Meet the HPD Program Advisory Committee Members

Charles Bacchi  
President & CEO of California Association of Health Plans

Charles Bacchi (He/Him) is the President & CEO for the California Association of Health Plans (CAHP) representing 45 health plans providing coverage to over 25 million Californians.  For the last 15 years Mr. Bacchi served in leadership positions at CAHP, leading the Association’s advocacy before the California Legislature, Covered California, Department of Health Care Services, and the Department of Managed Health Care. A veteran of California’s political community, Mr. Bacchi has over 27 years of experience in California’s legislative, advocacy, and trade association arenas. Bacchi played a prominent role as the health plan voice on a range of issues, including translation of the ACA into state law, the start-up of Covered California, and the expansion of the state’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal.

Steffanie Watkins
Senior Vice President, Association of California Life and Health Insurance Companies    

Steffanie Watkins has more than 28 years of experience in government, primarily focused in the legislative and state branches of government. She began her career as an intern for Assemblyman George House, and later moved to Sacramento upon graduating from college and began working for Senator Roy Ashburn as his Executive Secretary. Over her tenure with Senator Ashburn, she worked her way up as a Legislative Aide, Legislative Director and finally as his Capitol Director until her departure in 2007. During her time in the legislature, she specialized in pension reform, health and human service issues focusing on welfare reform, and children’s issue. In 2007, Steffanie left the Legislature and was appointed by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Assistant Secretary of Legislative Affairs at the Labor and Workforce Development Agency. There she focused on issues related to labor and employment, representing the Department of Industrial Relations, the Employment Development Department, the Workforce Investment Board, and the Employment Training Panel. Steffanie joined ACLHIC in April 2011 as the Legislative and Regulatory Advocate for Health Policy, covering a wide variety of critical health care issues. Steffani received her Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Business from California Polytechnic State University.

Janice Rocco
Chief of Staff, California Medical Association

Janice Rocco is Chief of Staff at the California Medical Association (CMA) and is leading CMA’s work on matters related to health care access, coverage and reform, as well as issues affecting the business of health care. Janice previously served as CMA’s Vice President of Health Care Access and Coverage and as Interim Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Political Operations. Prior to joining CMA, Janice was the Principal Consultant for the California State Senate’s Pandemic Emergency Response Committee.  From 2011 to early 2020 Janice was California’s Deputy Insurance Commissioner overseeing health policy and reform at the California Department of Insurance (CDI). There, she led CDI’s successful efforts to implement the Affordable Care Act and was a key leader in developing California’s related state health care reform laws. Before joining CDI, Janice spent 12 years working for the California State Assembly where she served as the Chief of Staff for two different Assemblymembers. Prior to her work in the State Capitol, Janice worked for Planned Parenthood, and she has served on the Board of Directors of various women’s political organizations over the last thirty years.

Amber Ott
California Hospital Association

Amber Ott provides analytical expertise to support policy and advocacy objectives benefiting California hospitals and health systems. She represents CHA with state agencies and other stakeholders where technical knowledge is needed. Amber has been recognized for her invaluable technical expertise on policies regarding data collection, management, use, access, and the development of public information. Most recently, as California has come together to combat the global pandemic, Amber has worked closely with state health leaders to establish a real-time data collection tool for the tracking of COVID-19 spread. This has proven to be a key resource for state leaders, public health officials, and clinicians, as they respond to changing conditions as they happen

Emma Hoo
Director, Pay for Value, Purchaser Business Group on Health

Emma Hoo focuses on value-purchasing, accountability, quality measurement and data initiatives at the Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH), including PBGH’s Health Value Index and advanced primary care measures, use of patient-reported outcomes measures and prescription drug value-purchasing strategies. Current activities include mental health initiatives, digital health tools assessment and efforts to develop health-related quality of life and pain measures in oncology care.  She has managed joint purchasing and performance measurement initiatives for health plan, pharmacy benefit, retiree and disease management services on behalf of PBGH members.  She has also evaluated and implemented data analytic solutions on behalf of large purchasers to improve health care performance reporting. Emma has authored papers on provider network management and design, consumer-directed health plans, ACOs and quality reporting requirements for health insurance exchanges. She has represented self-funded purchasers on the State All Payer Claims Databases Advisory Committee appointed by the US Government Accountability Office to advise the Department of Labor.  She currently serves on the National Quality Forum Measures Application Partnership and Cost and Efficiency Measures Committee. Previously, she was director of operations for a Northern California medical group, with responsibility for contracting, data analysis, and information systems.  Hoo received her Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies from Harvard University.

