Deborah Devaux, Chair
Statutory Requirement: One member, designated as chairperson, with demonstrated expertise in health care delivery, health care management at a senior level or health care finance and administration, including payment methodologies. (Appointed by the Governor)
Deborah Devaux was appointed to Chair the HPC’s Board of Commissioners in July 2022, following 40 years of health care management experience with health insurers and providers in Massachusetts. Most recently, she served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Population Health Officer at Beth Israel Lahey Health where she was responsible for payor relationships and the system’s unified performance network of physicians and hospitals to advance new models of care. Previously, she was the Chief Operating Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts, the largest insurer in the state and one of the largest non-for-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in the county. In this role, she was responsible for divisions such as Performance and Improvement Management, IT, and Member Services. In addition to holding various leadership roles during her 18-year tenure, she served on many committees including the Mass Collaborative steering committee and the Commonwealth’s Special Commission on Provider Price and Variation in 2017.
She has taught at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health as an Adjunct Faculty Member in health payment systems and strategy and as a guest lecturer at Suffolk University, Boston University Graduate School of Management, and Harvard Business School. She earned an MHA from the University of Michigan and her undergraduate degree from Western Michigan University.
Barbara Blakeney, Committee Chair, Care Delivery Transformation
Statutory Requirement: One member with demonstrated expertise in the development and utilization of innovative medical technologies and treatments for patient care. (Appointed by the State Auditor)
Barbara Blakeney, MS, RN, FNAP, is the past President of the American Nurses' Association, and has maintained a passion for providing access to high quality, affordable health care throughout her career. As a clinician, she focused her practice in poor communities, both urban and rural, and from that learned the power of resilience and the oppression of poverty. Barbara is the recipient of many awards and honors including the Pearl McIvor Public Health Nursing Award from the American Nurses’ Association, the Chief Nurse Award of the US Public Health Service,and is a Distinguished Alumni at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Barbara has served on the National Advisory Board for the Joint Commission and as a member of the advisory group for the first nursing sensitive quality indicators for the National Quality Forum. Barbara is a Distinguished Public Policy Fellow of the National Academies of Practice. Barbara has served on many boards of directors including as a founding member and current Vice-Chair of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, the American Nurses Association, the American Nurses Credentialing Center, Health Care Without Harm, Practice Green Health, and the Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics (CERTS). Barbara served as an Innovation Advisor to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Center. In that capacity, she led highly successful projects to improve care, decrease delays in care, and improve efficiency at the clinical Microsystems level. She is a co-author of a first of its kind study of equine assisted learning and Nurse Presence. (10.1177/0898010112474721 http://jhn.sagepub.com)
Dr. Matilde Castiel
Statutory Requirement: One member who is a primary care physician. (Appointed by the Governor)
Matilde "Mattie" Castiel, M.D. has always held a professional and personal mission to work with the underserved. She was born in Camaguey, Cuba and immigrated to the U.S. in 1962 as part of Operation Peter Pan. Raised and educated in California, she completed her medical training at the University of California-San Francisco after earning a B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from California State University - Northridge.
Dr. Castiel moved to Massachusetts to complete her residency at UMass Memorial and she has worked as a Board certified physician in Internal Medicine in the Worcester community for over 30 years, including working at UMass Memorial Medical Center and Family Health Center of Worcester and also as an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Family Medicine and Psychiatry at UMass Medical School.
In 2009, Dr. Castiel founded the Latin American Health Alliance (LAHA), a nonprofit organization in Worcester dedicated to combating homelessness and drug addiction and at present she continues to serve as its Medical Director.
Dr. Castiel has served on the boards of several Worcester nonprofits, including The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts, Centro Las Americas, Abby’s House, Greater Worcester Community Foundation, Quinsigamond Community College, United Way, and the Boys and Girls Club.
In September of 2015, Dr. Castiel was appointed as the City of Worcester’s Commissioner for Health and Human Services, where she oversees the divisions of Public Health, Youth Services, Human Rights and Disabilities, Veterans Affairs, and Elder Affairs, and Homelessness along with advancing important new initiatives that fall under the scope of youth violence and the current opioid crisis, mental health, reentry from jail and Covid19.
Martin Cohen, Vice Chair
Statutory Requirement: One member with expertise in behavioral health, substance use disorder, and mental health services. (Appointed by the Attorney General)
Martin D. Cohen is the president/CEO of the MetroWest Health Foundation, a community health philanthropy serving the MetroWest area of Massachusetts. Mr. Cohen has more than 30 years of experience working with federal and state policymakers to plan and implement comprehensive strategies for improving public mental health services. Prior to joining the foundation, Mr. Cohen served as the executive director of the Technical Assistance Collaborative, Inc., a national health and human services consulting firm. He previously served as a deputy program director and senior program consultant for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was a deputy assistant secretary in the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health & Human Services. He serves on the board of advisors of the David and Lura Lovell Foundation and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation. Cohen holds both a BA and MSW from Boston University.
Dr. David Cutler, Committee Chair, Market Oversight and Transparency
Statutory Requirement: One member who is a health economist. (Appointed by the Attorney General)
David Cutler, P.h.D., is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Economics at Harvard University and holds secondary appointments at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard School of Public Health. David served as Assistant Professor of Economics from 1991 to 1995, was named John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences in 1995, and received tenure in 1997. Professor Cutler was associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for Social Sciences from 2003-2008.
Honored for his scholarly work and singled out for outstanding mentorship of graduate students, Professor Cutler's work in health economics and public economics has earned him significant academic and public acclaim. Professor Cutler served on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council during the Clinton Administration and has advised the Presidential campaigns of Bill Bradley, John Kerry, and Barack Obama as well as being Senior Health Care Advisor for the Obama Presidential Campaign and a Senior Fellow for the Center for American Progress.
Professor Cutler is author of two books, several chapters in edited books, and many of published papers on the topic s of health care and other public policy topics. Author of Your Money Or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America's Health Care System, published by Oxford University Press, this book, and Professor Cutler's ideas, were the subject of a feature article in the New York Times Magazine, The Quality Cure, by Roger Lowenstein. Cutler was recently named one of the 30 people who could have a powerful impact on healthcare by Modern Healthcare magazine and one of the 50 most influential men aged 45 and younger by Details magazine.
Professor Cutler earned an A.B. from Harvard University and his P.h.D. in Economics from MIT (1991).
Timothy Foley
Statutory Requirement: One member with demonstrated expertise in representing the health care workforce as a leader in a labor organization. (Appointed by the State Auditor)
Timothy Foley is a Vice President for 1199SEIU, the state’s largest union of health care workers. He has worked for SEIU for 11 years, starting out as a political director, then being elected to a Vice President position. Mr. Foley has worked for the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Delaware and a masters’ degree in public affairs from the University of Massachusetts- Boston.
Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz, Executive Office of Administration and Finance
Statutory Requirement: Secretary of Administration and Finance (Appointed by the Governor, Ex-Officio)
Matthew Gorzkowicz is the Secretary of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance. He has more than 25 years' experience in state finance and budgeting in the Commonwealth. He has served as the Associate Vice President for Administration and Finance at the University of Massachusetts President's Office for more than a decade, where he has had a direct role in setting the University’s long-range administrative and financial goals and managed the development of an annual operating budget of $3.8 billion. Prior to UMass, Secretary Gorzkowicz worked in the Massachusetts Senate, the Department of Mental Health, the School Building Authority, and the Executive Office for Administration and Finance under Governor Deval Patrick, where he served as Assistant Secretary for Budget and then Undersecretary. He is a graduate of Northeastern University and lives in Winthrop, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.
Patricia Houpt
Statutory Requirement: One member with demonstrated expertise as a purchaser of health insurance representing business management or health benefits administration. (Appointed by the State Auditor)
For over 40 years, Patricia Houpt has advised employers, from large corporations to small business owners, on how best to structure their employee benefits offerings to achieve their financial and retention goals. She recently retired after serving as executive director at the New England Employee Benefits Council (NEEBC) for eight years. NEEBC is the region's leading source of unbiased employee benefits and total rewards education and information. Before joining NEEBC, she was the founder and president of PMH Insurance Associates, a firm dedicated to providing integrated employee benefits consulting and brokerage services to a varied client base. In addition, she founded the Sudbury Military Support Network and has served on the board of directors for the New England Society of Association Executives. She is a graduate of Denison University.
