Board Of Trustees
Douglas Kamerow, MD, MPH (chair) is chief scientist for Health Services and Policy Research at RTI International, and chair of the CFAH Board of Trustees. He is the former director of the Center for Practice and Technology Assessment at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, where he developed and led a multi-program national initiative to improve health care quality through the development and implementation of evidence-based tools and research. He conceived and supervised creation of the Evidence-Based Practice Centers program and the National Guideline Clearinghouse. In 2001, he joined RTI, where he leads research on health-related behaviors, preventive medicine, evidence-based care and improving the quality of health care. Previously, Dr. Kamerow spent 20 years in the U.S. Public Health Service, initiating and leading key federal research, health policy, public health and clinical programs. A family physician, he is a graduate of University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and holds a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University. He did his undergraduate work in government at Harvard College.
Maulik S. Joshi, DrPH (treasurer) is president of the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) and Senior Vice President for Research at the American Hospital Association (AHA). As the independent, not-for-profit research affiliate of the AHA, HRET conducts applied research in improving quality and patient safety, reducing costs, eliminating health disparities, improving leadership and governance, payment reform and care coordination. Before joining HRET, Dr. Joshi served as president and chief executive officer of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) and was previously a senior advisor for the office of the director at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He also served as president and chief executive officer of the Delmarva Foundation. During Dr. Joshi's tenure, the organization received the 2005 U.S. Senate Productivity Award, the highest level award in the state of Maryland, based on the national Malcolm Baldrige criteria for performance excellence. In addition, Dr. Joshi was vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), co-founder and executive vice president for DoctorQuality, senior director of quality for the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and executive vice president of The HMO Group. Dr. Joshi has a doctorate in public health and a master's in health services administration from the University of Michigan and a bachelor of science in mathematics from Lafayette College. Dr. Joshi is co-editor of The Healthcare Quality Book: Vision, Strategy and Tools, a graduate-level textbook (Health Administration Press, second edition) and author of Healthcare Transformation: A Guide for the Hospital Board Member (CRC Press). 
Patricia Barrett, MHSA, joined NCQA in 2008 as the Vice President for Product Development. In this role, she is responsible for exploring new product concepts and evolving existing products to meet the needs of a changing health care environment. Prior to joining NCQA, Ms. Barrett was the lead consultant for General Motors on managed care. As HAP Associate Vice President and the Program Director for the HAP/GM Managed Care Consulting Team, she was responsible for evaluating the quality and efficiency of GM's managed care offerings nationally and for establishing supplier development activities with all of GM's HMOs. In this role, she participated on the NCQA Purchaser Advisory Council, the National Business Coalition on Health eValue8 Steering Committee and served as an author and scorer for the eValue8 RFI. Ms. Barrett joined Health Alliance Plan (HAP) in Detroit, Mich. as an Analyst in the Quality Management Department in 1993. During her 14 years with HAP she served in a variety of roles including Manager of Research, Analysis and Program Development, Acting Director of Managed Care Information and Director of Quality Management. As Director of QM, she had responsibility for all clinical quality improvement and disease management programs as well as HEDIS production and NCQA accreditation for the organization as a whole. In addition, Ms. Barrett was a member of the NCQA HEDIS Policy Panel and served as the Chairperson for the Measurement Committee of the Michigan Quality Improvement Consortium (MQIC). Ms. Barrett attended the University of Michigan receiving her Bachelors degree in Sociology and a Masters Degree in Health Services Administration from the School of Public Health.
Carol Cronin has more than 20 years experience working on health care and aging issues, with a particular interest in consumer health information and Medicare. She is currently Executive Director of a Maryland-based non-profit organization- the Informed Patient Institute (IPI) (www.informedpatientinstitute.org)- whose mission is to improve the quality of health care by helping the public make more informed decisions about their care. Since 2000, she has worked as a consultant and advisor to a number of non-profit organizations, foundations and government agencies. These include the California Endowment, AARP, the Delmarva Foundation, the federal Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Markle Foundation, the National Health Council, the Health Insurance Reform Project at the George Washington University, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California Healthcare Foundation. Previously, she was first director of the Center for Beneficiary Services at the Health Care Financing Administration. Prior to HCFA, she was senior vice president for Health Pages, a New York City-based consumer health information Web site primarily made available through large employers. Ms. Cronin holds an A.B. degree from Smith College and two Masters degrees in Social Work and Gerontology from the University of Southern California.
