Who is a member?
Our members are the local governments of Massachusetts and their elected and appointed leadership.
Secretary Kate Walsh
Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh, a former hospital CEO and a champion of equity in health care, will be the keynote speaker at the Women Elected Municipal Officials Leadership Luncheon on Jan. 24 in Boston.
At the luncheon, held during the MMA’s Connect 351 conference, Walsh will discuss the successes and challenges she has experienced as a woman leader, and offer insights from her extensive background in the health care field.
Before taking leadership of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services in March 2023, Walsh was the CEO of the Boston Medical Center Health System for 13 years. She has also held senior leadership positions at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, and several New York hospitals.
With a bio on X that reads, “Advocate for health equity. Music, pop culture enthusiast. Mom,” Walsh hadn’t anticipated a second act in state government when the new Healey-Driscoll administration approached her almost two years ago.
“It definitely came out of left field,” Walsh said during a 2023 appearance at the World Medical Innovation Forum in Boston. “I was really planning to retire. Our first grandchild had just been born, and I was thinking, ‘I’ve got to try to see if I can develop some hobbies or some interests.’ When Gov. [Maura] Healey talked to me about this role, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a really interesting job for somebody who wants to work really, really hard.’”
Walsh went on to say that she was “absolutely delighted” that she did become the HHS secretary, a role that oversees 11 agencies, two soldiers’ homes, the MassHealth system, and 23,000 employees whose work touches roughly one in three Massachusetts residents each day.
When announcing Walsh’s appointment, Healey cited her “innovative and compassionate approach” that would prioritize the needs of patients and providers. With a stated goal of providing a safety net for the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable residents, Walsh stands on the front lines of issues including, but not limited to, child welfare, health benefits, veterans’ services, behavioral health, opioids response, and elder care.
As HHS secretary, Walsh has helped the state navigate significant health and human services challenges, including ongoing fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, the collapse of the Steward Health Care hospital system, and the crisis in the state’s emergency shelter system, which has been taxed by the arrival of thousands of migrants over the past couple years. The state has also garnered national attention for its actions to protect women’s health care following the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“We all saw our governor stand up to protect women’s health and women’s rights in a very effective way and take active steps to assure access,” Walsh said during a 2023 fireside chat with the Boston Public Health Commission.
As CEO of Boston Medical Center, Walsh led a safety-net hospital and academic medical center that provides care to underserved populations in the region, while also overseeing the BMC WellSense Health Plan, which administers health insurance for low-income patients. While there, Walsh made health equity a centerpiece of her work. In 2021, the hospital launched the Health Equity Accelerator to examine inequities in health care, studying dozens of health conditions to identify disparate outcomes by race and ethnicity and devising strategies to eliminate those gaps.
Under Walsh’s leadership, BMC programs also sought to improve patients’ lives beyond their hospital beds, with partnerships focusing on behavioral health, affordable housing, job training, food insecurity, transportation, addiction services, and other issues affecting people’s health. In 2016, the hospital opened the first comprehensive transgender medical program in the Northeast.
A Yale University graduate with a master’s degree in public health, Walsh has served on numerous boards and commissions, including the Boston Public Health Commission, the American Hospital Association, and the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.