

Staff

Alan Weil
Director
Alan Weil, JD, MPP, is senior vice president, public policy and director of the AARP Public Policy Institute (PPI), where he oversees public policy research across PPI’s issue areas of financial security, health security, and family, home and community. Before joining AARP, Weil served ten years as editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, the nation’s premier peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Previously Weil was the executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), director of the Urban Institute’s Assessing the New Federalism project, and executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and has been a member of the Medicaid & CHIP Payment & Access Commission (MACPAC), a trustee of the Consumer Health Foundation (now if, a foundation for radical possibility), a member of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid & the Uninsured, a member of the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, and a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Health Care Services.

Ruth Katz
Executive Director, Health, Medicine, & Society Program
Ruth Katz, JD, MPH, is executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Health, Medicine & Society Program, which brings together groups of thought leaders, decision-makers, and the informed public to confront US health challenges and pursue solutions to them. She also serves as vice president of the Aspen Institute and directs Aspen Ideas Health. Prior to joining the Aspen Institute, Katz served as chief public health counsel (Democratic staff) with the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the US House of Representatives. She has also been Walter G. Ross Professor of Health Policy of the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health, dean of that school, and associate dean for administration at Yale University School of Medicine. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she holds a law degree from Emory University and a Masters of Public Health from Harvard University.

Katya Wanzer
Manager of Operations, Health, Medicine, & Society Program
Katya Wanzer, MPH, is manager of operations for the Health, Medicine & Society Program at the Aspen Institute. Her extensive background in public health includes pursuing AIDS research in San Francisco at the height of the epidemic, conducting environmental and occupational health monitoring immediately after the 9/11 attacks in New York City, advocating for adoption of health information technology, and promoting emergency response services for the Virginia Department of Health. Wanzer earned an MPH from Hunter College in New York City.