Health Equity Breakfast Series

Maria Veronica Svetaz, MD, MPH, FSAHM, FAAFP is a Faculty Family Medicine and Adolescent Health Specialist physician at HCMC Department of Family and Community Medicine and an Associate Professor at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Minnesota. She is also Faculty at the LEAH (Leadership Education on Adolescent Health) at the Division of General Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota.

From Argentina, Dr. Svetaz completed her medical school, Internal Medicine, and Chief Residency at the University of Buenos Aries, Argentina. She came to the University of Minnesota in 1996 to join the Division of Pediatrics and Adolescent Health LEAH training program for a two-year fellowship. At the same time, she completed a Master in Public Health, Maternal, and Child Major and completed her Family Medicine Residency at Region's Hospital. She was a National team member that drafted the 2002 "Consensus Statement on Health Care Transitions for Young Adults with Special Needs," endorsed by AAP/AAFP/ACP/ASIN (published in Pediatrics, 2002). She designed and funded the Aqui Para Ti/Here for You youth development clinic since its beginning in 2002. This program has been funded since its inception by MDH Eliminating Health Disparities Initiatives and has received multiple National Awards, most notably the 2014 Millar Award for Innovation in Adolescent Care by the Society of Adolescent Health (SAHM). She leads another system-wide initiative, "Between US," to make Hennepin Healthcare teen-friendly, funded by MDH through an FPSP grant.

With her team, Dr. Svetaz partnered with the DHS in 2015 to pass the Behavioral Health Model in MN, anchored around Mental Health. Aqui Para Ti is now one of two MN-certified Primary Care Behavioral Health Homes. Her research includes working with bilingual youth, chronic illness and youth, issues around parenting that youth, educating practitioners to better work with minority youth, using CBPR (Community Based Participatory Research), and supporting Health Equity.

She is currently a Board Member of the Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) and the past SAHM's National Diversity Committee Chair. She considers herself a scholar at the intersection of Health Equity and Development, and she has published extensively on this.

Dr. French joined the University of St. Thomas in 2014. She graduated from the University of Illinois' Counseling Psychology PhD program and completed an American Psychological Association (APA) accredited pre-doctoral internship at the University of Maryland Counseling and Psychological Services Center. From there, she worked as an APA MFP Policy Fellow for SAMHSA and began her teaching career at the University of Missouri before moving back to her hometown, Minneapolis.

Her research, teaching, and community engagement focuses on racial and sexual trauma and recovery, specifically among Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Her recent first authored article from the Psychology of Radical Healing Collective, "Toward a psychological framework for radical healing in Communities of Color" published in The Counseling Psychologist (2020) is ranked in the top 5% on Altmetrics publication data and her research on men's sexual victimization has been featured in several news outlets including Time, US News, and Huffington Post.

Her training interests focus on multicultural liberatory counseling development and social justice pedagogy. She also has a private practice, offering psychotherapy for adults, specializing in racial and sexual trauma recovery. Dr. French has held multiple leadership roles in APA and she has been recognized with awards throughout her career, including the APA Minority Fellowship Program, APA Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology, APA Divisions 17, 35, and 45, the Minnesota Psychological Association, and the Minnesota chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists.