Jeanne Lambrew, PhD, is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and an adjunct professor at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Her writing, research, and teaching focus on policies to improve health care access, affordability, and quality.
Previously, she worked in the Obama Administration. In the first two years, she was the director of the Office of Health Reform at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In that role, she coordinated work toward passage and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). From 2011 to January 2017, she worked at the White House as the deputy assistant to the president for health policy. In that capacity, she helped ensure execution of the president’s health policy agenda including implementation and defense of the ACA. Her portfolio also included policy regarding Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and public health. She helped to develop positions on legislation and executive actions, direct special projects and analyses, review regulations, manage short-term challenges, set the long-term agenda, and coordinate work with key departments.
Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Lambrew was an associate professor at both the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in Austin, Texas (2007–2008) and the George Washington University School of Public Health (2001–2007). She also served as senior fellow for health policy at the Center for American Progress (2003–2007). In 1996, she was a research faculty member at Georgetown University.
Lambrew also served in the Clinton Administration in the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (1993–1995), the White House National Economic Council (1997–1999), and the White House Office of Management and Budget (2000–2001). In these roles, she helped coordinate health policy development, evaluated legislative proposals, and conducted and managed analyses and cost estimates with HHS and other relevant federal agencies. She led White House efforts to draft and implement the Children’s Health Insurance Program and helped develop the president’s Medicare reform plan, initiative on long-term care, and other health care proposals.
She received her master’s and doctoral degrees in health policy from University of North Carolina’s school of public health and her bachelor’s degree from Amherst College.
