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Office of the Commissioner


Commissioner
Heather Howard
New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services

On November 29, 2007, Governor Jon S. Corzine nominated Heather Howard to be the 14th Commissioner of the Department of Health and Senior Services. She was confirmed as Commissioner by the Senate on January 8, 2008.

An attorney, Howard comes to the post with 15 years of policy experience at the state and federal levels.  She has expertise in the areas of children and family issues, women’s health, hospital and physician regulation, health programs for vulnerable populations, and efforts to expand health insurance coverage.  She also has litigated health industry antitrust matters.
 
Before her nomination as Commissioner, Howard was Governor’s Corzine’s Policy Counsel for two years.  She advised on all policy issues and directed the policy staff.  She worked closely with the Governor’s Commission on Rationalizing Healthcare Resources, a group studying the state’s financially stressed health care delivery system, and played a key role in the successful effort to protect NJ FamilyCare, the state’s health insurance program for low-income children and families, from federal cuts.

From 2001 to 2006, Howard worked in Washington, D.C., for then-Senator Corzine. She served as Legislative Counsel, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Planning, and finally as Chief of Staff.  Howard advised the Senator on policy development, legislative strategy, constituent services, communications and personnel.  She worked on legislation to expand access to prenatal care, increase federal funding to New Jersey health care providers, and protect the state’s Pharmaceutical Assistance to the Aged and Disabled program when the federal Medicare prescription program was implemented.

Before joining the Corzine staff, Howard worked in the White House where she served as Associate Director of President Bill Clinton’s Domestic Policy Council, and Senior Policy Adviser to First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Howard earned her J.D. cum laude from New York University School of Law. Following law school, she served a judicial clerkship with Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.  Howard was then accepted into the U.S. Department of Justice’s Honors Program, where she worked as a trial attorney in the Antitrust Division’s Health Care Task Force.   

From 1990 to 1994, she was legislative assistant and policy adviser to Congresswoman Nita Lowey of New York.

Howard also earned a B.A. cum laude in History and Spanish from Duke University.  She lives in Princeton with her husband and son.

 


Department of Health and Senior Services

P. O. Box 360, Trenton, NJ 08625-0360
Phone: (609) 292-7837
Toll-free in NJ: 1-800-367-6543
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Last Modified: Monday, 20-Oct-08 12:04:22