Helen L. Smits, M.D.
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| Dr. Helen Smits was a policy shaper at National Institute of Health and helped develop an AIDS plan in Mozambique. Throughout her career Helen Smits has been a strong advocate for quality health care for all. From the early days of community health care programs designed to care for the underserved to the African initiatives designed to prevent the spread of AIDS, Helen’s compassion and caring have enabled her to touch multiple continents and make a difference. Helen became involved with health policy and health care management early in her career. In 1977, she became the Director of the Health Standards and Quality Bureau, Health Care Financing Administration, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services where she looked for ways to assure high quality while improving the processes by which health care is delivered and managed. The Bureau set the standards for medical providers for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. In 1993, she became one of the few women to head a federal health bureaucracy when she became Deputy Administrator and Chief Medical Officer of the Health Care Financing Administration at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC. As Deputy Administrator, Helen was appointed by HHS Secretary Donna Shalala to oversee a review of the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland to assess options for privatization. After the review was completed and a list of recommendations to bring Clinical Center at NIH into the 21st century was presented, Helen was chosen to serve on the Board of Governors of the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health. In 2002 Helen was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to become a visiting professor and lecturer at the Department of Community Medicine at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique where she also volunteered in the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation to help write the Ministry of Health’s plan to scale up AIDS treatment. In 2003 Congress passed the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, which established a five-year, $15 billion initiative to help countries around the world respond to their AIDS epidemics. The initiative is generally referred to as PEPFAR, or the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Helen served as Vice Chair of this evaluation and in 2007 reported , in part, that the program supported antiretroviral therapy for more than 800,000 adults and children, HIV tested and counseled nearly 19 million people. It is estimated that, today, over 50,000 people are still living because of the work done in 2003! In 2008, Helen joined the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s Medical Research Program and is a senior consultant to the African Health Initiative whose purpose is to support operations research related to AIDS care and treatment in Africa. | |||||||||
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