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Staff

 

Enrique Martinez-Vidal, Director

Enrique Martinez-Vidal is a Vice President at AcademyHealth and the Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Coverage Initiatives (SCI) program. Enrique joined AcademyHealth in February 2005 as the deputy director of SCI.

He is currently also the project director for the State Quality Improvement Institute, a project of the Commonwealth Fund to assist states that are ready to make substantial commitments to quality improvement and to facilitate development of concrete action plans for further progress. In addition, he has worked on various state-related projects under a contract with the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Previously Mr. Martinez-Vidal was the deputy director for performance and benefits at the Maryland Health Care Commission, an independent state agency. There he was responsible for the oversight of Maryland's small group insurance market reforms; the annual evaluation of Maryland's mandated health insurance benefits; the collection and public dissemination of quality and performance information for hospitals, nursing homes and health plans; providing primary assistance on all legislative issues; and working on numerous other projects related to the affordability of health care, quality improvement, and patient safety.

Mr. Martinez-Vidal was formerly a policy analyst with the Maryland Department of Legislative Services for five years. During that time he staffed the House Economic Matters Committee and was involved with a number of health-care related issues. He has a B.A. in political science and international studies from Dickinson College and a master's degree in public policy from Georgetown University.

 

Isabel Friedenzohn, Deputy Director

Isabel Friedenzohn is the Deputy Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Coverage Initiatives (SCI) program. During her tenure with SCI, she has been grant coordinator for the program and also the monitor for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) State Planning Grant contract at AcademyHealth, which ended in 2007. She has been intimately involved in writing five State of the States publications and was the managing editor for the 2006 and 2007 issues. Most recently, Ms. Friedenzohn implemented the Coverage Institute, SCI's new technical assistance offering, to provide support to 12 states that are considering substantial and comprehensive health reform and to help their state officials develop the capacity to understand the implications of different programmatic decisions and how those may impact the existing system.

Ms. Friedenzohn joined AcademyHealth in October 2001 after receiving a Master's of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

 

Shelly Ten Napel, Senior Associate

Shelly Ten Napel is a Senior Associate at AcademyHealth, working on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Coverage Initiatives (SCI) program.

Before joining AcademyHealth in November 2007, Ms. Ten Napel held a position as development director for Columbia Road Health Services, a Community Health Center that serves low-income and uninsured residents of Washington, DC. Prior to her work in local health care, she served as a policy and program manager for the National Rural Health Association. She did health policy work related to health insurance and rural health care quality and managed several programs, including ones related to Community Health Centers, the Medicare PACE program, Medicare Part D and rural EMS. Ms. Ten Napel spent the first four years of her career working for U.S. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, becoming a legislative assistant on health care issues. She advised the Senator on a range of health policy issues including health care appropriations, Medicare, Medicaid, insurance reform, public health, and rural health care issues.

Ms. Ten Napel holds masters degrees in social work and public policy from the University of Michigan. She did her thesis work on health care finance in her home state of South Dakota while working for the Community HealthCare Association of the Dakotas.

 

Imran J. Mahmud, Program Assistant

Imran Mahmud is a Program Assistant at AcademyHealth, working on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Coverage Initiatives (SCI) program.

Before joining AcademyHealth in June 2010, Mr. Mahmud was a health legislative strategy intern at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC. In this role, much of his work involved researching government programs and the implications of the forthcoming health care reform bill.

Mr. Mahmud has a B.S. in Public Health from The George Washington University in Washington, DC.