President

Dr. Cyril Blavo is a Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at the College of Osteopathic Medicine (COM) at Nova Southeastern University (NSU), Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is a practicing board certified Pediatrician and Director of the NSU-COM Master of Public Health Program. Dr. Blavo has been teaching, training and mentoring health professions students for three decades. He is a seven-time recipient of the Golden Apple Award for excellence in teaching medical students, and recipient of the Life Time Tribute from alumni of the NSU-COM. His dedication to scholarship and service has earned him numerous awards such as the Heart Award for Exemplary Service to Children in Broward County, the Arnold Melnick Child Advocate Award, the Leonard Tow 2012 Humanism in Medicine Award by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, in recognition of his exemplary compassion, competence and respect in the delivery of care, and a Distinguished Service Award by IHI in 2015. He serves on several boards and councils including the Broward Regional Health Planning Council, Advisory Council on Genetics and Newborn Screening for the Florida Department of Health, Board of Directors of the Broward County Pediatric Society, and Advisory Council for the Preventive Medicine Residency Program of the Palm Beach County Health Department. Dr. Blavo is President of International Health Initiatives, Inc., a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, develop, and support health promotion and disease prevention initiatives for underserved populations, domestically and globally. He is currently engaged in global health capacity building projects including a Breast Cancer initiative in Zambia, a Cataract prevention initiative in India, a Hurricane preparedness program in Haiti, a children’s Cancer initiative in Rwanda, a Malaria control initiative in Sierra Leone, a medication access initiative in Ghana, earthquake relief in Nepal, and a water supply, purification, and storage project for an orphanage in Kenya. Cyril’s commitment to service is evidently his passion and his life mission.

Executive Vice President

William D. Kirsh DO, MPH is Chief Medical Officer and has been with Sentry Data Systems, a Business Intelligent Software Solution since the organizations inception. He has been a leader in Sentry’s proprietary ASP software solution’s development that provides health care institutions an immediate avenue of generating new revenue or saving on existing expenses in clinical and pharmacological services. The software application provides the hospital the ability to aggregate all divergent data from multiple software systems; financial, clinical, pharmacy and accounting information into a comprehensive longitudinal electronic patient specific record. The solution is able to bench mark and identify patterns of data limitations, clinical/medication utilization, contract compliance, regulatory compliance and third party payment information against Sentry’s 10 million individual historical patient records.

Dr. Kirsh joined Sentry after founding and developing eAppeals, LLC a transaction based company involved in software development to provide a simplified process of handling insurance claims appeals for both healthcare providers and consumers. eAppeals was established in 1999 as the first company to electronically process disputed health care appeals nationally to all third party payors.

He has had extensive experience in the health care insurance industry as the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer for Foundation Health Plan of Florida were he had various responsibilities for management oversight of operational, fiscal, medical and marketing/sales activities for various healthcare products and services.
 
Dr. Kirsh was Vice-President of Medical Affairs and Quality Assurance at Physician Corporation of America Inc., with accountability for more that 400,000 patients in the State of Florida. During his tenure at P.C.A., he instituted a coordinated, comprehensive sub-acute care delivery system and integrated case management services.

Dr. Kirsh is a published author and member of several medical boards, he holds degrees from Florida State University, Nova-Southeastern University of Health Sciences, and The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene & Public Health. Dr. Kirsh was residency trained at The Johns Hopkins University and actively practices medicine at “South Beach Preventive Cardiology”, a group practice focused on the application of clinical prevention.

He holds appointments as clinical facility at Nova Southeastern University, College of  Osteopathic Medicine and in the School of Public Health. He is also Chairman of the Board of the Association of Retarded Citizens of South Florida and founding member and Executive Vice President of International Health Initiatives.

William D. Kirsh DO, MPH has over 20 years of medical and business experience. His expertise includes software development, hospital negotiations, high-risk provider contracting, comprehensive patient risk profiling systems development, provider network development, and utilization management and continues quality improvement activities. Has successfully marketed disease-specific medical intervention programs to various managed care organizations and continues to clinically practice the full range of acute care and ambulatory medicine.

Vice President, Programs

Dr. Kenneth Johnson received his medical degree at Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Ft. Lauderdale Florida.  Dr. Johnson is currently Associate Professor of OB/GYN and Public Health at the College.  He also serves as Director of the NSU-COM Women’s Health Center at the Davie Campus.  Dr. Johnson completed his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbus Medical Center a teaching affiliate of Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago.  Dr. Johnson is in active practice at the University and is the immediate past Vice Chief of the Chris Everet Women’s Hospital at the Broward General Medical Center.  He is a former captain in the United States Air Force, and currently serves on the Governor’s task force on maternal death in Florida.  Dr. Johnson has been principal investigator on numerous clinical research trials in women’s health including studies on Hormone Replacement therapy, contraception, female sexual dysfunction, osteoporosis and urinary incontinence.  He is currently Co-investigator on Project Choices and Project Healthy Choices, two studies funded by the Centers for Disease Control to reduce Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Vice President, Public Relations

Bismark Ashiagbor joined the IHI team as Executive Director to provide leadership toward the advancement of the organizations mission and strategic goals. Bismark works as part of the management team of the Ronald McDonald House of Fort Lauderdale, a nonprofit organization. Bismark holds a Masters of Business Administration in Health Services from Nova Southeastern University and a Bachelors of Science in Biochemistry from St. Edward's University in Austin, TX.

Vice President, Operations

Dr. Grace Sidberry is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Plantation, Florida. She has over 15 years of experience providing therapy for individuals, couples and families. Dr. Sidberry believes that individuals who are healthy emotionally take better care of their physical health. She is therefore committed to helping individuals and couples work through challenging life situations that can produce feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. She is especially concerned with teaching couples skills to help them build a strong marriage and a healthy family life.