RHAU Advocacy Council Members

Rachel Craig is the Government Affairs Manager at the Association for Utah Community Health (AUCH), which is the federally recognized Primary Care Association (PCA) for the state of Utah. The association supports and represents Utah’s 14 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and other allied not-for-profit health care providers, with more than half of these health centers serving rural, frontier, or tribal communities across Utah. Rachel has been involved in numerous efforts to help support Utah’s rural health centers and the communities they serve, including securing funding for primary care loan repayment programs, expanding substance use disorder treatment and extending Medicaid reimbursement to traditional healing services for American Indians and Alaskan Natives. She currently serves as Chairperson of Utah’s Medicaid Advisory Committee (MAC). She earned a MS in Political Science from Suffolk University in 2019.

Marissa Courtad, is the Director of Nursing for Amazing Care Home Health Services in the southern Utah area. She has been a nurse for nine years and focuses on long term acute pediatric care. After starting her career in Las Vegas, she moved back to Cedar City to service the community she wanted to raise her two children in. With experience on the receiving and giving end of health care and a medically needy child of her own, her passion is advocating for and providing quality care to the most vulnerable in her community. When not working she enjoys reading, spa days at home with her kids, and sharing her love for all nerdy things, particularly science fiction!

Ms. Perisho serves as the Program Director at the Northwest Telehealth Resource Center (NRTRC), creating and disseminating resources to expand and sustain telehealth in the NRTRC’s seven-state region, serving AK, ID, MT, OR, UT, WA, and WY. She is an invited speaker across the country, sharing her deep and broad
telehealth expertise in ways that resonate with participants, including a focus on telehealth’s critical role in achieving the quadruple aim of reducing cost, improving quality, enhancing the patient experience, and bettering the work life of health care staff.

Prior to joining the NRTRC, Ms. Perisho oversaw the Telehealth Program at a rural regional hospital, managing all aspects of telehealth delivery, expansion, and improvement. Her clinical background in critical care, years of telehealth experience, and her knowledge of the needs of healthcare providers and patients translate into an intuitive approach to supporting and operationalizing telehealth best practices for healthcare. Ms. Perisho has testified in front of Congress at the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care and is pursuing a Master of Public Health as a health policy fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

Denise is a full-time faculty member in the Brigham Young University (BYU) College of Nursing. She is also a quality consultant for a rural health district in California. She has served in clinical, research, leadership, and teaching positions in a variety of healthcare and academic settings. Her clinical specialties are high- and low-risk maternal/ newborn care, healthcare quality, and rural healthcare.

He received his kidney transplant at the University of Utah hospital on Oct. 18, 2018 after being on dialysis for four and a half years. Tippets currently serves on the National Kidney Foundation Advocacy Committee and Transplant Committee.

He is also the co-founder of Dreams in Motion, which is an official 501c non-profit organization. The mission statement is to honor people of all ages who have overcome serious health challenges or who are going through serious challenges and provide them with a first-class experience at a professional or college sporting event.
He is a full-time reporter for the Uintah Basin Standard and the Vernal Express.

Dr. Michelle Hofmann is Interim Senior Associate Dean of the Southern Utah Regional Medical Campus, a planned expansion of the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah in southern Utah devoted to curating training experiences that address the region's health professional shortages, especially rural primary care physicians. She previously served four years in public health, most recently as executive medical director of the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, where she was chief medical advisor for Utah's COVID-19 response and lead physician executive in a merger of the state's two largest government agencies and the integration of the state's prison health care system into the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Hofmann has been a faculty member of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Utah since 2004, practicing as a pediatric hospitalist and planning and opening the first satellite unit of Primary Children's Hospital in Riverton in 2010. Throughout her career, she has focused on addressing health disparities and differences in access to care through value-driven healthcare innovations.