Ken Stuart
California Health Care Coalition
Committee Chair 

Ken Stuart (He/Him) retired in April 2019 after a career of over 46 years serving in administration and consulting for employee group benefit plans. From April 1990 – March 2019 he was employed as the administrative manager of the San Diego Electrical Health & Welfare Trust, San Diego Electrical Pension Trust and the NECA/IBEW Drug-Free Workforce Program.  Previously he was employed for 16 years by one of the largest third-party administration and consulting firms in the US servicing numerous Taft-Hartley, single employer and municipal employee group benefit plans and is presently providing private consulting services. His professional focus was in controlling employer plan sponsor provided group healthcare costs in the best interest of all participants and contributing employers by utilizing cost-containment programs and plan design methods to lower overall costs. The scope of his work included in-house claims administration and closely managing the performance of all involved health plans and service providers to ensure their level of service was of the highest quality and that costs/fees were reasonable.

John Kabateck
National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB)

After graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in English, Mr. Kabateck went to work for Gov. Pete Wilson as his appointments secretary responsible for finding the best qualified people for more than eight state agencies. His reputation for spotting talent caught the attention of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who selected him to serve as his director of external affairs. He also served as chief of staff to a legislative leader in the State Capitol. In addition to his service to two governors, Mr. Kabateck later became vice president and senior legislative director for the California Restaurant Association. Soon after, he was recruited by America’s voice of small business, the National Federation of Independent Business, as its California state director. Today, his Kabateck Strategies clients include not only NFIB, which brought him back to lead its efforts, but also a half dozen other groups dealing with everything from technology and public safety to veterans and health care.

Joan Allen
Government Relations Advocate, Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West

Joan Allen (She/Her) is a Government Relations Advocate for SEIU United Healthcare Workers (SEIU-UHW), where she has worked in various roles to improve California’s health care system for the benefit of patients, consumers, and health care workers. She currently covers issues related to health care, health insurance, COVID-19 response, and elections. SEIU-UHW represents approximately 100,000 California health care workers and advocates for Healthcare Justice on behalf of both workers and patients. Allen previously worked for the City and County of San Francisco Department of Adult Probation, focusing on policies related to reentry services and improving coordination between the department and other aspects of the justice and public health systems. She earned a Master of Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Rice University.

Anthony Wright
President, Western Regional Minority Supplier Development Council 

Anthony E. Wright has served as Executive Director for Health Access, California’s health care consumer advocacy coalition since 2002. Health Access leads state efforts to win patient protections, fight budget cuts and invest in our safety-net, expand coverage and advance equity and prevention. Wright led California’s coalition effort to help pass, and later defend, the Affordable Care Act and state laws to implement and improve it, and campaigns to successfully pass numerous health reforms, including first-in-the-nation laws to ensure timely access to care, to stop hospital overcharging of the uninsured, and to expand Medicaid regardless of immigration status. As a consumer advocate and community organizer, Wright has been widely quoted in state and national media. He has also worked for New Jersey Citizen Action, the Center for Media Education, The Nation magazine, and in Vice President Gore’s office in the White House. Bred in the Bronx, Wright graduated from Amherst College magna cum laude in both English and Sociology. He lives in Davis with his wife Jessica, and his son Jefferson.