Chris Gibbons, MD, MPH, is the associate director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute and the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Community Health. Dr. Gibbons holds faculty appointments at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Public Health. His interests focus on demonstrating the value of uniting information and communications technologies with culturally appropriate clinical and behavioral interventions to improve health outcomes and reduce disparities in chronic disease among African-American populations. He has been named a Health Disparities Scholar by the National Institutes of Health/National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities. Dr. Gibbons received his training in Preventive Medicine, General Surgery, cancer epigenetics research and a Master of Public Health degree all from Johns Hopkins University. He received his medical degree from the University of Alabama School of Medicine.
Janet Heinrich, DrPH, MPH, is the Senior Policy Advisor for Health Policy R&D. Prior to joining Health Policy R&D, Dr. Heinrich directed the public health work at the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO). At GAO, she directed studies on many topics including oversight of the drug review process at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), review of human subject protection policies at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the FDA, and analysis of vaccine shortages, health care workforce supply, and hospital preparedness for bioterrorism and other emergencies. She was Deputy Director of the National Institute of Nursing Research at NIH. Her work focuses on interactions with the Federal Public Health Service Agencies, such as NIH, the FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She also has expertise in issues that involve the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and works extensively on performance measures and quality of care initiatives in both the public and private sectors. Dr. Heinrich has worked with a variety of public and private organizations, including voluntary home health care agencies and official public health organizations. Dr. Heinrich has a DrPH from Yale University, an MPH from Johns Hopkins University and a BSN from the University of Michigan.Gail Hunt is president and CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving, a nonprofit coalition of more than 40 national groups, which conducts national research, outreach and public awareness programs to support family caregivers of older and disabled people. Until 1996, Ms. Hunt was president of Gibson-Hunt Associates, a Washington management consulting firm specializing in aging issues. In 1993, working with the American Occupational Therapy Association, she developed an award-winning video and training package for Alzheimer’s caregivers, “A Part of Daily Life,” that described how to structure the home environment to support family life with a person with Alzheimer’s. She also was a senior manager at KPMG Peat Marwick in Washington. Her work on eldercare has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Working Woman, American Demographics, the New York Times, Parade magazine, CNN, MSNBC and other media. Ms. Hunt attended Vassar College and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English. She also attended the International Graduate Institute at Oxford University in England.
Craig Stoltz has been a leader in communicating health information to the public through traditional and digital channels for over a decade. As editor of the Washington Post's Health section, he directed the newspaper's coverage of personal and public health issues. While there he was a speaker for NIH's Medicine in the Media program, which trains journalists to interpret medical research studies. After leaving the Post, Stoltz served as editorial director of Revolution Health, a digital health information portal aimed at consumers. There he developed original content on major conditions, diseases and lifestyle issues, working closely with a team of physicians and integrating content from Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School and the Cleveland Clinic. The site was an early adopter of social media, launched with physician blogs and moderated patient communities. From 2007 through 2009 Stoltz operated Stoltz Digital Strategies, a small media consulting firm. His blog, Web 2.Oh...Really?, a skeptical look at social media, was named a Top 25 blog by Time.com. For three years he served as a reviewer for Health News Review, an award-winning non-profit group that evaluates the quality of health and medical news. Stoltz joined the federal government in 2009.
Kalahn Taylor-Clark, PhD, MPH, leads the Racial and Ethnic Healthcare Equity Initiative in the RWJF funded High Value Health Care Project within the Engelberg Center of Healthcare Reform at the Brookings Institution. This Initiative seeks to inform regional, state, and national practices for collecting and reporting race/ethnicity data and measuring health care equity. Prior to joining Brookings, she was a W.K. Kellogg Health Scholar at Harvard University, where her areas of research included public health communication in politically and socially marginalized populations and minority voting on healthcare issues. In 2005-2007, Dr. Taylor-Clark was a lecturer at Tufts University, where she taught "Women and Health" and "The Politics of Health Disparities." Before teaching at Tufts, Dr. Taylor-Clark held a position as a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Project on Biological Security and the Public, where she focused on risk communication in communities of color during public health emergencies. Selected first-authored publications include, “News of Disparity: Content Analysis of News Coverage of African American Healthcare Inequalities in the USA, 1994-2004” (2007), “Communication Inequalities on Cancer and the Environment: Implications for Communicating Environmental Risk in Low-SEP Populations” (2007), “Confidence in Crisis: Understanding Trust in Government and Public Attitudes toward Mandatory State Health Powers” (2005), and “African Americans’ Views on Health Policy: Implications for the 2004 Elections,” published in Health Affairs in 2003. She completed a PhD in Health Policy and Political Analysis from Harvard University, and an MPH and BA (in International Relations and French) from Tufts University.
