UNE announces public health team for $3.6 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education grant
University of New England (UNE) has announced members of its staff who will administer a $3.6 million grant of federal USDA funds by Maine DHHS to provide nutrition education to people in Maine living with low incomes.
The grant, renewable for up to four years, was awarded by the Office of Family Independence in the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and comprises federal USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) funds.
Dora Anne Mills
The principal investigator of the grant is UNE's Vice President for Clinical Health and Director of Public Health Programs Dora Anne Mills, MD, MPH, FAAP. A pediatrician by training, Mills served as director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention for 15 years under Governors Angus King and John Baldacci.
She is widely recognized for her public health accomplishments, including reducing Maine's rate of tobacco use, teen pregnancy and childhood obesity. As Maine's CDC director, she established numerous statewide partnerships with hospitals, agencies and schools, including Healthy Maine Partnerships, which provide public health programs on a local level.
Dr. Mills received her MD degree from University of Vermont College of Medicine, and her Master of Public Health from Harvard University. Her time on this grant is pro bono from UNE.
Joan B. Ingram
Joan B. Ingram, MPH, has been named the SNAP-Ed program manager. Ingram most recently served as the Healthy Maine Partnership director for Healthy Portland at the City of Portland, Public Health Division where her work focused on nutrition, physical activity and obesity prevention using policy, systems and environmental strategies as well as direct services and educational programs.
She has experience managing state and federal funds, collaborating closely with a variety of community organizations. She also managed a Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grant that included 11 subcontracts and working with an evaluation team. She also has experience coordinating a public health emergency preparedness program, managing a breast cancer case-control study at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in addition to supervising a research team at Harvard Medical School and working on a Spanish community research team in Boston for John Snow, Inc.
She is a graduate of Bowdoin College and Yale University's School of Epidemiology and Public Health.
Anne-Marie Davee
Anne-Marie Davee, MS, RD, LD, serves as the SNAP-Ed Nutrition Program coordinator. She has worked in the health promotion field for over 25 years in a wide variety of roles. Davee worked at Hannaford for 14 years managing employee wellness programs and customer relations.
She has also worked at the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School of Public Service implementing SNAP-Ed programs, and taught Nutrition for Athletic Performance and Nutrition Applications (Biochemistry) at USM's College of Nursing and Allied Health Professions. Davee served as a school health coordinator in RSU No. 5 (Durham-Freeport-Pownal), which was funded by the Healthy Maine Partnerships. Early in her career, Davee worked as a clinical dietitian at Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway and at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. She was most recently employed as the Wellness Director for Casco Bay YMCA, and currently provides nutrition consultation services as a member of Bowdoin College's health care provider team.
Davee received her BS in food and nutrition and her MS in human development with an exercise concentration from the University of Maine at Orono. She also has an Advanced Graduate Certificate in Public Health from UNE. Her professional work has also been recognized with the US Surgeon General's Healthy Youth for a Healthy Future Champion Award.
A marathoner, Davee has been inducted into the Maine Running Hall of Fame. She has completed 20 marathons and 11 triathalons, including qualifying and competing in the first Women's Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984.
Leslie Ouellette
Leslie Ouellette, MS, RD, LD, is the SNAP-Ed Nutrition Program coordinator. Ouellette has previously worked on the Healthy Weight Awareness Campaign and the Healthy Maine Partnerships as part of the SNAP-Ed program at the University of Southern Maine, Muskie School of Public Service. In her role as a research analyst,
Ouellette was the creative director and technical administrator for social media initiatives targeted toward public health professionals and food stamp recipients. She also assisted with nutrition programming, collaborating on county Healthy Maine Partnership work plans for nutrition education programs, including garden-based nutrition education for children, Cooking Matters, food pantry nutrition education and farmers' market cooking demonstrations.
Kim Bowie
Kim Bowie is the SNAP-Ed contract manager. She is a graduate of the University of Vermont, where she studied environmental studies and art history. In her previous role at ServiceMaster Elite, Bowie gained extensive experience in a regional office overseeing all correspondence with adjusters and insurance carriers, developing relationships with vendors, scheduling appointments for residential and commercial mitigation projects and executing other administrative functions.