Our Team

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

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 is 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.