Nancy Barrand

Since joining the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in 1986, Nancy Barrand has worked on a broad range of issues as program officer, senior program officer, and senior adviser for program development. She has helped to identify, design, develop, and manage a number of the Foundation’s programs and initiatives, including the State Initiatives in Health Care Reform Program, which helped to model coverage expansion and health insurance reforms; the Medicaid Managed Care Program, which created the Center for Health Care Strategies and the Medicaid Leadership Program; the Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) initiative which helped to build the field of health policy research; the Community Oriented Correctional Health Services (COCHS) project, which promotes connections between care in the community and care in the jail to reduce recidivism; Supportive Housing as a tool to end chronic homelessness, divert and/or aid the reentry of mentally ill individuals engaged with the criminal justice system, and help stabilize high-risk families and reduce child abuse and neglect to prevent children from needing to be placed into foster care; the Coming Home Program, which developed and spread a model of affordable assisted living for low-income rural elders; The Green House Project, which established an alternative small-house model for skilled nursing care; Playworks, which promotes play in elementary schools to increase physical activity and promote social emotional development; and Project ECHO, a transformative learning model transferring knowledge and skills to expand access to care around the globe.

As co-chair of the Foundation’s former Capital Impact Committee, she helped to deploy over $60 million in program-related investments, and continues to explore Pay for Success models as a tool to promote prevention and value-based purchasing in Medicaid.

Prior to coming to RWJF, Nancy spent four years on the staff of U.S. Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA), and before that on the staff of the California Assembly Committee on Resources, Land Use and Energy. Nancy received her MPA2 from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.