Panel 4 – Administration Outlook: Health Policy Priorities in 2026

November 18, 2025
4:00 pm-

4:40 pm

Former Administration officials will examine the road ahead for health policy, highlighting key agency initiatives and priorities. Panelists will discuss key areas of opportunity,  potential challenges, and definitions of success for the year ahead. 

  • Claire Sheahan, MSc., President and CEO, Alliance for Health Policy (Moderator)
  • Elizabeth Fowler, J.D., Ph.D., Managing Partner, Health Transformation Strategies, LLC.
  • Brian Blase, Ph.D., President, Paragon Health Institute

Learning Goals: 

  1. Understand expert perspectives on issues of greatest impact in Congress this year.
  2. Be familiar with potential issues for the Administration in 2026.

Speakers

Claire Sheahan, M.Sc.

President and CEO, Alliance for Health Policy
Claire is the Chief Executive Officer at the Alliance for Health Policy. She is a dynamic executive with more than 25 years of experience effectively engaging others to catalyze change in health care and health policy.  Claire has served in leadership roles in associations, corporations,  consulting and communications firms, including GMMB, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Fleishman Hillard, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (now AAM), Avalere, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and others. In these roles, she has managed effective educational and engagement campaigns, introduced new capabilities, products and services, established novel cross-functional teams, and successfully achieved gains in reputational status, growth and audience impact.  In her career, she has worked for organizations across the spectrum in health care ranging from scientific discovery to public health to patient advocacy.  These include non-profits like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and National Health Council; medical leaders like the American Academy of Family Physicians, the International Society for Stem Cell Research and Mayo Clinic; and companies like Biogen, Cigna, and Siemens Health.  Claire is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where she served a semester as a research assistant to a member of UK parliament, and a co-founder of the campus sketch comedy troupe. She also holds an MSc. with Distinction from the London School of Economics in Media and Communications, where her dissertation focused on the construct of public opinion within the halls of the U.S. Congress. Claire also served as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, teaching students in the Communications MA program. She is the mother of two children, a cancer survivor, and serves as a Director on the Fairfax Library Foundation Board.

Brian Blase, PhD

President, Paragon Health Institute
Brian Blase, Ph.D., is the President of Paragon Health Institute. Brian was Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House’s National Economic Council (NEC) from 2017-2019, where he coordinated the development and execution of numerous health policies and advised the President, NEC director, and senior officials. After leaving the White House, Brian founded Blase Policy Strategies and served as its CEO. Brian guided the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s health care and entitlement program oversight and investigation efforts from 2011 to 2014 and then served as the Senate Republican Policy Committee’s health policy analyst from 2014 to 2015. Brian serves as a policy advisor to Hoosiers for Affordable Health Care and as a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability. He has also worked at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and at the Heritage Foundation. Brian is a prolific researcher and writer, authoring scores of research studies and policy analyses and regularly writing commentaries for The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, The Hill, National Review, and Forbes. Brian received his PhD in Economics from George Mason University. He lives in Florida with his wife and five children.

Elizabeth Fowler, JD, Ph.D

Managing Partner, Health Transformation Strategies LLC
Liz Fowler is a nationally recognized expert in federal health policy and Distinguished Scholar on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Carey Business School. Most recently, Liz was Deputy Administrator and Director of the Innovation Center at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). In that role, she was responsible for advancing innovative payment and care delivery models in Medicare and Medicaid to promote value-based care on a national scale. These value-based payment models have provided an important testing ground and scaling opportunity for innovative start-ups and health care disrupters. Prior to leading the Innovation Center, she was Executive Vice President of programs at The Commonwealth Fund and Vice President for Global Health Policy at Johnson & Johnson. In 2011-2012, she served as special assistant to President Obama on health care and economic policy at the National Economic Council to implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As Chief Health Counsel at the Senate Finance Committee, she played a major role in the drafting and passage of the ACA in 2010, and she also played a key role drafting the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA). Liz has over 25 years of experience in health policy and health services research. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a law degree (J.D.) from the University of Minnesota. She is admitted to the bar in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Liz is a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Aspen Health Innovators Fellowship and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2022.