Forum Staff Leadership
GARY A. PUCKREIN, PhD
President and Chief Executive Officer
gpuckrein@nmqf.org
Gary A. Puckrein is President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Minority Quality Forum. Dr. Puckrein also serves as Executive Director of the Alliance of Minority Medical Associations—a collaborative effort of the Asian and Pacific Physicians' Association, the Association of American Indian Physicians, and the National Medical Association. In 1998 he founded the Forum's predecessor program (the National Minority Health Month Foundation) to help communities and policy makers eliminate the disproportionate burden of premature death and preventable illness in special populations through the use of evidence-based, data-driven initiatives. Dr. Puckrein has built the Forum's capacity to house vital statistics and other information—including demographic, environmental, claims, prescription, laboratory, hospital, and clinic data—in a centralized data warehouse. Dr. Puckrein has also led the development of the Forum's health atlases to measure and forecast health status in small geographic areas, evaluate the impact of specific interventions, monitor changes in health outcomes, and provide information and analysis regarding the health of ethnic and racial minorities. Dr. Puckrein published two successful magazines:
American Visions and
Minority
Health Today. Dr. Puckrein was awarded his doctorate from Brown University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa.
Click here to view Dr. Puckrein's extended biography.
Forum Executive Staff (alphabetical)
WILLIAM A. GRIFFITH
Vice President, Development and Services
bgriffith@nmqf.org
William A. Griffith has over twenty-five years of experience in the health-care industry. He began his career as a research scientist, supervising vaccine research and development at Wyeth-Ayerst. He was awarded a patent for improving antigen yields in the development of an acellular pertussis vaccine. Before assuming his current responsibilities as Vice President, Development and Services, he worked for several major medical communications agencies as a senior account manager, providing strategic and tactical leadership for many prescription and over-the-counter brands.
CAROLE J. DeSPAIN MAGOFFIN, MSW
Vice President, Quality Measurement and Improvement
cmagoffin@nmqf.org
Carole J. DeSpain Magoffin is a twenty-five-year health-policy veteran who has led some of the nation's most innovative programs in applied health-services research and quality improvement. She has worked in hospital and integrated delivery settings, led innovative community-based quality-improvement programs, organized and led statewide business health coalitions and national employer and labor health initiatives, conducted pioneering quasi-experimental research on population-based variations in medical practice, and evaluated performance-measure translation from some of the nation's first evidence-based guidelines for clinical practice. For eleven years, Ms. Magoffin was Executive Director of the national Center for Clinical Quality Evaluation (formerly the American Medical Review Research Center), where she brought together pioneers in quality-of-care evaluation, for the first time, to collaborate on research, national educational symposia, and training programs. Previously with the nonprofit research National Pharmaceutical Council, Ms. Magoffin developed and managed patient-drug-safety and strategic quality-improvement grants and initiatives evaluating programs for computerized physician order entry and creating new medication-management measures. Ms. Magoffin was named by Health Week as one of twenty-five leading U.S. innovators in health-outcomes research and by Who's Who in American Women.
GRETCHEN C. WARTMAN
Vice President, Policy and Program
gwartman@nmqf.org
Gretchen Wartman has over thirty years of experience in health-policy analysis, strategic planning, and program design and administration. She has held key positions in both the public and the private sectors, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Missouri
Department of Health, the Comprehensive Health Planning Council of Southeastern Michigan,
the Greater Detroit Area Health Council, and the City of Detroit Department of Health. She served as the Missouri Title V director and has administered divisions with budgets of $200 million and 300 employees. Her experience in testifying before the Missouri General Assembly and in drafting budget proposals and legislation addressing critical health issues, such as family planning, and nutrition issues have afforded her a solid foundation of knowledge and experience that informs her performance in this leadership position.