Catherine Hess, Managing Director for Coverage and Access

Catherine Hess is Managing Director for Coverage and Access, working with a group of staff in developing and implementing initiatives focused on public and private insurance coverage, access to care and health care reform. She serves as co-director for Maximizing Enrollment: Transforming State Coverage, a $15 million program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and Co-Expert Director for the RWJF sponsored State Refor(u)m web-based platform for exchange on health care reform. She also oversees longstanding work funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to provide assistance and report on state children’s health insurance programs, as well as an Atlantic Philanthropies project to address children and health care reform. She was principal investigator for the National Workgroup to Integrate a Safety Net into Health Reform Implementation, supported by The Commonwealth Fund, and is a senior advisor on a federal cooperative agreement focused on Medicaid and the safety net. Catherine earlier served as the first executive director of the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, a position she held for 14 years. Afterward, she worked as a consultant to national organizations and federal and state agencies. In the 1980s, she served as director of the policy office for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Division of Family Health, where she played an instrumental role in developing the nation’s first state maternity care insurance program, Healthy Start. Catherine holds teaching appointments at both Johns Hopkins and George Washington Universities’ schools of public health. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts from the University of Rochester and has a master of social work from the Boston University School of Social Work.
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