Ep. 57: Laura Howard serves as Secretary for both the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS) and the Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF).

During the span of her career, Howard has served in various roles at the then-Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS) from 1997 to 2011, including as Assistant Secretary, Deputy Secretary for Health Care Policy, and Deputy Secretary for Operations. After leaving state service in 2011, she served for three years as the Region VII Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Regional Administrator within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She also led the KU Public Management Center. In that role, Howard had the opportunity to interact with KDADS staff through the Center’s Emerging Leaders and Certified Public Management® programs.

Listen now, and learn how Secretary Howard is an innovative leader in Kansas.

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Ep. 56: Anthony Wright serves as the executive director of Families USA. Before joining the organization, Anthony Wright served 22 years as executive director of Health Access California, a statewide healthcare consumer advocacy coalition. Under Anthony’s leadership, Health Access California led state efforts to win patient protections, fight budget cuts, invest in the safety net, expand coverage, and advance equity and prevention.

Anthony led California’s coalition effort to help pass and later defend the Affordable Care Act, and for state policies to implement and improve the law to attain the biggest drop of the uninsured rate in the nation. He was responsible for numerous successful health care advocacy efforts to pass critical health reforms — such as nation-leading laws to stop surprise medical bills, ensure timely access to care, stop hospitals overcharging, and expand Medicaid regardless of age, assets, or immigration status.

A consumer advocate and community organizer quoted widely in state and national media, Anthony’s background also includes working for New Jersey Citizen Action, the Center for Media Education, The Nation magazine, and at the White House in Vice President Al Gore’s office. Raised in the Bronx, he graduated from Amherst College magna cum laude in both English and Sociology.

Listen now, and learn how Anthony is an innovative leader in healthcare.

For more about the Health Fund, visit www.healthfund.org.

Ep. 55: Dr. Sharla Smith completed her Ph.D. in Health Systems and Services Research with a concentration in Health Economics from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 2013. Sharla is a health services and systems researcher whose primary research is maternal and infant health disparities, women cancer disparities, and community engagement.

She is the co-founder of Kansas Sisters and Brothers for Healthy Infants and the founder of the Kansas Birth Equity Network. She has experience manipulating large datasets and performing descriptive, cross-sectional, and longitudinal data analysis using SAS and Stata, and conducting social network analysis. In addition, she has over four years of experience in clinical research. Dr. Smith is passionate about developing a culture of birth equity through community engagement, empowerment and education.

Sharla has experience teaching public health law, public health policy and law, introduction to public health, developing public health interventions, introduction to health policy and politics, and epidemiology. She advises students and has served as a faculty mentor on master's-level and Ph.D. research projects.

Listen now, and learn how Sharla is an innovative leader in health care.

For more about the Health Fund, visit www.healthfund.org.