Diane K. Bollman Chapter Advocate Award

Elena Lopez-Gusman, JD

Ms. Lopez-Gusman is the executive director of California ACEP and has been with the organization since 2007. She directs the chapter’s advocacy efforts including multiple litigation efforts, regulatory advocacy, and legislative advocacy, also working as a registered lobbyist. Additionally, she oversees the chapter’s two sponsored political action committees and their strategic efforts to elect and reelect champions of emergency medicine.

She brings more than 20 years of legislative, political, and policy experience to her advocacy on behalf of emergency physicians and their patients. She spent 10 years working in the California State Legislature for Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and Sen. Joe Dunn.

She worked on a variety of legislative policy areas and developed an expertise in immigration and health care issues. She first began her collaboration with California ACEP when staffing legislation to ensure that California’s tobacco litigation settlement funds would be spent on health care.

Ms. Lopez-Gusman has extensive campaign experience dating back to 1998 when she served as volunteer coordinator for the Assembly Democratic Campaign. She subsequently worked on Measure H in Orange County to dedicate local tobacco settlement funds to health care; Proposition 16 of 2000—the Veterans Home Bond Act; Proposition 61 of 2004—the Children’s Hospital Bond Act; Proposition 67 of 2007—the Emergency and Medical Services Funding; and the state controller’s race in 2006.

Prior to her service in the legislature, she was a legislative staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and supervised its Sacramento office.

Ms. Lopez-Gusman earned her BA in sociology and her JD from the University of California, Davis, and is a member in good standing of the State Bar of California and the American Association of Medical Society Executives.

Outstanding Contribution in Research Award

Rebecca M. Cunningham, MD, FACEP

Dr. Cunningham is director of the CDC-funded University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center, interim vice president of research for the University of Michigan, professor in the University of Michigan’s department of emergency medicine, and professor in health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in in Ann Arbor.

Dr. Cunningham has a distinguished career in researching injury prevention, particularly in youth and young adult populations. Her focus on brief interventions in the emergency room and health systems has included using technology to overcome barriers to reaching youth to prevent substance use and violent injury (SafERTeens intervention/National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism), and longitudinal studies of youth seeking ED care with assault injury (including firearm injury)/ National Institute on Drug Abuse. She is the principal investigator of the 2017 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development–funded Firearm-Safety Among Children and Teens Consortium (FACTS). This grant brings together firearm researchers across the country to build capacity in this field.