| |
ANN M. MARCHETTI HAS CENTERED HER CAREER around a singular mission: better health care for infants, pregnant women, children, and youth. Nothing can be simpler or clearer than the motto for the advocacy organization she helped found in 1996, the Illinois Coalition for School Health Centers: “Keeping students healthy and ready to learn.”
As Staff Director for the Coalition and its membership of 300 student health centers, Ann led successful pushes to get school health centers included as a line item in the state budget and to improve the state grant formula for such centers. She organized students to lobby the state legislature, persuaded school leaders in Chicago to renovate existing health centers and design space to accommodate them in new schools, and enticed foundations and other private organizations to lend their support.
Today, Ann continues to advocate for the health of children and youth, as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality, a post she has held since 2005. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, NICHQ provides advocacy and assistance to help prevent and combat childhood obesity, promote the best approaches to dealing with chronic childhood illnesses such as asthma, hyperactivity, and epilepsy, and encourages early screening programs for infants.
Prior to joining NICHQ, Ann served as Program Director for the Southern Institute on Children and Families, based in Columbia, South Carolina, which advocates on behalf of lower-income children and families via policy recommendations, education, the building of partnerships and coalitions, and working to remove barriers to stable employment. Before that, she was Associate Director of the Illinois Maternal and Child Health Coalition, or IMCHC. IMCHC has fought to reduce infant mortality, obtain substance abuse treatment for pregnant women, improve funding for school-based health centers, and provide health insurance for all uninsured children in Illinois.
In describing her work, Ann has credited her success to the strength of coalitions and partnerships. Yet someone had to build those coalitions and partnerships first—a role we hope Ann will long continue to fill, on behalf of the health of children everywhere.
|
|
