Dr. Mark Casey has been the Dental Director/Officer of the NC Medicaid program since 2006.

After graduating with honors from the University of North Carolina Adams School of Dentistry, and completing her residency and fellowship, Dr. Jowers came to Western North Carolina to help develop a hospital-based oral health program for Mission Hospitals. The resulting program successfully advocated for positive change and provided care to underserved people for two decades, and Dr. Jowers presented that program at the Surgeon General’s Conference in Washington, DC. She then taught with East Carolina University School of Dental Medicine where she served as Assistant Director for one of the learning centers until she was recruited to UNC at MAHEC.

Dr. Jowers’ interests include: teaching new doctors and providers to be compassionate and effective; providing the public with better education in oral health and wellness; creating new ways to reach people with information, understanding and care; and providing operating-room oral rehabilitation for people who cannot tolerate adequate outpatient dental care.

Caroline McLeod, RDH, MS, is the value-based solutions manager for CareQuest Institute for Oral Health. She supports education, research, and health improvement program implementation centered on value-based care approaches for oral health.

Caroline’s dental hygiene experience ranges from traditional practice to school-based and mobile programs, and clinical teaching. She is a member of the American Dental Hygienists Association (ADHA) and serves as a delegate for her local district of the North Carolina Dental Hygienists Association (NCDHA).

Caroline is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BS in Dental Hygiene and a Master of Dental Hygiene Education. She worked previously as a teledentistry specialist and educational trainer for MouthWatch.

Hugh Tilson is the Director of the North Carolina Area Health Education Centers (NC AHEC) Program and Associate Dean and Assistant Professor in family medicine at the UNC School of Medicine. Mr. Tilson has extensive experience in health care, including particular experience in hospital and provider issues, health policy development, and North Carolina’s Medicaid Transformation.

Over the course of more than 20 years, Mr. Tilson served in roles of increasing responsibility at the North Carolina Hospital Association. He first joined the organization in 1996 as director of legal and regulatory affairs, eventually becoming the group’s executive vice president and chief operating officer and ultimately spending a year as interim president. Upon his departure, he was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine by Governor Roy Cooper for his proven record of extraordinary service to the state. Most recently, he operated Tilson Solutions, offering strategic planning, public affairs, and other consulting services to a range of clients.

As director of NC AHEC, Mr. Tilson provides overall direction for the statewide program, oversees the organization’s budget and program office, manages health workforce planning and development initiatives across a range of health professions, fosters collaboration among academic programs and organizations across the state, and represents the organization on the state and national level.

Mr. Tilson is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and the UNC School of Law. He holds a Master of Public Health from Harvard.

Dr. Jane A. Weintraub, former Dean of the UNC Adams School of Dentistry, is widely recognized for her expertise in oral epidemiology, dental public health, and clinical research. She is a leader in research to understand and prevent oral health disparities.

Dr. Weintraub earned her Doctor of Dental Surgery from the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine in 1979. She received her graduate training in public health and dental care administration from Harvard University and practiced dentistry in neighborhood health centers in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1982, Dr. Weintraub began her career in academia at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, followed by several years at the University of Michigan.

In 1988, Dr. Weintraub began her first appointment with the UNC Adams School of Dentistry as an assistant professor in the Department of Dental Ecology. After seven years at UNC, Dr. Weintraub received an appointment at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Dentistry, as the recipient of the school’s first endowed chair, becoming the Lee Hysan Professor of Dental Public Health and Oral Epidemiology. She served as the principal investigator and director of the Center to Address Disparities in Children’s Oral Health, also known as “CAN DO.” The Center focuses on preventing early childhood caries, a condition that is difficult and expensive to treat. She also served the UCSF School of Dentistry as the chair of the oral epidemiology and dental public health division in the school’s preventive and restorative dental sciences department until her departure.

Dr. Weintraub returned to UNC in 2011 to serve as dean of the Adams School of Dentistry. During her tenure, the school’s research funding increased 50 percent and moved up from number seven to the number two ranking among dental schools in research funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research. The number of applications to the school’s Doctor of Dental Surgery program increased 32 percent.

Dr. Weintraub’s focus and research in public health dentistry helped shape scientific guidelines regarding sealants and fluoride that have become a part of mainstream dental and public health practices. She is a past president of the American Association of Public Health Dentistry and the International Association of Dental Research’s behavioral sciences and health services research group. She was one of the scientific editors and contributing authors for the first Surgeon General’s Report on Oral Health.