William Barcelona
Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Director, San Francisco Department of Public Health

William “Bill” Barcellona (He/Him) is the Executive Vice President for Government Affairs for America’s Physician Groups. APG represents over three hundred physician organizations across the United States that deliver health care to patients enrolled under Medicare, Medi-Cal, and employer-sponsored coverage plans. Bill has been an attorney since 1985 and has served on the DHCS SAC and Managed Care Advisory Boards and helped to form and implement the Symphony and Senator provider registries. He currently serves on the Health Care Payments Data Advisory Board and the CHHS Data Exchange Framework Stakeholder Advisory Sub-Committee. He has worked in healthcare for over 20 years and previously served as a deputy director at the Department of Managed Health Care. Bill is also a graduate and former faculty member of the USC Price School MHA program.

Cheryl Damberg
Director, RAND 

Dr. Damberg is the Director of RAND’s Center of Excellence on Health System Performance and holds the Distinguished Chair in Healthcare Payment Policy at the RAND Corporation.  Dr. Damberg has more than 25 years of experience in the areas of health economics and public policy, with particular emphasis on measuring provider and health system performance, examining the impacts of health care delivery and payment reforms, and understanding changes in health care markets and their impacts on cost and quality.  As an expert in performance measurement, she has worked to develop measures of health equity and provide guidance to policymakers on how to redesign value-based incentive programs to advance health equity. She is an international expert in pay for performance (P4P) and value-based payment (VBP) reforms and has advised Congress, federal agencies, the UK National Health Service, and the governments of Germany and South Korea on embedding performance-based incentives into provider payments schemes.  Dr. Damberg was appointed in 2021 by the Comptroller General of the U.S. to serve on the Secretary of Labor’s State All Payer Claims Databases Advisory Committee.  In 2019-2020 she served as Vice-Chair of the California Healthcare Payments Database (HPD) Review Committee to establish a plan for California’s APCD.

Isaac Menashe
Deputy Director for Evaluation & Research, Covered California

Isaac is currently the Deputy Director for Evaluation & Research at Covered California, where he responsible for analytics and research that evaluates the department’s impact and identifies actionable insights that can help improve the marketplace experience for Californians who need affordable health care. In this role, Isaac is responsible for designing, modeling, and evaluating new interventions for eligibility, affordability, and take-up, managing data collection across multiple administrative data warehouse, survey, and qualitative research initiatives, and collaborating with government and academic research partners to derive new evidence about what is working in the state insurance marketplaces. As a researcher, Isaac is currently focused on health care coverage trends, including implementing large-scale field experiments to reduce barriers to program take-up. Isaac studied politics at UC Santa Cruz and public policy at UC Berkeley, and previously worked as a paralegal at the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project and as a policy advocate at the California Immigrant Policy Center, where he advocated for expanding access to health and human services in the state budget. Isaac is passionate about making government of the people, by the people, for the people and spending time with his kids.

Linette Scott, MD, MPH
Deputy Director and Chief Data Officer,
California Department of Health Care Services

Linette Scott is the Deputy Director of Enterprise Data and Information Management and Chief Data Officer in the California Department of Health Care Services. In this role she works across the Department and with stakeholders to ensure that reliable data and information are available and used to drive improvements in population health and clinical outcomes through the Department’s programs and policies. Dr. Scott is a Board-Certified Physician in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine and in Clinical Informatics. She has a Doctor of Medicine from Eastern Virginia Medical School, a Master’s in Public Health from University of California, Davis, and a Bachelor of Arts in Physics from University of California, Santa Cruz. Highlights from her career include serving as a General Medical Officer with the United States Navy, first as squadron physician with the Regional Support Group and later as the military physician for an Active Duty clinic; as a Public Health Medical Officer with the California Department of Public Health; as the California State Registrar and Deputy Director of Health Information and Strategic Planning in the California Department of Public Health, and as the Interim Deputy Secretary for Health Information Technology at the California Health and Human Services Agency.

Michael Valle
Deputy Director and Chief Information Officer, California Department of Health Care Access and Information

Michael D. Valle is Chief Information Officer and Deputy Director for Information Services at the California Department of Health Care Access and Information, where he oversees data analytics and technology. Since 2009 he has worked in various data and technology policy and management roles with the department and the California Health and Human Services Agency. He has overseen the implementation of several data transparency programs, led organizational strategic planning, and administered the governance of enterprise technology. Mr. Valle holds a Master of Public Administration from the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy.