PROJECT STAFF
- Toni Wall- CSHN Director and Project Director
- Debbie Gilmer- Project Co-director
- Mallory Cyr- Youth Coordinator
Collaborators:
AAP- American Academy of Pediatrics
http://www.aap.org
MSN- Maine Support Network
http://www.mainesupportnetwork.org
MPF- Maine Parent Federation
http://www.mpf.org
CCI- Center for Community Inclusion
http://www.ccids.umaine.edu
Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (formerly the Maine Bureau of Health)
http://www.maine.gov/dhhs/boh/
Staff Bios
Toni Wall
CSHN Director and Project Director
PI, Healthy & Ready to Work National Resource Center
Director, Children with Special Health Needs
Division of Family Health, Maine Department of Health & Human Services,
Augusta, ME
207-287-5350
toni.g.wall@maine.gov -or- toniwall@hrtw.org
Expertise: Title V CSHCN policies and programming, transition, and, youth advisory councils.
Toni Wall is the Maine Title V CSHCN Director and Director of HRSA/MCHB’s Healthy & Ready to Work National Resource Center. She has extensive experience serving as Project Director on state and federally-funded initiatives including the Maine Adolescent Transition Partnership and Maine Works for Youth! (Maine’s MCHB-funded HRTW Phase I and Phase II initiatives), statewide Traumatic Brain Injury projects, and the recently-funded MCHB Integrated Services Grant. She supports Maine Family Voices, the Rural Medical Home Improvement Project, and the Family to Family Support Network. She serves on a number of state and federal interdepartmental committees and boards and is the AMCHP representative to the National Initiative on Physical Fitness for Children and Youth with Disabilities. Under Ms. Wall’s leadership, Maine is credited with being the first state in the nation to have a Title V Youth Advisory Council as well as to have a youth with disabilities participate as a reviewer for the MCHB Block Grant. She holds a BA in Environmental Science/Biology and a Masters in Public Administration.
Deb Gilmer
Project Co-Director
Co-Director,
Healthy & Ready to Work National Resource Center
Maine Support Network, telework office: Orono, Maine
P 207-866-4007
C 207-852-0992
debbiegilmer@hrtw.org -or- gilmer@maine.edu
Expertise: Interagency partnerships, youth involvement in policy and programming, and inclusive education.
Deborah Gilmer, MEd. serves as Associate Director of the Maine Support Network, Assistant Director of the Western Maine Partnership at the University of Maine at Farmington and Director of the Center for Self Determination, Health & Policy. She is the Project Co-Director for the HRTW National Resource Center and the Interagency Partnership Lead. She is also Co-Director of Integrated Community Services for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs in Maine, Maine’s Integrated Services grant.
Ms. Gilmer has been engaged in policy development and systems change in Maine for more than twenty years working in partnership with state and community agencies, providers, families and youth, was Project Director or Project Co-Director of Maine’s HRTW Needs Assessment and Phase I and Phase II initiatives, Director of Maine’s Champions for Progress State Incentive project on medical home and co-team leader for Maine’s Medical Home Learning Collaborative initiative. She is co-directing the Maine State GEAR UP program supporting economically disadvantaged youth and their families to aspire to post secondary education for the Maine Department of Education. She served on the Governor’s Task Force on Mental Retardation, the Integrating Adult Services Sub-Committee of the Governor’s Unification Council in 2003 and Integrating Services Work Group of the Commissioner’s Implementation Advisory Committee in 2004 addressing the merger of the two state agencies into the DHHS. She is a member of the Society for Adolescent Medicine (SAM) and is widely recognized for her commitment to family and youth-centered services as well as translating policy to practice in the community as demonstrated by her recent nomination for a Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership Award.
She was a high school special education teacher, regional transition coordinator and has directed a wide variety of state and federally-funded initiatives in the areas of health care, school reform, student centered planning, employment and transition.
Mallory Cyr
Youth Coordinator
Youth Coordinator,
Healthy & Ready to Work National Resource Center
Maine Support Network
(207) 576-1980
mallorycyr@hrtw.org
Mallory Cyr serves as the Youth Coordinator for the HRSA/MCHB funded projects coordinated at the Maine Support Network: the Healthy & Ready to Work National Resource Center and the NFI Integrative Services grant for Maine. She teleworks from her home in Sabattus, Maine.
In this capacity she assists in the development of materials for youth and young adults with special health care needs, provides technical assistance to State Title V CSHN Programs in support creating and strengthening state Youth Advisory Councils, identifies strategies to increase youth involvement at the policy level and on the individual level, and develop a national network of youth leaders who have expertise in health care policy and practices.
Mallory was part of the key staff that created the first State Title V CSHCN Program’s Youth Advisory Council in the country; YEA ME (young educators and advocators of Maine). She served as the Chair on this YAC for 8 years and currently now oversees the regional coordinators for the Youth and Family Advisory Committees.
Her advocacy and public awareness activities began when she was a sophomore in high school and continued throughout her college years. She has assisted in the planning of many events on transition for youth with medical challenges, and has spoken at national conferences for medical professionals.
A recent graduate from the University of Maine at Farmington with a degree in Creative Writing (2007), she is working on her autobiography discussing the challenges (and successes) of living and thriving with with a rare digestive disorder and growth impairment. In addition to her awareness activities, Mallory has a love for the theatre and has performed in several theatrical fundraisers for Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, including two star studded performances at Lincoln Center.