HEALTH & WELLNESS

Deborah Allen

Deputy Director, The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health

Deborah Allen is Deputy Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, where she heads the Bureau of Health Promotion. Divisions within the bureau include Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention, Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health, Women’s Health, Children’s Medical Services, and Substance Abuse Prevention and Care. Bureau programs take a holistic approach, addressing health needs in the context of family and community. Like all programs of the Department of Public Health, they emphasize elimination of health inequality as a central goal. Dr. Allen is new to the Department of Public Health and to Los Angeles. She served previously as Director of Child, Adolescent and Family Health at the Boston Public Health Commission, as Associate Professor of Maternal and Child Health at the Boston University School of Public and as director of the Division for Special Health Needs at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. 

Dr. Allen received the MCHB Director’s Award and the Federation for Children with Special Needs Executive Director’s Award in 2016; the Coalition for Excellence in MCH Epidemiology Outstanding Leadership Award in 2014; the American Public Health Association Maternal and Child Health Section Outstanding Leadership Award in 2013; the Massachusetts Association for Behavioral Healthcare Children’s Behavioral Health Award in 2012; and the Boston University School of Public Health Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009, 2010 and 2012. She currently chairs the Maternal and Child Health Section of the American Public Health Association and serves on the board of CityMatCH, the national organization of urban maternal and child health leaders. Throughout her career, she has served on multiple leadership and advisory committees for maternal and child health programs at local, state and national levels. Dr. Allen has a doctorate in Maternal and Child Health and master’s degrees in MCH and Health Policy and Management from the Harvard University School of Public Health.

Christina Altmayer 

Vice President of Programs, First 5 LA

Christina Altmayer previously served as the Executive Director of the Children and Families Commission of Orange County, where she successfully led the organization through a comprehensive strategic planning and implementation process and oversaw a program funding portfolio of $35 million. In this capacity, Altmayer has helped lead several high impact efforts, including initiatives related to developmental screening and early intervention, kindergarten readiness, and oral health. Prior to this role, Altmayer was the President of Altmayer Consulting, Inc. and specialized in management consulting to public and nonprofit agencies.

In her consulting practice, she served as Project Director for the Pediatric Health Services (PHS) Program for the Orange County Children and Families Commission for 12 years. She also worked with numerous Children and Families Commissions throughout California, including First 5 LA, as well as the County of Los Angeles, on long-term financial planning, strategy development, program design, and implementation, and evaluation. Altmayer earned a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics, and later, a Master of Arts in Public Administration from St. John’s University in New York.

Raysa Barrientos

Family Support Counselor; Home visitor; HFA-F5LA, The Children’s Bureau

Ms. Barrientos is currently a Family Support Counselor with Children’s Bureau. Her responsibilities include case management, administration of developmental screenings, supporting her families with resources, parent education, and assisting families in crisis situations. Ms. Barrientos received her bachelor’s degree in Child and Adolescent Development. Ms. Barrientos started her role as a Family Support Counselor with Children’s Bureau in 2017, prior to her current position she has experience working as a Behavior Therapist working with children that have developmental delays. Her content knowledge is working with families and children 0 to 5. During her time with Children’s Bureau Ms. Barrientos has helped with training new Family Support Counselors and supported the team due to the expansion of the home visitation programs. Ms. Barrientos is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Social Work at California State University, Long Beach.

Jeanna Capito

Comprehensive Fiscal Analysis, The Los Angeles County Early Care and Education System

Jeanna Capito has been working in the prenatal to five fields for nearly 25 years with experience including the management of child-care programming, Early Head Start, Head Start, developmentally oriented pediatrics, national home visiting models, and child welfare programming. Capito has focused on developing state and local initiatives to increase the quality of programs, access by families, and capacity of professionals and communities through systems change across social services agencies, education systems, home visiting services, public health programming, and healthcare systems. Capito’s work has involved managing projects including the development of birth to three Early Learning Guidelines, recommending and implementing quality support structures for home visiting, crafting national scale learning communities across Head Start and child care with their respective federal offices, managing comprehensive fiscal analysis and cost modeling projects, and building a technical assistance structure for collaboration building. Capito brings a strong working knowledge of both state and local systems, including work on policies and recommendations to ensure that systems at each level inform one another and are built in response to the characteristics of each other. Capito’s consulting includes work building on her expertise in budget creation and management building build the complementary fiscal, governance and management systems that support collaboration and program implementation. 

Leslie Eichberg

Parent Coach Supervisor/ MCHA

Leslie Eichberg is a Parent Coach Supervisor for Maternal and Child Health Access (MCHA) Welcome Baby program. Leslie has worked with MCHA for over 11 years and was part of the Welcome Baby pilot program. Leslie provided shadowing and coaching other parent coaches from 14 other Welcome Baby programs as part of the Family Strengthening Oversight Entity (FSOE). Leslie provides mentoring, support and coaching for the staff she supervises to ensure the Welcome baby approach and fidelity of the program model is sustained . Leslie is passionate about breastfeeding education and providing culturally competent services to her clients and within her community utilizing a strength-based approach. Leslie is a mother and a champion breastfeeder  to her two young children Brady and Olivia. In her free time Leslie enjoys spending time with her husband Ernie and their children.

Cynthia Harding, M.P.H

Executive Member of the LA Partnership for Early Childhood Investment

Cynthia Harding is the Chief Strategist for Interdepartmental Initiatives for the Los Angeles County Department of Human Resources (DHR). In this role, she facilitates and implements transformational initiatives of importance to the Board of Supervisors, Chief Executive Office and DHR. She provides executive-level consulting services to other County Departments in order to transform service delivery, build new services or staffing models, provide oversight on executive projects, or develop new entrepreneurial services. Prior to coming to DHR, she worked in the Department of Public Health for 35 years in a variety of different public health programs, including serving as the Chief Deputy Director, Interim Director, and running Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health, Tobacco Control, and Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Programs.

Ms. Harding is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and taught as a visiting professor at the National School of Public Health in Brazil. Ms. Harding has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Community Health from Brown University, a Masters of Public Health from UCLA, and a Certificate of Management from USC’s Center of Excellence in Health Care Management.

In addition to her work for the County, Ms. Harding is a musician, playing a number of different instruments from Latin America. She performs Latin American folk jazz with her husband in the Ciro Hurtado Band and with her sister in Conjunto Jardin (pronounced con-HUN-toe har-DEEN), a group that performs the music of Veracruz, Mexico.