Hartford Foundation's Amy Berman Receives 2016 Terrance Keenan Leadership Award in Health Philanthropy

 

Amy Berman, Senior Program Officer at The John A. Hartford Foundation, today received the Grantmakers In Health's (GIH) 2016 Terrance Keenan Leadership Award in Health Philanthropy. The award pays tribute to health grantmakers whose work is distinguished by leadership, innovation, and outstanding achievement. 

 

A passionate visionary, advocate, and intellectual, Ms. Berman directs the Foundation's work to develop, test, and spread innovative models of care that improve health outcomes for older adults while lowering health care costs and increasing value in our health care system. 

 

While at the Foundation, Ms. Berman has nurtured a dynamic portfolio of nationally influential programs including Carealign, the Care Transitions Intervention, Care Management Plus, the IMPACT model for depression care, Project BOOST, and Guided Care. The evidence base created by these programs has had a profound impact on the care older adults receive, and Ms. Berman has worked tirelessly to ensure this knowledge benefits as many patients as possible.

 

Ms. Berman's influence is particularly evident in the palliative care field. Her dedication, guidance, and willingness to take risks have greatly contributed to the availability of palliative care services throughout the country. Working with the Center to Advance Palliative Care, she has helped ensure such services are available in more than 90 percent of large hospitals.

 

Ms. Berman's drive to improve quality of care is also deeply personal. In 2010, she was diagnosed with Stage IV inflammatory breast cancer. Since then, she has openly shared her personal experience with advanced illness. With the goal of improving the health care system by informing providers, patients, policymakers, and other funders, Ms. Berman has regularly contributed to The John A. Hartford Foundation's Health AGEnda blog and has been featured in national stories about serious illness and patient engagement in decision-making, including articles published in Health Affairs and the Washington Post.

 

"As a grantmaker, Amy Berman is bold, strategic, a problem solver, an opportunity creator, and a connector extraordinaire," said Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, President of The John A. Hartford Foundation. "In all of the grant projects she has developed, and in her contributions serving on national committees and through presentations and writing, she makes the idea of person-centered health care real." 

 

Before joining the Foundation, Ms. Berman served as the Nursing Education Initiatives Director at the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at New York University's College of Nursing. Prior to that, she worked in home health care administration. She has served on the New York State Department of Health's Emergency Preparedness Task Force and is a member of the Aging Task Force for Healthy People 2020, the Gerontological Society of America, and the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau. Ms. Berman earned a BS in nursing from New York University, a BS in health care administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Geriatric Scholar Certificate from the Consortium of New York Geriatric Education Centers.

 

GIH established the Terrance Keenan Leadership Award in 1993 in honor of Terrance Keenan and his more than 40 years of services and contributions to health philanthropy. GIH will present the award to Ms. Berman at its annual conference in San Diego, California.