Alumni Hall of Fame Awards

Millard A. Shepherd, MD, was instrumental in establishing and maintaining public health departments in Kentucky. He earned his Medical Degree at the University of Louisville, and after completing Boards in Preventive Medicine and Public Health Administration, he worked for the Kentucky Department for Public Health (KDPH).

During his time at KDPH, his dream was to create a district or regional health department. This dream came to fruition with the establishment of the Lake Cumberland District Health Department in 1972. He initiated the practice of Fluoridating drinking water in the district, thus greatly decreasing the risk of dental decay and disease. He was proactive in getting vaccinations in public schools and even vaccinated his own children for polio and smallpox as public examples for the benefit of vaccinations. He served as the director until his retirement in 1980.

Dr. Shepherd published hundreds of Health Columns in the Commonwealth Journal and in the Harlan Daily Enterprise. He was a life member of many organizations, including the AMA, KMA, Pulaski Co. Medical Society, the KY Sportsman League, and the American Legion. In 1981, he received the Russell E Teague Meritorious Award from the Kentucky Public Health Association.

Angelica Geter, DrPH, MPH, is a public health expert specializing in evidence-based initiatives and sustainable solutions to improve overlooked and underprioritized populations' health, social, and economic viability. As President and CEO of Impactful Collaboration, LLC, Geter uplifts her mission of equity and justice through community engagement, research, interventions, policy development, op-eds, and peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Geter also leads as Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business for the Black Women's Health Imperative (BWHI). Geter created and delivered a multi-million-dollar evidence-based initiative to promote healthy workplaces through metrics-driven technology and research, community and corporate partnerships, and legislative engagement.

Before her work with BWHI, Geter led the Mayor of Atlanta's public health strategies as the City's inaugural Chief Health Officer. She built and led the COVID-19 Pandemic Coordination Team. Dr. Geter serves on the American Heart Association Southeast Board of Directors and earned a Doctor of Public Health in Health Behavior from the University of Kentucky, a Master of Public Health in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from Emory University, and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Mississippi College.

Sydney Clark, MPH, is the Maternal and Child Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Program Director at the Tennessee Department of Health. She formerly worked as a Disability and Preparedness Specialist for the Tennessee Department of Health since September 2021. In this role, Clark strives to increase inclusivity for people with disabilities in every phase of the emergency preparedness process. However, her first job was as a data epidemiologist for the Kentucky Department for Public Health after graduating with her Master of Public Health.

Clark received her Master of Public Health with a concentration in Emergency Management from Western Kentucky University in 2020 and her Bachelor of Public Health with a minor in Community and Leadership Development from the University of Kentucky in 2017. During her academic career, she began researching disability inclusion and emergency preparedness. This is where her passion for increasing the inclusivity of vulnerable populations in emergency management grew.

Lawrence “Larry” Prybil has been a Professor in UK’s College of Public Health since 2010, where he also served as Associate Dean and retired in June 2021 as the Norton Professor in Healthcare Leadership. He also is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Iowa where he was Associate Dean and Senior Advisor to the Dean in Iowa’s College of Public Health.

Before returning to Iowa to participate in building its new College of Public Health, Dr. Prybil held senior executive positions in two of our Nation’s largest not-for-profit health systems for nearly twenty years, including ten years as CEO for a six-state division of the Daughters of Charity National Health System (now Ascension Health).

Dr. Prybil received master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Iowa’s College of Medicine and is a Life Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives. He has served on the governing boards of hospitals, health systems, the American Hospital Association, and several other organizations, including the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.

He is recognized for expertise in governance and executive leadership, and has authored or co-authored 120 publications including a book on governance ethics published last year by Routledge, Inc. He has directed several national studies regarding effective governance in healthcare organizations and multi-sector partnerships focused on improving community health funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and numerous other organizations.

Greg Corby-Lee is the Strategist for Kentucky’s Harm Reduction Initiative, a joint project of the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. His current role involves introducing local health departments to what this Initiative can offer in ways of staffing and how it can cover most costs for harm reduction programs. He also coordinates the training of the local people that are hired by the Initiative to work in all of Kentucky’s Harm Reduction/Syringe Exchange Programs.

Greg has been involved with HIV Prevention in Kentucky for over 35 years, starting as a volunteer and fundraiser for AIDS in the early ‘80s. In 1986, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department brought him onboard as the first local AIDS Coordinator in the state. During that time, he was also a Disease Intervention Specialist and provided over 7,000 HIV tests, as well as partner notification services for positives.

