Southern Medical Association (SMA) requires instructors, planners, managers, and all other individuals who are in a position to control the content of this activity to disclose conflicts of interest (COI) with ineligible entities within the last 24 months of the development of this activity. All identified COIs are thoroughly vetted and mitigated prior to the release of the activity. SMA is committed to providing its learners with high quality activities and related materials that promote improvements or quality in healthcare and not a specific proprietary business interest of a commercial interest.

The following individuals, unless otherwise noted, have no relevant financial relationships to disclose.

William Ventres, MD, MA
Bill Ventres is a seasoned family physician and medical anthropologist and is the Ben Saltzman, MD, Distinguished Chair in Rural Family Medicine in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Clinically, he has more than 30 years’ experience as a community-based family doctor working in both in ambulatory and hospital settings. Dr. Ventres’ work has focused on the care of underserved and minority populations in safety-net clinics and corrections health settings. Outside of clinical practice, he has been a leader in developing family medicine internationally, investigating communication between physicians and patients, and using qualitative methods to explore practice-oriented research questions. Dr. Ventres has written extensively on topics related to social determinants of health, ethics in generalist practice, and social accountability in medical education. He has been awarded two Fulbright Senior Scholarships to teach in medicine and public health, one in Venezuela and the other in El Salvador, and has been a visiting professor at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Erick Messias, MD, PhD
Dr. Messias was born and raised in Brazil, where he completed medical school and practiced family medicine in rural areas before moving to Baltimore for residency training. He then completed a psychiatry residency at the University of Maryland, in 2001, and preventive medicine training at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in 2003. While at Hopkins he also received a master’s in public health and a PhD in Psychiatric Epidemiology. Since graduation he has held academic positions at his alma mater in Brazil, and later in Georgia and Arkansas where he was medical director of the Walker Family Clinic and responsible for the House Staff Mental Health Service at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock. Dr. Messias served as VP and Medical Director for Beacon Health Options, overseeing the mental health care received by Arkansas Medicaid recipients. Dr. Messias has over 50 publications in scientific journals, has published several book chapters, and edited a volume on schizophrenia for psychiatrists and a textbook on Positive Psychiatry, Psychology and Psychotherapy, he’s the recipient of many research and teaching awards. Dr. Messias also served as the Associate Dean for Faculty Affair for the UAMS College of Medicine and Program Director for the Baptist-UAMS psychiatry residency program, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Dr. Messias is currently the Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the St. Louis University School of Medicine.