Dr. Miller is the Director of STEER and Course Director for the Environmental Medicine/Border Health Elective. She is a tenured professor in environmental and occupational medicine and Vice Chair for Community Medicine and Environmental Health in the Department of Family and Community Medicine of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA). She coauthored the landmark New Jersey Report on Chemical Sensitivity, for which the New Jersey Department of Health received the World Health Organization’s Macedo Award, and a professionally acclaimed book, Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes (2nd ed. [New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998]). She also has numerous peer-reviewed publications on the health effects of low-level chemical exposures.

Dr. Miller has held appointments to federal advisory committees, including the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs Persian Gulf Expert Scientific Committee, and the National Toxicology Program Board of Scientific Counselors. She has served as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Canadian government. Board-certified in allergy/immunology and internal medicine, she holds a staff appointment at University Hospital in San Antonio.

Dr. Miller earned a B.A. in molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and an M.S. in environmental health from the University of California School of Public Health - Berkeley. After receiving her M.D. from the UTHSCSA, she completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, Texas, and her fellowship in allergy/immunology at the UTHSCSA. Prior to attending medical school, she worked as an industrial hygienist for twelve years and directed occupational health training for compliance officers at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s National Training Institute.

Mr. Perales has been an environmental medicine training coordinator for the STEER program since its inception in 1996. He is the Assistant Director for the STEER program, and is Faculty Associate in the UTHSCSA Department of Family and Community Medicine. He is the lead coordinator for the one-month environmental medicine and public health elective, spending much of his time with students in the field, teaching them about the border region, the Rio Grande, colonias, sanitation, infectious diseases, and air and water pollution.

A native of San Antonio, Perales moved to Laredo in 1990 to become the general manager for a group of family-owned restaurants. In 1991, Perales began his public health career with the City of Laredo Health Department, where he held and managed several positions including food inspector, animal control supervisor, recycling coordinator, health educator, and interim director of the continuous air-monitoring program. He is a registered sanitarian in the state of Texas. As adjunct faculty at Laredo Community College, he has taught classes in food management and food safety.

Perales earned a bachelors degree in biology from St. Mary’s University, and attended the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. In December of 2005, he received his M.P.H. degree from the University Of Texas - Houston School Of Public Health. His thesis focused on a “Retrospective Assessment of the Environmental House Call Pilot (EHC) Study," which studied the ability of trained health professionals to measure potential exposures to asthma triggers in the homes of children with asthma.

Perales holds various positions within the community. He has been appointed vice-president of the Board of Directors for the Domestic Violence Shelter, which is part of the Mercy Ministries of Laredo. He also is a member of the Board of Directors of the Mercy Ministries of Laredo, which oversees primary health care clinics, the domestic violence shelter and a food bank.

Perales is a 2007 Fellow in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Environmental Public Health Leadership Institute (EPHLI). He was an invited speaker at the 2006 Annual Conference of the National Environmental Health Association. He has also presented at six of the past eight annual meetings of the American Public Health.

He was awarded the prestigious UTHSCSA Presidential Employee Excellence in Service Award in 2003, and the Hispanic Staff Excellence Award in 2002.

Kelsey Vaughan, M.P.P., is an environmental medicine training coordinator for the South Texas Environmental Education and Research (STEER) Program. She is a Faculty Associate in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the UTHSCSA. She serves as coordinator for the one-month environmental medicine and public health elective held in Laredo. Vaughan is also responsible for program outreach, grant-writing and other development initiatives, as well as teaching several segments during the rotations.

Vaughan is a graduate of Florida International University in Miami, Florida and holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Her thesis was entitled “The Impact of the Polio Eradication Initiative on the Development of National Health Systems and Overall Public Health.” Vaughan also completed a post-graduate fellowship in border health at the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Hispanic-Serving Health Professions Schools (HSHPS). During her fellowship she studied major stressors in farmworkers in Yuma County, Arizona and worked to develop a health pormotion program at a microcredit agency serving clients in a Mexican border town. She has presented the results from her investigations at several conferences.

Vaughan is a recipient of a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to Budapest, Hungary and the winner of the Truman Scholar award for her extensive record of public and community service and outstanding leadership potential in government and the public sector.

Prior to joining the STEER program as Faculty Associate in September 2008, Vaughan worked internationally for five years in the fields of health policy and international relations. Vaughan is also active with Rotary International in polio eradication and local community service projects.

Dr. Tapia is an environmental medicine training coordinator for the STEER program, and is Faculty Associate in the UTHSCSA Department of Family and Community Medicine. She assists the month-long Harlingen elective in environmental and occupational medicine. She is active in various border health organizations, and was recently appointed member to the epidemiology subcommittee for United States – México Border Health Association.

Dr. Tapia is a native of Chicago, Illinois. She attended Autonomous University of Puebla in Mexico, where she received her MD, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University (JHSPH), in Baltimore, Maryland, where she received her Masters in Public Health. In addition to her MPH, Dr. Tapia trained in occupational health and health disparities at the JHSPH. After medical school, Dr. Tapia returned to her hometown of Chicago and worked on several programs aimed at educating Hispanic women on the need for contraception to prevent both HIV/AIDS and pregnancy. She identifies herself as a bi-cultural and bi-national public health practitioner, trained on both sides of the border.

In the summer of 2005, Dr. Tapia was among the first group from the Hispanic-Serving Health Professions Schools/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to participate in the STEER Program. In March 2006, she joined STEER as Faculty Associate in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the UTHSCSA.

Ms. Bortoni is Project Coordinator for the STEER program in Harlingen. Ms. Bortoni was instrumental in the development of the Harlingen program and coordinates the month-long Harlingen elective in environmental and occupational medicine. She has developed and taught environmental medicine modules on arsenic, asbestos and asthma to medical students and residents, and has coordinated and/or presented at major South Texas environmental health conferences and training sessions on healthy hospital environments (EPA), asthma (EPA), lead poisoning, smoking cessation and harmful household products, addressing audiences ranging from grade schoolers to health care providers and community lay health workers. Ms. Bortoni serves as the U.S. lead on the Border 2012 Gulf Task Force Environmental Education Committee, a partnership between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales of Mexico.