, leading a statewide child health quality improvement initiative, and research & evaluation at Oregon Health & Science University. Throughout her career she has worked with more than 300 primary care clinics and, more recently, with specialty behavioral health organizations. 

Dawn is a founding member of Oregon’s Primary Care Payment Reform Collaborative, fulfilling the role of an “expert in primary care contracting and reimbursement.” She is also a member of the Integrated Behavioral Health Alliance, serving on the Executive Committee.

Dawn provides a variety of services including technical assistance and training, practice assessments, strategic guidance, program development, consensus building, and facilitating stakeholder engagement in solving local health needs. 

With a background in sociology, Dawn brings a systems-level perspective and a diverse set of skills to help solve complex problems with the needs of patients and families at the forefront.

Denise has 13 years’ experience in operations/project management and marketing strategy. Over the last two years, she has worked in partnership with Oregon Health Authority,

Synergy Health Consulting, Oasis Center of Rogue Valley, and Lines for Life to bring project management to a variety of cross-sector substance use prevention and treatment initiatives. In partnership with Oregon

Health Authority (OHA) and Synergy Health Consulting, Denise convened medical, municipal, and community leadership and compiled statewide best practices for developing drug overdose task forces,

implementing emergency response strategies, and connecting to statewide harm reduction and prevention resources. With this invaluable information, she drafted the OHA funded Drug Overdose Outbreak Plan Guidebook to assist Oregon counties in developing interagency emergency response plans that intercept and prevent drug overdoses.

Denise conducted research and interviews to develop a multidisciplinary team workflow manual in partnership with the Oasis Center of Rogue Valley who is providing integrated primary care, Medication

for Addiction Treatment (MAT), and coordination between SUD treatment services, Community Justice, Child Welfare and Self-sufficiency services for mothers with OUD, their children and families. As part of

the Creach Consulting, LLC team, Denise provides project management and data support, documentation review, and site assessment coordination. She also supports CAHPS patient survey distribution and data collection for primary care clinics.

Dr. McCormack has over 30 years of experience working with large and small organizations to implement, use, and optimize health IT on a variety of EMR platforms.

After 13 years with Cerner, he earned a Doctorate and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Clinical Informatics at Oregon Health & Science University before dividing his time between teaching, consulting, and supporting independent medical practices with their EMRs.

Most recently, James served for 3 years with a large Independent Practice Association providing expertise in health IT, supporting members with quality reporting and incentive programs (MIPS, PCPCH, CPC+, ACO), population health analytics, interoperability, and extracting and managing clinical data from a variety of EMR systems. In 2020, he returned to Portland and resumed work as an EMR consultant for small medical practices and continues to participate in applied informatics research as a Subject Matter Expert for AHRQ-funded research with the Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network at OHSU.

Dr. Higa is a clinical psychologist and behavioral health clinician who works in Portland, Oregon at a family medicine patient-centered medical home. She trains psychology doctoral students and medical residents in behavioral health. She received her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Michigan and her doctorate in psychology from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. She completed her internship at Reed College’s counseling center and her residency at Rosemont Treatment Center and School, a part of Morrison Child & Family Services. In addition to seeing patients in clinic and teaching, she has worked extensively on behavioral health curriculum design and workflows. Outside of work, you’ll likely find her spending time with her husband and children, cooking, or walking outside. 

Marijana began her career in social services in London, UK, continued in Honolulu, Hawaii and eventually landed her roots in Oregon, where she has been residing and practicing eleven years now. 

Marijana has been in the field of clinical social work since 2003, serving 

diverse population in a variety of clinical settings, to include integrated behavioral health, specialty mental health, adoption, developmental disabilities, substance use disorder treatment, as well as health plan and CCO agencies. 

Marijana held leadership positions in many of the above-listed settings, such as independent Clinical Supervisor for clinicians working towards their licensure (LPC and LCSW), Clinical Supervisor and Clinical Director for co occurring disorder treatment facility, Program Director for an adoption agency, as well as Regional Care Team Supervisor for health plan / CCO operations. 

Marijana brings a strong passion for and appreciation of program  development and supporting organizational change to reach the goal of improved integrated health outcomes. 

In her spare time Marijana enjoys sharing fun times with her loved ones, she is an avid Zumba dancer, gardener, hiker and a chef.