Cheryl Austein Casnoff
Managing Director, Healthcare Payment Innovation & Quality Division
Healthcare Delivery
Cheryl Austein Casnoff is managing director of the Healthcare Payment Innovation & Quality Division. She will lead our work for the Health FFRDC executive sponsor, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, providing strategic policy and analysis on Medicare, Medicaid & CHIP, the Healthcare Marketplace, the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality, the CMS Innovation Center, and the Office of Minority Health projects.
Austein Casnoff is a senior health policy executive with a distinguished consulting and public service career in public health and health financing policy. She brings decades of experience in government and not-for-profit organizations in such key areas as public health, heath equity , health care access and safety net providers, Medicaid, health IT, social determinants of health, population health, maternal and child health, oral health, and systems transformation.
Austein Casnoff was instrumental in creating and implementing the original State Children’s Health Insurance Program, served as a legislative fellow in the U.S. Senate, and established a new Office of Health Information Technology to promote the adoption and meaningful use of electronic records for safety net providers.
She also served in numerous senior positions at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for more than three decades, including as the director of public health policy for the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Director of CHIP and Medicaid services for children, and Associate Administrator for HRSA
After leaving HHS, Austein Casnoff was selected to be a senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago, where she directed numerous studies related to Medicaid, children, and vulnerable populations. She currently serves on not-for-profit boards on behalf of children’s health and well-being, including Action for Healthy Kids, as well as on the boards of the Medical Research Analytics and Informatics Alliance and Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s Department of Population Science and Policy. She is also an adjunct professor of clinical research and leadership at George Washington University’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Austein Casnoff earned her bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from Northwestern University and her master’s degree in public health from Yale School of Public Health.
Publications:
Role of Health Information Technology in Addressing Health Disparities
An Emergent Research and Policy Framework for Telehealth
Smoking in America: Medicaid, Quitting and Income
Improving Children’s Health and Well-Being by Integrating Children’s Programs
Quality Oral Healthcare Through Health Information Technology