Posted on September 7, 2010

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Announces 2010 Health Policy Fellows

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has announced six health professionals as this year's Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows.

Established in 1973, the program awards fellowships of up to $165,000 so that fellows can leave their academic settings and professional practices for a year and use their academic, public health, clinical, and/or community-based experience to provide health policy leadership in the nation's capital. A three-month orientation program is followed by a nine-month assignment in which fellows work in a congressional office or the executive branch. Throughout the year, assignments are supplemented with health policy leadership development activities and media training.

This year's fellows are Echezona Ezeanolue, associate professor and director of pediatric research at the University of Nevada School of Medicine; Jonathan Jaffery, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and chief medical officer for the Wisconsin Medicaid program; Matthew Levy, associate professor of clinical pediatrics and medical director of community pediatrics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine; Paul Lipkin, director of the Center for Development and Learning at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and associate professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Rhonda Ozanian, senior policy analyst to the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force; and Janice Phillips, manager of nursing research at the University of Chicago Medical Center and assistant professor and research associate at the Center for Clinical Cancer, Genetics, and Global Health.

"This is an incredible time for health policy at the federal level," said RWJF Health Policy Fellows program director Marie Michnich, who also directs the health policy education programs and fellowships for the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. "With the move toward healthcare reform, the issues and the opportunities have never been greater. Our program brings policy makers together with health professionals to create policies that will improve the health of Americans."