Board of Directors

Board Chair

Edward Chory retired at the end of 2019 after a 40 year career as a surgeon. He and his wife moved to Lancaster with their 7 year old triplets in 1991 after completing medical school, surgical residency and practicing surgery in New York City and the northern New Jersey suburbs where he was raised. He served as director of the Lancaster General Level II Trauma Center in 1996-1997 helping with the transition from surgical staffing by local private practice general surgeons to full time trauma fellowship trained surgeons. Given his experience caring for trauma patients he has a particular interest in public safety and gun violence prevention.

President & CEO, Alliance for Health Equity

President & Chief Executive Officer, Union Community Care

Alisa is President and Chief Executive Officer for Union Community Care. Union is the merged organization of Lancaster Health Center and Welsh Mountain Health Center. Union Community Care serves both Lancaster and Lebanon Counties. Prior to joining Union, Alisa was CEO of Lancaster Health Center. Before moving to Lancaster in 2019, Alisa was CEO of a community health center in Chester County, PA, for seven years. She moved to Chester County from Delaware where she served as the Delaware Department of Public Health’s Director of Maternal and Child Health for almost a decade. Her public health experience includes epidemiology, public health program planning, development, implementation and evaluation. Her community health experience includes operational alignment, strategic planning and leadership development.

Alisa is bilingual and bicultural and originally from southern California where she received her Bachelor’s at California State University and a Master’s in Public Health from San Diego State University.

Executive Director, Touchstone Foundation

Anna holds a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of California- Irvine, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Geography from Penn State University. Anna serves as co-chair of the Pennsylvania Health Funders Collaborative and on the steering committee of the Coalition for the Common Health. She is a founding member of Let’s Talk, Lancaster: changing the conversation about mental health.

Dr. Jeffrey Martin is Associate Director of the Lancaster General Health Family Medicine Residency Program. He attended the University of Colorado School Of Medicine where he obtained his M.D. degree with honors. He completed his Family Medicine residency at Lancaster General Hospital. During residency he received the national Mead-Johnson Award for excellence in Family Practice Graduate Medicine. At LGH he directs the Population Health Fellowship and provides clinical leadership to LGH’s complex-care clinic called Care Connections which cares for persons with complex health and social needs.  Along with being director of the Lancaster Lead Coalition he is Medical Director at Vantage House, a long-term drug-rehab program for women and children, Medical Consultant at IU-13 and member of the United Way Public Advocacy Committee.  His interest in public health stems from his past work as the president of the Lancaster City Board of Health and his work with directing the community medicine curriculum for the LGH residents.

Alan S. Peterson, MD, is a highly regarded family medicine physician and champion for children and families across Lancaster County and beyond, Dr. Peterson retired in December 2013 as Lancaster General Health Director of Community and Environmental Medicine, Associate Director of the Family Medicine Residency Program, and family physician at Walter L. Aument Family Health Center. He will continue his role as preceptor at Walter L. Aument.

Throughout his career, Dr. Peterson was an outspoken advocate for public health initiatives such as tackling lead poisoning and immunizing children and adults

During his tenure at LG Health, Dr. Peterson served as medical director for the health system’s free immunization program, ChildProtect, and was a medical advisor to Lancaster County’s Immunization Coalition. In 2013, Dr. Peterson received the Pennsylvania Immunization Coalition’s 2013 Immunization Champion – Community Impact Award for his commitment to promoting immunization to children and adults in Lancaster County.

The numbers are telling. In the 22 years he was at the helm of ChildProtect, 72,000 children received free immunizations and 33,000 received free flu shots.
Dr. Peterson was one of only three individuals recognized nationally with The American Lung Association’s Volunteer Excellence Award. In fact, he was featured on the American Lung Association’s website, where his decades of advocacy work on behalf of public health initiatives such as immunization, radon testing and mitigation, healthy air policies, and smoking cessation are detailed.

In 2011, Dr. Peterson worked with Alice Yoder, LG Health’s Director of Community Health, to advocate for widespread testing for lead poisoning in children across Lancaster County and to educate families of the damage lead poisoning causes to children’s brains and nervous systems.
Dr. Peterson also has served on community boards and organizations, including the Edward Hand Medical Heritage Foundation, whose mission is to preserve and publicize the healing arts in Lancaster County.

