Yvonne Jonk, PhD
Director, Maine Rural Health Research Center
yvonne.jonk@maine.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Please see Yvonne Jonk’s publications on Digital Commons.
Yvonne Jonk joins the Maine Rural Health Research Center as Deputy Director , bringing her expertise in health economics. She also holds the position of Associate Research Professor in the graduate program in public health at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service. She was previously the Associate Director of the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Analytics at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and held a faculty appointment there. Dr. Jonk’s areas of specialization include rural health, access to care, health insurance coverage, program evaluation, and cost and cost effectiveness analyses. Her current portfolio of work with the Maine Rural Health Research Center includes research on acuity differences in newly admitted rural and urban nursing home residents and the use and cost of health services by the elderly (65+) and the oldest old (age 85+), opioid prescribing practices for rural Medicare beneficiaries, and rural non-emergent ED use. Dr. Jonk contributes on projects with the Rural Telehealth Research Center addressing the use of telebehavioral health services by the Medicaid population and the use of telehealth services within Maine using Maine’s All Payer Claims Dataset (APCD). Dr. Jonk received her PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota, where she conducted research with the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and the Minnesota Rural Health Research Center and taught in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota.
John Gale, MS
Director of Policy Engagement, Senior Research Associate; President of the National Rural Health Association
john.gale@maine.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Please see John Gale’s publications on Digital Commons.
John Gale is a Senior Research Associate and Director of Policy Engagement at the Maine Rural Health Research Center. John is past-President of the National Rural Health Association, completing his term in January 2022. John was awarded the Calico Leadership Award in 2020 by the National Rural Health Resource Center’s Technical Assistance and Services Center (TASC), which annually presents the award to an outstanding rural health leader.
John’s work focuses on leveraging resources to improve the rural healthcare infrastructure and develop rural systems of care. He serves as the principal investigator for several rural health studies as well as for the Center’s work on the National Flex Monitoring Team and the Frontier Community Health Integration Project Demonstration. His portfolio has included projects on rural health care delivery systems including Rural Health Clinics and Critical Access Hospitals; mental health, substance use, primary care, and EMS services; the community benefit, community health needs assessment, population health strategies of rural hospitals; state and federal program outcome measurement and evaluation; and Veteran’s issues. He has presented nationally and has authored and co-authored a wide range of publications.
Gale served as the President of the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) in 2021 and currently chairs their Policy Congress as part of his tenure on its Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Technical Expert Panel for the National Quality Forum’s MAP Rural Health Workgroup, the National Academy of Medicine’s Collaborative Working Group on Community Health Needs Assessments Principles and Practice, and serves as an Expert Advisor on the Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s Grand Challenges Project: Preventing Opioid Misuse in Pregnant Women & New Moms. His past service includes chairing the Policy Committee for the New England Rural Health Association, work with the National Association for Rural Mental Health, the Catholic Health Association, the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health, the National Rural Health Resource Center, the National Center for Frontier Communities, and the National Center for Rural Health Works. He recently served as a lead consultant to develop a toolkit for policymakers in developing countries on rural substance use treatment, prevention, and recovery for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Mr. Gale received his Master of Science degree from the Muskie School of Public Service’s graduate program in public health.
Brianna Holston
Research Assistant II
brianna.holstonmaine.edu
Brianna Holston joined the Maine Rural Health Research Center team as a full-time Research Assistant II in June of 2024. Prior to this, she worked as a student research assistant during her undergraduate studies in public health at the University of Southern Maine (USM). In May 2024, she received her BSPH and is currently pursuing her MPH at USM. Her work focuses on supporting the research team through literature reviews, tabulation and visualization of data, ArcGIS mapping, and formatting deliverables. Recent projects she has contributed to include chronic pain, rural poverty and health, ambulance deserts, and children’s public insurance coverage.
Celia Jewell, RN, BSN, MPH
Research Associate
celia.jewell@maine.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Celia Jewell is a Research Associate at the Maine Rural Health Research Center. Her research interests include chronic disease management, access to health care, and social determinants of health. She conducts quantitative analysis of national survey data such as the MEPS, NHIS, CHR, and ACS to examine health disparities among rural residents. Examples of current projects include characteristics of people living in ambulance deserts and rural and urban differences among people with chronic pain and disability. Ms. Jewell also employs mixed method approaches to evaluate state health improvement initiatives. Recent projects include the evaluation of three rural community health improvement partnerships focused on addressing health related social needs and a rural EMS quality improvement collaborative focused on improving clinical performance.
