Johanna Derlega (Executive Host) Publisher, The Hill Johanna is publisher of The Hill. She was previously senior vice president at National Journal where she was responsible for revenue, operations and strategy for National Journal LIVE and digital and print advertising. She worked at The Hill from 2001 to 2013 where she served as a sales executive and then advertising director. She graduated from Denison University in 1997 and lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two children.
Bob Cusack (Moderator) Editor-in-Chief, The Hill Bob Cusack serves as Editor in Chief of The Hill newspaper and thehill.com. Cusack has been reporting on policy and politics in the nation’s capital since 1995. He joined The Hill as a Business and Lobbying Editor in 2003 and because the newspaper’s Managing Editor a year later. He regularly appears on MSNBC, Fox, ABC and CNN as a political analyst. Before joining The Hill, he serves as a Chief Editor at Inside Washington Publishers. He is a Member of the Screen Actors Guild and has appeared in commercials, TV shows and films.
Nadine Gracia, M.D. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health & Director, Office of Minority, Health & Human Services J. Nadine Gracia is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health and the Director of the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Office of Minority Health is dedicated to improving the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through the development of health policies and programs that will help eliminate health disparities.
A pediatrician with epidemiology training, Dr. Gracia was previously a clinical
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instructor at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and a clinical instructor and research fellow at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she conducted research on community risk factors for violence.
Dr. Gracia joined the Federal government as a White House Fellow, assigned to HHS and later to the Office of the First Lady. She served as Chief Medical Officer in the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, where her portfolio included child and adolescent health, environmental health, disaster preparedness and response, global health, and the White House Council on Women and Girls. She also led the development of the 2012 HHS environmental justice strategy.
A first-generation Haitian-American, Dr. Gracia holds a Bachelor of Arts in French from Stanford University, a medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania.
Samantha Artiga Director, Disparities Policy Project, Kaiser Family Foundation Samantha Artiga serves as Director of the Disparities Policy Project at the Kaiser Family Foundation and Associate Director for the Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. Ms. Artiga leads research and policy analysis to provide greater insight into healthcare disparities affecting underserved groups and strategies to promote equity in health care. In addition, she serves as a national expert on Medicaid and CHIP and directs work on eligibility policy at the federal and state level and outreach and enrollment as well as on emerging program issues, including implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Section 1115 waivers, and coverage and access for vulnerable populations, including homeless individuals and immigrants.
Mary McGowan CEO, WomenHeart With over 35 years of non-profit management experience, Mary McGowan currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease. As the primary representative and spokesperson for this national 35,000 member patient advocacy organization serving women living with and at risk for heart disease, McGowan ensures
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successful implementation of the strategic direction and increases WomenHeart's visibility and brand recognition among key audiences nationally.
McGowan joined WomenHeart in September of 2010 as Chief Operating Officer to ensure the organization’s long term growth and sustainability. McGowan provided leadership and day-to-day oversight of WomenHeart’s main components including fundraising, resource development, communications, marketing, programs and public policy. She created and implemented WomenHeart's National Hospital Alliance, comprised of hospitals committed to advancing women's heart health - a partnership with hospitals nationwide that seeks to ensure that women heart disease patients in every community have access to information, education and patient support services. Prior to joining WomenHeart, Mary served as Executive Director of the Allergy & Asthma Network, the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating suffering and death due to asthma, allergies and related conditions. She held various positions with the American Academy of Pediatrics during her service of 18 years. Following the events of 9/11, she was project director on multiple emergency preparedness grants focusing on the needs of children.
Ramanathan Raju, M.D. President and CEO, New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation Ramanathan (Ram) Raju, MD, MBA, FACS, FACHE is the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NYC Health + Hospitals, the largest municipal healthcare system in the nation. Dr. Raju was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in January 2014 to lead the 42,000 employees of this $7.2 billion health system, providing essential services to 1.4 million New Yorkers, including more than 425,000 uninsured, every year in more than 70 locations across the City's five boroughs. NYC Health + Hospitals includes a network of 11 hospitals, trauma centers, neighborhood health centers, nursing homes, a large home care agency, and post-acute care centers. NYC Health + Hospitals encompasses more than 70 community-based health centers, including Gotham Health, Federally Qualified Health Centers with 36 sites, OneCity Health which serves as the largest performing provider system participating in New York State’s Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment Program, and an Accountable Care Organization which is achieving superior quality scores for patient care while simultaneously reducing costs. NYC Health + Hospitals also owns and operates one of the New York area's largest managed care plans, MetroPlus Health, with nearly half a million members.