Lawer has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Susquehanna University and a law degree from Widener University. Before joining LG Health, she served as President and Executive Director of Philadelphia Safe and Sound, a Robert Wood Johnson urban health development program that works to reduce violence and dropout rates, and improve youth outcomes. She also served as DHS Deputy Secretary for the Office of Children, Youth and Families. And she established the Center for Schools and Communities, which provides program development, training and evaluation services for state agencies.

Phil Goropoulos joined CHI St. Joseph Children’s Health as President in May 2014 with more than 14 years of executive experience in non-profit, community-based health care and social services in south central Pennsylvania.  He brings a comprehensive background in strategic planning, program development and evaluation, community relations, financial management and fundraising.

A native of Lancaster, Phil completed the Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Executive Leadership Program at UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif. He received a master’s degree in nonprofit management from Regis University, Denver, CO and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and American Studies from Dickinson College.  Phil and his wife Amy have two daughters, Elena and Maya.

CEO of Thomas E. Strauss Inc.

Dr. Marilyn Howarth’s career in Public Health began when she was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers of Disease Control in Atlanta.  While an EIS officer she worked with communities and government agencies to investigate and tackle occupational and environmental problems.  After leaving the CDC, Dr. Howarth worked with Cooper Hospital in Camden, NJ re-shaping their Occupational Health efforts by reaching out to employers to provide medical services to their workers.  In 1995 she joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania as the Director of Consultation Services for the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.  In that role she published papers, taught courses, performed worksite evaluations and helped patients and communities with the effects of environmental exposures. Dr. Howarth has extensive experience evaluating and treating patients with exposure to heavy metals, solvents, mold, respiratory allergens and irritants, and musculoskeletal trauma. Dr. Howarth has participated with CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the National Institutes of Health and the Camden County Technical Advisory Board to work on topics as diverse as latex allergy, the health effects of air pollution, and lead and radiological contamination. She is a past president of the Pennsylvania Occupational and Environmental Medical Society and a former member of the Board of Directors of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.  She is currently a member of the PHILAPOSH Technical Advisory Board, which helps unions with concerns about exposures on the job.  She is a founding professor of the University of Pennsylvania’s Masters in Public Health Environmental and Occupational Health course and provides educational programs on Environmental Health topics to community and employee groups.

Mr. Pepino is Coordinator of the Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) courses in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.  Mr. Pepino has  Master’s degrees in Biology and Science Education, and previously served as Director of the Public Policy Program at Franklin and Marshall College.  He spent 25 years with US EPA Region III, serving as Director of Strategic Planning, Chief of Environmental Impact Analysis, and Associate Director of the Office of Watersheds.  His interests include public policy related to environmental health, especially childhood lead poisoning in at-risk communities. He has been funded by the NIEHS, PA Department of Health, and the Philadelphia Department of Health to investigate environmental problems within Environmental Justice communities.

Richard D. Clark is the Chair of the Department of Earth Sciences and Professor of Meteorology at Millersville University of Pennsylvania where he has been for 28 years. His research interests are boundary layers and turbulence and air chemistry with a special emphasis on field observations using remote-sensing and balloon-borne platforms. He also has a strong interest in space weather and climate science applications, and recently spearheaded the development of an academic minor in Heliophysics and Space Weather. Clark developed the framework and curriculum for the M.S. in Integrated Scientific Applications, which includes specializations in Climate Science Applications, Weather Intelligence and Risk Management, Environmental Earth Systems Management, and Geoinformatics, and serves as the program coordinator. He is also spearheading the development of a new program, the B.S. in Environmental Engineering.

Clark has a Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Wyoming (’87). He was elected Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, and is member of the American Geophysical Union and Sigma Xi. Clark served on as a member of AMS Council (2008-11) and completed two terms as a member of the Board of Trustees (2009-2015) of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). He was the recipient of the 2006 Russell L. DeSouza Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Unidata Community and the 2008 AMS Teaching Excellence Award. Clark has been awarded over $3.0 M in extramural funding since 2005 and has involved over 100 undergraduate students in field research through this funding. A current project, “Plains Elevated Convection at Night” (summer 2015) is a multi-institutional study of the conditions associated with mesoscale convective complexes, convective initiation, bores, and the low-level jet. Recent projects include a NASA funded DISCOVER-AQ, a study of air quality in four areas (CA, TX, CO, MD) and an NSF-funded study of Ontario Winter Lake-effect Systems (OWLeS). More recently, Clark was elected to the Board of Directors of the North Museum of Nature and Science and appointed to the UCAR Advocacy for the Science Community (UASC) committee.

President & CEO, United Way of Lancaster County