Lauren S. Hughes, MD, MPH, MSc, FAAFP, is a practicing family physician and Deputy Secretary for Health Innovation in the Pennsylvania Department of Health. In this role, she creates and leads statewide strategies to improve health and health care delivery for all Pennsylvanians, with a focus on initiatives combatting the opioid and heroin epidemic and transforming rural health care delivery.
“The Pennsylvania Rural Health Model is designed to provide greater financial stability and predictability for rural hospitals.”
Prior to joining the Department, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the University of Michigan where she studied health services research.
“(The Pennsylvania Rural Health Model) also provides rural hospitals with a volume to value pathway to transform how to deliver care to better meet the community’s health needs.”
She holds degrees in zoology and Spanish from Iowa State University, an MPH in health policy from The George Washington University, and a medical degree from the University of Iowa.
Dr. Hughes served as the national president of the American Medical Student Association for one year prior to completing her residency at the University of Washington in Seattle.
She has volunteered through AmeriCorps in a federally qualified health center, worked for Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, and studied medicine and health systems in Brazil, Sweden, Tanzania, and Botswana. Dr. Hughes has also been a visiting scholar at the Robert Graham Center, ABC News Medical Unit in New York City, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, and The Commonwealth Fund.
In 2015, she was named a regional finalist in the White House Fellows program, and in 2016, a recipient of the Women Leaders in Medicine Award from the American Medical Student Association and the Early Career Achievement Award from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. In 2017, she was elected to a five-year term on the American Board of Family Medicine Board of Directors, and in 2018, as a Presidential Leadership Scholar.