Kathryn D. Haslanger, Chief Executive Officer of JASA (Jewish Association Serving the Aging), has been elected to the Commonwealth Fund Board of Directors. Haslanger has spent more than 30 years in health care policy, research and delivery, holding leadership roles in organizations dedicated to ensuring access to health care for New Yorkers. JASA, a New York-based nonprofit, serves more than 53,000 older adults each year through its housing and home health divisions.
Prior to her appointment as CEO of JASA, Haslanger served as a senior vice president for Community Benefit and External Affairs at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, from 2006 to 2012. In that role, she led the development of the organization’s community benefit strategy and new community initiatives, including a Caregiver Support demonstration project.
Earlier in her career, Haslanger was Vice President for Health Practice and Policy at Maimonides Medical Center, a 705-bed nonprofit teaching hospital in Brooklyn, where she developed programs to help ensure safe transitions across care settings for geriatric patients and advanced adoption of health information technology, and designed care coordination models that colocated primary care physicians with behavioral health clinicians.
Haslanger was at the United Hospital Fund of New York from 1990 to 2005. While serving as Vice President for Public Policy, among other roles, she shaped the organization’s policy agenda and identified, developed and managed programs in the areas of health insurance coverage, managed care, health care finance and Medicaid. She also led a coalition to support Disaster Relief Medicaid in New York City after September 11, enabling 340,000 people to obtain Medicaid coverage during a four-month period of simplified eligibility.
“Kathryn Haslanger brings to The Commonwealth Fund Board a wealth of experience in turning health policy into real improvements in the health and lives of people, especially the most vulnerable,” said Board Chairman James R. Tallon, Jr., who is President of the United Hospital Fund of New York. “Her knowledge of health systems and health care delivery will be an invaluable asset as The Commonwealth Fund continues to monitor and inform the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.”
“We are very fortunate to be able to benefit from Kathryn Haslanger’s practical knowledge and forward thinking as The Commonwealth Fund continues its work toward a high performance health system, and as we face the challenges of rising health care spending and growing needs of our aging population,” said Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D.
Haslanger earned a J.D. from Boston College Law School and an M.C.R.P. from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She is a member of the New York State Medicaid Managed Care Advisory Panel, appointed by the Speaker of the Assembly, as well as the National Academy of Social Insurance and the United Hospital Fund Health Policy Forum.