In 1992, he was promoted to HIV/STD Manager at the Lexington Health Department, and managed that growing program for 15 years. In 2007, he became the HIV/AIDS Continuing Education Director with the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services/Department for Public Health.

For his last few years at Kentucky Public Health, he was the state’s “point person” for Kentucky’s Harm Reduction/Syringe Exchange Program efforts. When Greg took this role, there were only three syringe exchange programs in Kentucky. By his retirement from Kentucky Public Health in 2018, there were 43 counties with syringe exchanges.

Dr. Angela Dearinger is the Assistant Dean of Graduate Medical Education with a focus on accreditation, and the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, with a focus on Wellbeing and Professionalism, at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Dr. Dearinger is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and General Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Dearinger received a Doctorate of Medicine from the UK College of Medicine in 2001, and following a residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, she earned a Master of Public Health degree from the UK College of Public Health in 2007.

She holds faculty appointments in the department of Internal Medicine (UK COM), and the department of Health Management and Policy (UK CPH). At the University of Kentucky, Dr. Dearinger has been involved in clinical care, graduate medical and public health education, and public health services research. She was the founding director of the Kentucky Public Health Research Network, one of the first five public health practice-based research networks.

Dr. Dearinger also served as the director of the UK Preventive Medicine residency program, and as the Associate Chief of Staff for Education at the Lexington VA Healthcare System. Dr. Dearinger served as the Kentucky Public Health Commissioner in 2019-2020. Dr. Dearinger is currently the vice- president elect of the Lexington Medical Society and is a member of the KMA Commission on Public Health.

Dr. Erin Abner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology with joint appointments in the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and the Department of Biostatistics. After completing her MPH in Biostatistics in 2006, Dr. Abner joined Sanders-Brown as a researcher the same year. She then completed her PhD in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from the College of Public Health in 2013 and became an assistant professor at the college.

Dr. Abner is currently an MPI or co-investigator on multiple NIH-funded grants, including the NIH/NIA Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, where she is the Co-Leader of the Data Management and Statistics Core. She also serves on the Data Core Steering Committee and Scientific Review Committees for the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center, and she is Vice-Chair of the Clinical Trials Advancement and Methods Professional Interest Area for the International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment. Her current research is focused on assessing how medical conditions like hypertension and diabetes are related to cognitive impairment and neuropathology.

She is author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Abner teaches primarily graduate-level methods courses for the Department of Epidemiology, including Advanced Research Methods in Biostatistics and Epidemiology and Introduction to Causal Inference.

Esias Bedingar, who graduated with a Bachelor of Public Health in 2018, is currently a PhD student in the Population Health Sciences at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, based at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Global Health and Population Department. He specializes in Health Systems, Economics, and Decision Sciences.

As a doctoral student, Esias is interested in identifying health system priorities in Chad and designing community-based health insurance schemes and measuring their impact on access and quality of care. Additionally, he aims to create a think tank in Chad to generate and scale up innovative solutions to health system issues, especially supporting African governments in the reform of their health systems.

Neil Horsley is a graduate of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. During his time at the College of Medicine, he held multiple leadership positions, including serving on the National Advisory Committee of the Nexus Summit 2021 and the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative’s Student Engagement Committee. Furthermore, he served as President of both the interprofessional student collaborative Medical Rehabilitation Education Development (MedRED) and the Vascular Surgery Interest Group, a student group officially chartered by the Society for Vascular Surgery. Additionally, he presented original research at international conferences such as the Nexus Summit 2020, the American Thoracic Society’s International Conference, and the American Society of Nephrology’s Kidney Week. Finally, he was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society in recognition of clinical excellence in medicine, compassionate care, and exemplary service.

Neil is currently completing his preliminary internship in general surgery at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, where he currently serves as the PGY-1 class representative on the residency leadership council. Recently, he was co-author of an abstract presented at the Society for Vascular Surgery’s Vascular Annual Meeting 2021, and further published as a manuscript in the Annals of Vascular Surgery.

Neil received a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Kentucky. During his graduate studies in Public Health, he completed both a NIOSH/OSHA fellowship in Occupational Epidemiology at the Central Appalachian Regional Education and Research Center (CARERC) as well as a Pathways to Practice Fellowship at the Region IV Public Health Training Center at Emory University. Shortly after receiving his MPH, he was inducted into Delta Omega, the honorary society in public health.