Shelly Ten Napel*

Shelly Ten Napel is a Senior Associate at AcademyHealth, working primarily on State Coverage Initiatives (SCI), a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation designed to help state policy makers expand health coverage in their states. She also works on State Quality Improvement Institute, a program funded by The Commonwealth Fund to help state officials work with stakeholders and political leaders to improve quality and reduce costs in their health care system.

Before joining AcademyHealth in November 2007, Ms. Ten Napel held a position as Development Director for Columbia Road Health Services, a Community Health Center that serves low-income and uninsured residents of Washington, DC. Prior to her work in local health care, she served as a Policy and Program Manager for the National Rural Health Association. She did health policy work related to health insurance and rural health care quality and managed several programs, including ones related to Community Health Centers, the Medicare PACE program, Medicare Part D and rural EMS. Ms. Ten Napel spent the first four years of her career working for U.S. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, becoming a legislative assistant on health care issues. She advised the Senator on a range of health policy issues including health care appropriations, Medicare, Medicaid, insurance reform, public health, and rural health care issues. 

Ms. Ten Napel holds masters degrees in social work and public policy from the University of Michigan. She did her thesis work on health care finance in her home state of South Dakota while working for the Community HealthCare Association of the Dakotas.