Ellen Robinson brings nearly 30 years of experience as a public health professional to the OPEN MINDS team. She is experienced in health communications across federal agencies, non-profit organizations, and foundations. Ms. Robinson has developed, tested, and scaled value-based care and population health initiatives that improved access to care, quality of care, reduced costs, improved patient outcomes, and advanced health equity.

Prior to joining OPEN MINDS, Ms. Robinson was the Director of Clinical and Public Health Communications at the National Association of Community Health Centers in Bethesda, MD. In this role she directed a cross-functional communications team within a $30 million cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, focused on accelerating new models of clinical care for patients. She led strategic development dissemination and evaluation of health communications resources, supporting over 300,000 healthcare professionals across 1,400+ health centers and successfully launched the Care Teams Digest newsletter.

Previously, Ms. Robinson was Director of the Health Promotion Group for IQ Solutions, a consulting firm in Rockville, Md, specializing in health communications. Here she supervised 14 public health professionals supporting nonprofit health organizations and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ms. Robinson advised the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Health and Constituent Affairs, amplifying the patient voice in the review of new treatments and led development of a new patient network website, increasing patient advocate engagement by 30%. She designed a user-friendly adverse event reporting form, honored with the 2013 FDA Plain Language Award. She also directed a $12 million communications contract for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Before this, Ms. Robinson served as Health Communications Officer at the Academy for Educational Development’s Center for Health Communication in Washington D.C., where she coordinated media-related technical assistance for the CDC program to boost influenza and pneumococcal vaccination rates among African Americans and Hispanics age 65 and older. This effort included conducting focus groups with providers, developing communication materials, and field-testing draft products. She identified innovative and effective communication and distribution channels for pilot sites to communicate with health departments and the CDC about their efforts. Ms. Robinson led day-to-day project activities for CDC brain injury awareness initiatives targeting physicians and athletic coaches.

Ms. Robinson earned a Master of Health Science, Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism (Public Relations Sequence), from the University of Maryland Honors Program. She has a Project Management Professional certification.