OU-Tulsa Professor Graduates from Prestigious Women’s Leadership Fellowship

To address injustices in health care, the Carol Emmott Foundation established its namesake fellowship for exceptional, innovative women leaders in the health care field.

Juell Homco, Ph.D., MPH, assistant professor in the Department of Medical Informatics at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine in Tulsa, graduated from this prestigious, 14-month program on March 1 as part of the Class of 2022.

“The Carol Emmott Fellowship has been more transformative than I could have imagined,” Homco said. “The experiences have furthered my desire to provide effective mentoring to help pave the way for future female leaders, encourage a more inclusive workplace, and motivate change both at an organizational and individual level.”

The fellowship is for exceptional, innovative women leaders who are making lasting change in their communities and institutions and serving as exemplary advocates for equity in the workplace and beyond. the Carol Emmott Foundation is dedicated to inclusive gender equity at the highest levels of health care leadership and governance.

“As our country continues to confront alarming injustices in all aspects of health, work and society, we need diverse women executives who will lead the health care industry,” said Anne McCune, CEO of the foundation. “We are a national movement of women and allies who are doing just that.”

As part of the fellowship, Homco developed an “impact project” to make a difference in approaches to health care. The project involved spearheading the implementation of a comprehensive, public health approach to addressing behavioral health issues in primary care practices, known as SBIRT (or screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment). This approach aims to identify patients with mental illness or risky alcohol and drug use by screening at least annually for tobacco use, unhealthy alcohol use, drug misuse and depression. Homco worked to implement the screening in more than 40 primary care practices.

“Despite agreement in the health care community that SBIRT is the ‘right thing to do,’ we identified numerous barriers to implementation that needed to be addressed,” Homco said.

In her day-to-day role at OU, Homco serves as director of research and community analytics in the Department of Medical Informatics. She leads the OUSCM’s business intelligence and analytics efforts and serves as associate director of the Oklahoma Primary Healthcare Improvement Cooperative, where she helps lead a consortium of researchers and practitioners transforming health care delivery through statewide dissemination and implementation projects.

The Carol Emmott Fellowship Class of 2022 consisted of 22 women leaders representing public and private health care systems, state departments of health, and academic medical centers from across the country. Carol Emmott Fellows are nominated by their sponsoring organizations. The competitive process includes the submission of an original impact project proposal designed to accelerate action toward equity in their institutions and communities. Fellowship recipients also receive mentorship throughout their tenure from nationally recognized senior executive health leaders.

Homco’s participation was made possible by the Lloyd K. and Peggy L. Stephens Foundation and the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

Learn more about this year’s fellows, as well as the work and mission of the Carol Emmott Foundation, by visiting carolemmottfoundation.org.