Caya Lewis

Caya Lewis will coordinate HHS outreach and interaction with stakeholders on health reform. She will also advise the Office on prevention and public health policy. Before joining the Administration Lewis was the Deputy Staff Director for Health for the Senate HELP committee under the chairmanship of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. She advised Senator Kennedy on a range of issues including public health and prevention, community health centers, health professions training and health disparities. Lewis will begin work in the Office of Health Reform on May 25. Lewis graduated from Spelman College in 1994 and earned a master’s in public health from the University of Michigan. In 1997, she became the first full-time health expert at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As national health coordinator, she advised the NAACP president on health policy, and designed education and outreach initiatives, especially related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 2001, President Bill Clinton appointed Lewis to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. She stayed on the council into the early years of the George W. Bush administration, completing her term in 2003. From 2001 until 2003, Lewis also co-chaired a group called National Organizations Responding to AIDS. In 2003, Lewis left the NAACP to become a senior policy analyst at the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. She developed programs aimed at policymakers and the media to raise awareness about reproductive health.Caya B. Lewis Bio(1)Caya B. Lewis Bio Lewis was also a senior policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-policy non-profit group. She studied health-care disparities based on race.See a Powerpoint presentation here: (2)See a Powerpoint presentation here: In November 2005, Lewis became the deputy staff director for health for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which was chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy, who was one of the Senate’s biggest proponents of universal health care until his 2009 death. As Kennedy’s top health staffer, Lewis advised the Democrat on public health and prevention, community health centers, health professions training and health disparities. She also worked on legislation related to government-funded health insurance, including to Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Expanding all of those programs could be a key part of Obama’s health-care overhaul.