Our Team
Our Team
The Health Initiative team has dedicated our lives to creating productive change and to disrupting the healthcare system. We bring decades of experience and expertise in the healthcare system and in ensuring patients have access to the basics they need to be healthy, including safe housing, healthy food, and well-paying jobs.
We have led and worked in federal healthcare agencies, health policy organizations, community-based clinics, healthcare delivery systems, and quality improvement organizations. THI’s board brings additional expertise in health policy, healthcare delivery, financial systems, and philanthropy. THI is committed to working with and through others, with a set of partners who are crucial to achieve our collective aim of increased investments in the known drivers of health.
Rebecca Onie,
Co-Founder
Rebecca Onie is Co-Founder of The Health Initiative (THI), a national campaign to catalyze a new conversation about and increased investments in health, including access to healthy food, safe and affordable housing, and well-paying jobs. Previously, Onie co-founded Health Leads to enable physicians and other healthcare providers and caregivers across the country to address these fundamental drivers of patients’ health. Health Leads armed thousands of healthcare institutions with the tools, technology, analytics, and best practices to address their patients’ resource needs, ultimately serving as a model for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation’s Accountable Health Communities pilot, the first federal pilot to screen and navigate patients to basic resources. Onie is a MacArthur “Genius” awardee, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and an Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellow. She has received the APHA Avedis Donabedian Quality Award; Network for Excellence in Health Innovation “Innovator in Health” Award; Robert Wood Johnson Young Leader Award; and Forbes’ Impact 30 Award for leading social entrepreneurs. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Rocco Perla,
co-founder
Rocco Perla is Co-Founder of The Health Initiative, a campaign catalyzing a nationwide effort to spur a new conversation about – and increased investments in – health. Perla previously served as President of Health Leads, which enables physicians and other healthcare providers across the country to address the fundamental drivers of patients’ health, such as healthy food and safe housing. Prior to this, he was part of the leadership team that established the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, where he was responsible for developing the national learning system to test new ways to pay for and deliver care through the Affordable Care Act and oversaw the $1 Billion Partnership for Patients and the Million Hearts Campaign. Perla was a Merck Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and received the Impact Article of the Year Award from the National Association for Health Care Quality; the Federal Executive Board Award for Outstanding Creativity and Innovation; and the Deming Medal by the American Society for Quality. He has served as Assistant Professor at the UMass Chan Medical School with a joint appointment in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and Family and Community Health. He received his Ed.D from University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Christina Gunther-Murphy, Chief Campaign Officer
Christina Gunther-Murphy oversees THI’s evolving work to achieve its aim of increased investments in health. Prior to THI, Gunther-Murphy was a Vice President at the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI), which uses improvement science to advance and sustain better outcomes in health and healthcare across the world. She has expertise in leveraging a wide variety of methods to achieve large-scale change, including managing IHI’s 5 Million Lives campaign—a patient safety movement which engaged 4,000 hospitals in implementing evidence-based practices to reduce mortality and unnecessary harm—and advising Community Solutions on their 100,000 Homes and Built for Zero efforts—100 cities and counties committed to measurably ending homelessness for entire populations. Prior to joining IHI, she directed a national initiative focused on preventing, identifying, and treating children with unhealthy weight at NICHQ. She holds an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Program Team
Becca Gastin, Director of Partnerships
Bethlihem Gebremedhin, Associate Manager, Special Projects
Owen Harrelson, Project Manager
Natalie Ortiz, Research Associate
Operations Team
Dan Hall, Associate Director, Campaign Operations
Hope Royer, Executive Assistant
Cathryn Wile, Chief of Staff