Our Team

Deb Lefever Rhizal is Lead of the Trauma-Informed Care workgroup. She is a Certified Nurse Midwife at the University of Michigan. Trauma-Informed Care at its root is respectful, empowering care. She believes the the principles are important for every patient, and absolutely essential for patients who have experienced trauma. Deb enjoys both directly caring for patients one on one and also working to create the environments and policies that allow providers to do that best. Deb joined the trauma-informed care workgroup because she believes that models of care and the psychosocial aspects of care have huge impacts, and was excited to apply quality improvement activities in this realm. For fun, Deb enjoys kayaking, gardening with her children, and collecting wild plants for food or supplements.

Melisa is the Lead for the Mom+ Centric Models of Care and Support workgroup. She is a Certified Nurse Midwife at the University of Michigan. She has a strong belief in a person’s ability to birth and has a passion for providing safe, loving, and high-quality care for birthing families.

Holly Naylor is a Co-Lead for the Home Visiting workgroup. She is the Director of Family PRevention and Education at LACASA, a nonprofit agency that support survivors of child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault. Holly received her Master of Public Administration degree from the University of South Florida and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory University. She is also a facilitator for the Stewards of Children child sexual abuse prevention workship and is a Michigan ACEs Community Champion, bringing information on neuroscience, epigenetics, ACEs, and resilience to her community. For fun, Holly loves to hike, backpack, travel, read, and garden.

Dr. Alex Peahl is an Assistant Professor and physician-investigator in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan and Co-Lead for the Perinatal Substance Use Disorder Workgroup. She is a board-certified OB/GYN, with a focus on providing patient-centered, equitable care for marginalized pregnant and postpartum patients. She is the Director of the Partnering for the Future Clinic, a comprehensive care clinic providing services for birthing people with opioid use disorder (OUD). Her overarching career aim is to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, experience, and equity of maternity care delivery by centering patients and the people caring for them in intervention design and assessment. Her research content expertise includes prenatal care redesign, peripartum opioid use, and person-centered care for birthing people with OUD. Dr. Peahl is nationally known for her work developing stakeholder-informed approaches to care delivery including the COMFORT guideline, a national guideline for person-centered, peripartum pain management for birthing people with and without OUD and the Plan for Appropriate Tailored Healthcare in pregnancy. Her work also includes the implementation and evaluation of care delivery innovations through robust Human-Centered Design and Implementation Science-informed methodologies—particularly for historically marginalized populations, including birthing people with OUD. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time outside with her family.