Hilary Heishman

Hilary Heishman joined the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in 2011 and spent her first two years supporting regional healthcare system transformation through initiatives like Aligning Forces for Quality. As a senior program officer, she has expertise in a variety of topics, with special attention to improving and connecting systems that enable people to be healthy. She embraces the aspect of her role that she describes as “finding connections among projects that RWJF supports.”

Hilary's background in local public health, community health planning, and healthcare system improvement enable her to take a broad, multifaceted approach to program development. She has developed programs related to building communities’ capacities to improve health, helping healthcare organizations address patients’ social circumstances and play a strong role in improving community health, improving the use of health data and information systems, identifying healthcare payment methods that support community health, and helping people learning from one another in networks. For example, she is a senior program officer for grants that support Health Leads, Data Across Sectors for Health, Payment Reform for Population Health, and 100 Million Healthier Lives.

Previously, Hilary 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, she supported the Influenza Epidemiology and Prevention Branch during the spread of the 2009 H1N1 influenza. She also worked with CDC’s Healthy Community Design Program to promote and evaluate Health Impact Assessments (HIA) and with CDC’s WHO Collaborating Center for Reproductive Health to improve birth outcomes in hospitals in Kabul, Afghanistan.

She has been involved with public health work and 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. Hilary served in the Peace Corps in Ghana, where she taught biology and coordinated HIV/AIDS prevention programs.

Hilary 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, N.J. She enjoys good conversation, good writing, and good food, and is eager to share all three.