Mary Wakefield will Keynote WIN’s 2010 Conference
Mary K. Wakefield, PhD, RN, Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), will keynote WIN’s 2010 conference on April 15, 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona. The conference theme is, “Nursing Science: Informing Practice and Driving Policy.”
Dr. Wakefield was named Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Rockville, Maryland, on February 20, 2009 by President Barack Obama. As Administrator, Dr. Wakefield oversees a staff of 1,400 employees and a $7 billion budget. HRSA distributes about 90% of its funding to expand access to quality health care through grants to US states and territories, public and private health care providers, health professions training programs and other organizations with health care providers and health professions training programs. HRSA is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Previously, Dr. Wakefield was the Associate Dean for Rural Health at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of North Dakota (UND), a tenured professor, and Director of the university’s Center for Rural Health. At UND, she also was Director of the Rural Assistance Center and administered, through the Center for Rural Health, the Critical Access Hospital Health Information Technology Implementation program.
She also has served as Director of the Center for Health Policy, Research and Ethics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and worked on site as a consultant to the World Health Organization's Global Programme on AIDS in Geneva, Switzerland. In the 1990s, she served as Chief of Staff to two North Dakota senators: Kent Conrad (D) and Quentin Burdick (D).
Dr. Wakefield is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing and was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies in 2004. In addition, she has served on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, as Chair of the National Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, as a member of President Clinton's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry, and as a member of the National Advisory Committee to HRSA's Office of Rural Health Policy.
Dr. Wakefield is a native of Devils Lake, N.D. She has a bachelor’s of science degree in nursing from the University of Mary in Bismarck and master's and doctoral degrees in nursing from the University of Texas at Austin.