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Prior to becoming President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, Dr. Raju served as Chief Executive Officer for Cook County Health & Hospitals System (CCHHS) in Chicago, Illinois, one of the nation’s largest and oldest metropolitan hospital systems, consisting of hospitals, a public health department, an ambulatory community health network and a correctional healthcare facility. During his tenure at CCHHS Dr. Raju obtained federal approval for a Section 1115 Medicaid Waiver permitting CCHHS to enroll “New Medicaid Eligibles” beginning in 2012, 15 months before the formal launch of the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. This enrollment of formerly-uninsured individuals into the newly created “CountyCare” health insurance plan lead to a reduction of CCHHS’s structural deficit by more than $150M annually. Dr. Raju’s tenure at CCHHS was also marked by success in gaining “meaningful use” designation throughout the health system.
Dr. Raju spent 25 years as a practicing vascular and trauma surgeon in Brooklyn, before going on to serve as the Chief Operating Officer and Medical Director at NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island. In 2006 he became NYC Health + Hospitals Chief Medical Officer, Corporate Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President. During his tenure, the system achieved great successes in quality, patient safety, and healthcare data transparency and won national acclaim.
Dr. Raju is the recipient of numerous national recognitions, including Modern Healthcare’s 100 Most Influential Healthcare Leaders in 2014, 2015, and 2016, 50 Most Influential Physician Executives in Healthcare in 2013, 2014, and 2015, and Top 25 Minority Executives in Healthcare for 2012, 2014 and 2016, as well as Becker’s Top 25 Healthcare Executives to Follow on Twitter, and Chicago United’s Business Leaders of Color.
Dana Goldman Director, USC Schaeffer Center Dana Goldman is Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair & a Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy, Public Policy, and Economics, University of Southern California He also directs the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, a centerpiece of one of the nation’s premier health policy and management programs (ranked #3 in 2016 by US News & World Report). He also is a founder of Precision Health Economics, a health economics consultancy with offices nationwide.
Dr. Goldman is the author of over 200 articles and book chapters, and his
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research has been published in leading medical, economic, health policy, and statistics journals. He is a health policy advisor to the Congressional Budget Office, Covered California (the California insurance exchange), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute, and is a frequent speaker on health care issues. He is a founding editor of the Forum for Health Economics and Policy, and serves on several editorial boards including Health Affairs and the American Journal of Managed Care. He is a member of the board of directors for the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research and the American Society of Health Economists. Dr. Goldman's work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Economist, NBC Nightly News, CNN, National Public Radio, and other media. Dr. Goldman has received several prominent awards. In 2016, he was appointed a Distinguished Professor at USC and in 2009 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine). He also was a recipient of the MetLife Foundation Silver Scholar Award, honoring his research to define the value of healthy aging and medical innovations to help individuals live healthier and longer lives; the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact Prize, recognizing outstanding research demonstrating how medical research impacts the economy; the National Institute for Health Care Management Research Foundation award for excellence in health policy; and the Alice S. Hersh New Investigator Award recognizing contributions of a young scholar to the field of health services research.
Dr. Goldman is also an Adjunct Professor of Health Services at UCLA and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to 2009, he held the Distinguished Chair in Health Economics at the RAND Corporation and was the director of RAND's program in Health Economics, Finance, and Organization and the Bing Center for Health Economics. He received his B.A. summa cum laude from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.
Paul Ginsberg Director, Leonard D. Schaeffer Initiative for Innovation in Health Policy Paul Ginsburg is Director of the Leonard D. Schaeffer Initiative for Innovation in Health Policy, a collaboration between the Schaeffer Center at the University of Southern California and the Brookings Institution. Continuing to be based in the Washington, DC area, he teaches graduate health administration courses and
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conducts health policy research. From 1995 through the end of 2013 he was President of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). Founded with core support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, HSC conducted research to inform policymakers and other audiences about changes in organization, financing and delivery of care and their effects on people. HSC was widely known for the objectivity and technical quality of its research and its success in communicating it to policy makers, industry and the media as well as to the research community. It enjoys particular respect for its knowledge of developments in communities and health care markets.
