Hilary Heishman joined the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2011 and spent her first two years supporting regional health care system transformation through initiatives like Aligning Forces for Quality as a member of the Quality/Equality team. She is now a program officer for the Health Care Group, working with Quality/Equality, Human Capital, Coverage, and Pioneer teams. Her background in local public health, community health planning, and health care system improvement enable her to take a broad, multifaceted approach to new program development.
Heishman describes her role as “connecting strategies and finding synergies within the Foundation and among programs we support.” In this role, she designs or helps coordinate projects that relate to more than one of RWJF’s areas of focus. Examples include projects related to state engagement, businesses’ role in health promotion, health data systems, and strong, sustainable community systems for health.
Previously, Heishman was a prevention specialist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While on field assignment, she coordinated the development of a Community Health Improvement Plan in Manchester, N.H. At CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., she supported the Influenza Epidemiology and Prevention Branch during the spread of 2009 H1N1 Influenza. She also worked with CDC’s Healthy Community Design Program in the National Center for Environmental Health to promote and evaluate Health Impact Assessments (HIA) and with CDC’s WHO Collaborating Center for Reproductive Health on a project to improve birth outcomes in hospitals in Kabul, Afghanistan.
She has been involved with public health work or research at the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice, the Washington State Department of Health’s Public Health Improvement Partnership, and the University of Washington Child Health Institute. Heishman served in Peace Corps in Ghana, where she taught biology and later coordinated HIV/AIDS prevention programs.
Heishman received a bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Virginia and a Master of Public Health in Community Oriented Public Health Practice from the University of Washington, Seattle.
Born in West Virginia, she now resides in Princeton. She enjoys good conversation, good writing, and good food, and is generally eager to share all three.
