Joan Alker, Executive Director and a cofounder of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families (CCF) in Washington, DC, will receive Grantmakers In Health’s 2024 Andy Hyman Award for Advocacy. The award pays tribute to advocacy grantees who embody a commitment to principled action, passionate leadership to advance social change, and dedication to making progress in policy and practice despite challenging political environments. Ms. Alker was nominated by Katherine Beckmann of The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, with support from Martha Davis of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Cathy Hope of CCF. The award will be presented to Ms. Alker at the 2024 GIH Annual Conference on Health Philanthropy in Portland, Oregon.
For 25 years, Ms. Alker has dedicated her career to addressing issues that affect low- and moderate-income children and families in America. Ms. Alker co-founded CFF in 2005 as a nonpartisan policy and research center with a mission to expand and improve high-quality, affordable health coverage for those families. She has authored numerous reports and studies focused on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, including recent reports examining the role of Medicaid in rural areas, the nation’s progress on covering children, Medicaid waivers, premium assistance, and a multiyear study on Florida’s Medicaid program.
In addition to her leadership role at CCF, Ms. Alker is a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy as well as a frequent public speaker and media commentator. Ms. Alker holds a Master of Philosophy degree in politics from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science with honors from Bryn Mawr College.
In selecting Ms. Alker, this year’s committee members lauded her work to protect millions of eligible people at risk of losing Medicaid at the end of the national public health emergency. Ms. Alker has worked to educate a broad coalition of stakeholders, equip them with tools needed to help people retain Medicaid enrollment, and push for policy changes when problems arise. Due in large part to the work by Ms. Alker and her team at CCF, a major issue with state automated renewal systems was uncovered after millions of likely eligible people, mainly children, lost coverage for procedural reasons. Ms. Alker continues to push states to reinstate coverage for those impacted, remove unnecessary administrative barriers and prevent more people from erroneously losing their health coverage.