Prior to his founding HSC, Ginsburg served as the founding Executive Director of the Physician Payment Review Commission (now the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission). Widely regarded as highly influential, the Commission developed the Medicare physician payment reform proposal that was enacted by the Congress in 1989. Ginsburg was a Senior Economist at RAND and served as Deputy Assistant Director at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Before that, he served on the faculties of Duke and Michigan State Universities. He earned his doctorate in economics from Harvard University.
Ginsburg is a noted speaker and consultant on the changes in the financing and delivery of health care, particularly on the evolution of health care markets. In addition to presentations on the overall direction of change, recent topics have included cost trends and drivers, consumer driven health care, provider payment reform, future of employer-based health insurance and competition in health care. As a consultant to the Bipartisan Policy Center, he has contributed to reports on reducing federal spending on health care (2010) and on a strategy to contain health care costs (2013). He has been named to Modern Healthcare’s “100 Most Influential Persons in Health Care” eight times. He received the first annual HSR Impact Award from AcademyHealth. He is a founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a Public Trustee of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, served two elected terms on the Board of AcademyHealth, served on CBO’s Panel of Health Advisors and serves on Health Affairs’ editorial board.
Mark Hlatky, MD Professor of Health Research and Policy and of Medicine, Stanford Mark Hlatky is a professor of Health Research and Policy and of medicine (cardiovascular medicine) at Stanford, as well as a CHP/PCOR fellow. His major
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interests are in outcomes research, evidence-based medicine, and cost-effectiveness analysis. He introduced data collection about economic and quality of life endpoints in several randomized trials, principally trials of therapies for cardiovascular disease. Hlatky received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania, and, after residency at the University of Arizona, studied as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco. He trained in cardiology at Duke University Medical Center, and then joined the Duke faculty. He has been at the Stanford University School of Medicine since 1989, where he is currently professor and chair of Health Research and Policy.
Amy Rudolph, Ph.D. VP & Head of Early Development and HE&OR in the US, Novartis Amy is the VP and Head of Early Development and HE&OR (Health Economics and Outcomes Research) in the US where she is responsible for the Pharma portfolio of early programs (POC thru Phase 3b) and leading the development and execution of the US HE&OR Pharma portfolio strategy. Amy has been in the industry since 1999 and previously held positions in US Medical as the medical lead for the heart failure programs and in US HE&OR as the Head of Early Products where she was responsible for leading the development of competitive outcomes-based strategies for pipeline products and the Head of CER (Comparative Effectiveness Research) where she led the development of the CER strategy for the US GenMeds portfolio. Prior to her focus on medical affairs, Amy was responsible for medical support for early development projects and licensing/technology evaluations in New Product Development Cardiovascular/ Metabolic diseases with Pfizer, Inc. and she held many advancing positions as a research scientist with G.D. Searle/Pharmacia/Pfizer, Inc. Amy has published 13 patents along with numerous articles spanning preclinical research, clinical trial development, and outcomes research.
Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-Louisiana) Bill Cassidy is the United States Senator for Louisiana.
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Bill grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and attended Louisiana State University (LSU) for undergraduate and Medical School.For nearly three decades, Bill has provided care for uninsured and underinsured patients in Louisiana’s charity hospital system.During this time, he co-founded the Greater Baton Rouge Community Clinic, a clinic providing free dental and health care to the working uninsured. Bill also created a private-public partnership to vaccinate 36,000 greater Baton Rouge area children against Hepatitis B at no cost to the schools or parents. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bill led a group of health care volunteers to convert an abandoned K-Mart building into an emergency health care facility, providing basic health care to hurricane evacuees.
In 1990, Bill joined LSU Medical School teaching medical students and residents at Earl K. Long hospital, a hospital for the uninsured. In 2006, Bill was elected to the Louisiana State Senate. In 2008, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives to represent Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District. In the U.S. House, Bill served on the Energy and Commerce Committee. In 2014, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He serves on the Health Education Labor & Pensions (HELP), Energy and Natural Resources, Appropriations, Veterans Affairs and Joint Economic Committees.
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