Before joining the Maine Rural Health Research Center full time in September of 2023, Ms. Jewell was a member of Flex Monitoring Team. In this role, she evaluated the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Grant Program and State Flex Program’s activities aimed at improving critical access hospitals in the areas of finance and operation, quality, population health, and EMS. Other relevant experience includes managing a palliative medicine practice and nursing in critical care, oncology, and community health settings. Ms. Jewell earned her BSN from the University of Maine, Orono and her MPH from the Public Health Leadership Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Heidi O’Connor, MS
Senior Data Analyst
heidi.oconnor@maine.edu
Please see Heidi O’Connor’ publications on Digital Commons
Heidi O’Connor, MS, is a Senior Data Analyst in the Maine Rural Health Research Center. Ms. O’Connor has over 20 years of experience working within the field of health services research and analytics in both public and private sectors. Ms. O’Connor’s areas of specialization include analyzing claims data, survey data, and public use data sets. Her research involvement includes topics of rural health, access to care, health insurance coverage, program evaluation, and cost and cost effectiveness analyses. Ms. O’Connor collaborates on the development of data analytic plans, writes complex statistical programs using large healthcare and public health administrative data sets, analyzes and interprets results and provides technical support to research teams. Some of her current projects include creating working datasets and analyses of Medicare and Medicaid administrative claims data to address the use of telehealth among Medicare beneficiaries by Rural Health Clinics and Federally Qualified Health Clinics, the role of tele-mental health use among rural and urban Medicare beneficiaries and Rural Health Clinic service use and reimbursement issues.
Jean Talbot, PhD, MPH
Research Associate
jean.talbot@maine.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Please see Jean Talbot’s publications on Digital Commons.
Jean A. Talbot, PhD, MPH, is a Research Associate at the Maine Rural Health Research Center. Her work with the Center has focused primarily on issues relating to behavioral health in rural populations. Recent projects have addressed: adverse childhood experiences in rural and urban contexts; tobacco use and tobacco control/prevention in rural areas; telehealth and telebehavioral health use among rural Medicaid beneficiaries; and rural Mental Health First Aid. Dr. Talbot holds a PhD in clinical psychology from Clark University, and completed clinical training at the VA Boston Healthcare System and the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry. She completed a Master’s in Public Health at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service.
Deb Thayer, MBA
Research Associate
deb.thayer@maine.edu
Deb Thayer brings her many years of experience with analytic file construction and statistical analysis of claims, surveys, and other health-related data to research projects in the Maine Rural Health Research Center and the Cutler Institute. She has worked with large healthcare claims data including Multi-Payer Claims Database, the Maine All Payer Claims Database, and the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) as part of the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP). She has completed complex statistical analyses using bivariate and multivariate techniques for several projects, including an epidemiological study of Maine Medicaid members with complex medical and behavioral health co-morbidities and a claims-based evaluation of state health reform efforts in Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont comparing state-subsidized insurance plan models.
Andrew Coburn, PhD
Research Professor Emeritus, Consultant
coburn@maine.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Please see Andy Coburn’s publications on Digital Commons.
As the founding director of the Maine Rural Health Research Center (MRHRC), one of several national centers funded by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy (HRSA), Professor Coburn (Emeritus) has a distinguished rural health research career spanning topics in rural health policy and human services. Since 1992, Dr. Coburn has led rural health studies focused on critical topics related to rural health access to care and insurance coverage, Critical Access Hospitals and state Rural Hospital Flexibility grant programs, rural patient safety and quality, rural long term services and supports and rural telehealth. Since 1993, Dr. Coburn has served on the Rural Policy Research Institute’s (RUPRI) Panel on Rural Health. With his RUPRI panel colleagues, he has authored or co-authored many reports examining the rural impact of federal Medicare, Medicaid, and other policy proposals. In 2003-4, Dr. Coburn served on the Institute of Medicine’s, Committee on the Future of Rural Health Care that published the report, Quality Through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health. He was awarded the Distinguished Researcher Award from the National Rural Health Association in 2000. Dr. Coburn received his AB from Brown University and Ph.D. from the Florence Heller Graduate School in Social Policy at Brandeis University.