Renato Mastrogiovanni
Statutory Requirement: One member with demonstrated expertise in health plan administration and finance. (Appointed by the Governor)
Renato "Ron" Mastrogiovanni, President and Chief Executive Officer of HealthView Services, has more than 25 years of experience in management consulting, financial services and health care software design. He is responsible for developing the HealthView platform, a solution-based planning system that integrates health care cost projections, Medicare means testing, long-term care expenses and Social Security optimization into the retirement planning process. Mr. Mastrogiovanni has emerged as a widely respected thought leader in the area of health care costs projections, and has co-authored several white papers on such topics as the Annual Health Care Cost Data Report and the Impact of Medicare Means Testing on Future Retirees.
Prior to HealthView, Mr. Mastrogiovanni was the co-founder of FundQuest, one of the first fee-based asset management companies that provided financial institutions - including banks, insurance companies, and brokerage firms – with wealth management solutions. Mr. Mastrogiovanni, who designed the firm’s asset allocation and money management process, was responsible for overseeing the management over $12 billion in client assets. The company was acquired by BNP Paribas, a global leader in banking and financial services.
HealthView Services and Mr. Mastrogiovanni have been featured in several national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and MarketWatch. Mr. Mastrogiovanni received a B.S. degree from Boston State College and an M.B.A. from Babson College.
Dr. Alecia McGregor
Statutory Requirement: One member with expertise in health care consumer advocacy
Alecia McGregor, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Politics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. McGregor is an interdisciplinary scholar with expertise in health systems, health equity, and community health.
Her research examines the political and structural determinants of health inequalities and health care access in the United States. Her current work investigates the causes and consequences of urban hospital closures with a specific focus on how obstetric unit loss impacts racial/ethnic disparities in maternal health outcomes. She uses multiple approaches including largescale hospital administrative data analysis, GIS mapping, community-engaged research, and survey analysis.
From 2016 to 2021, Dr. McGregor was a faculty member in the Department of Community Health at Tufts University, where she was affiliated with the Tufts University School of Medicine, the Program in Africana Studies, and the Science, Technology and Society Program. She co-organized the inaugural Black Maternal Health Conference at Tufts and lectured in the public health series at the Concord Prison Outreach Initiative. In 2018, she began serving on the Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era, which consists of an international group of scholars assembled to diagnose the shifts in population health and policy that have occurred since the 2016 federal election. She was a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University from 2014 to 2016.
Dr. McGregor obtained a Ph.D. in Health Policy in 2014 from Harvard University, and earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Social Studies from Harvard University in 2006.
Secretary Kate Walsh, Executive Office of Health and Human Services
Statutory Requirement: Secretary of Health and Human Services (Appointed by the Governor, Ex-Officio)
Prior to her appointment as Secretary, Kate Walsh served as CEO of Boston Medical Center (BMC) Health System for nearly 13 years, navigating multiple COVID-19 surges and recoveries by expanding telehealth capabilities, bolstering regional resource management, establishing a COVID Recuperation Unit, and coordinating with state and local government. She also oversaw a Clinical Campus Redesign project at BMC with the goal of decreasing costs and modernizing facilities. Walsh also established BMC Health System’s Health Equity Accelerator in November of 2021 to transform health care and eliminate gaps in life expectancy and quality of life among different races and ethnicities.
Walsh previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Chief Operating Officer for Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, and Senior Vice President of Medical Services and the MGH Cancer Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Yale University. She has served as a member of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the board of the American Hospital Association, America’s Essentials Hospitals the Boston Public Health Commission, the Massachusetts Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, Pine Street Inn, and Yale University. She lives in Boston.
Contact for Meet the Board
Online
Phone
HPC-Info@state.ma.us