Faculty

Medical

Veena Channamsetty, MD, is the Chief Medical Officer of Community Health Center, Inc. In this role, she is responsible for the clinical leadership of a large staff of medical providers and caregivers for Connecticut’s largest Federally Qualified Health Center. She is responsible for the delivery of evidence-based medical standards, the medical staff recruitment and retention, and provider affairs. Dr. Channamsetty oversees the clinical and non-clinical training, orientation, and onboarding for all new CHC medical providers. With the vision of a stable and solid medical staff, Dr. Channamsetty coordinates clinical care with provider professional interests, promoting provider well-being and work-life balance, overseeing clinical and non-clinical affairs of Physicians, APRNs, and Physician Assistants. Dr. Channamsetty is the President of the Medical Staff and the Chair of the Medical Quality Improvement Committee. She is a clinical preceptor for the APRN residency.  Dr. Channamsetty works closely with the chiefs of Behavior Health, Dentistry, and Nursing to promote interprofessional and team based care. She is responsible for ensuring Joint Commission and Patient Centered Medical Home compliance throughout CHC.

Behavioral Health

R. Timothy Kearney, PhD, earned his BA with a combined major in Psychology and Spanish Literature at Yale University and pursued graduate work at Fuller Theological Seminary where he earned his MA (Theology) from the Graduate School of Theology and his PhD (Clinical Psychology) from the Graduate School of Psychology. He has also completed the post graduate Primary Care Behavioral Health training program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester. He is a licensed psychologist in Connecticut. He joined the Community Health Center behavioral health staff in 1998. He is the author of Caring for Sexually Abused Children: A Handbook for Families and Churches (Intervarsity Press, 2001). In addition to administrative and clinical leadership of the Behavioral Health programs at CHC, Dr. Kearney supervises and trains postdoctoral psychology residents, co-leads psychotherapy groups with students and younger staff to train them in the provision of child group therapy, and provides direct client care with the clinical focus of providing care to children and adolescents and their families, especially those impacted by medical illness, trauma, and abuse.

Dental

Sheela Tummala, DDS, MPH is the Chief Dental Officer for the Community Health Center, Inc. Prior to joining CHC in 2006, Dr. Tummala worked as a general dentist at Meri Care Dental in Meriden and also served as an onsite dental director since 2006. Dr. Tummala also worked in her own private practice in Woodbury until 2015. In her role at CHC, Dr. Tummala treats patients, supervises staff, and maintains the goals and needs of the staff. Dr. Tummala also serves as the Dental Quality Improvement Chairman for CHC, where she is responsible for conducting meetings, writing policies, maintaining quality improvement, and assessing the needs for quality improvement from the patient and staff perspective. Dr. Tummala has served on a number of committees such as the Electronic Dental Records Committee where she was responsible for the creation of templates in open dental and consent forms. Dr. Tummala, who has a passion for research, was involved in the research study “Side effects of Triazolam in Children” published in American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry 21:1, 1999. She is also involved in organizing many events such as the Mission of Mercy events at CHC. Dr. Tummala completed her DDS degree at New York University and her General Practice Residency at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, N.Y. She also completed her MPH at Western Kentucky University. 

Weitzman Institute Disclosure Statement

It is the policy of the Weitzman Institute to ensure that Continuing Education (CE) activities are independent and free of commercial bias. To ensure educational content is objective, balanced, and guarantee content presented is in the best interest of its learners' and the public, the Weitzman Institute requires that everyone in a position to control educational content disclose all financial relationships with ineligible companies within the prior 24 months. An ineligible company is one whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. Examples can be found at accme.org.

Faculty participating in a Weitzman Institute-sponsored activity must disclose to the planning committee and audience all financial or other relationship(s) with ineligible companies.