2011 AMCHP and Family Voices National Conference ... - HRSA

2011 AMCHP and Family Voices National Conference: Welcome Plenary and
MacQueen Memorial Lecture
02/13/2011 Omni Shoreham, Washington, D.C.
just for you. Welcome to Washington, D.C. I came to Washington with
11 years ago as a physician. I told my wife we'd be here for 10 months.
11 years later she's still smiling and married to me. She called it the big
switch. I got Potomac fever as an advocate and for a short time was in the
Head Start bureau as well. I'm the senior advisor in early childhood health
and development in the Administration for Children and Families. But
most importantly I think I am a practicing pediatrician. And I have a
profound respect for the importance of how policy intersects with other
childhood mental, physical and oral health and a tremendous feel of
appreciation and inspiration from the work that you do. So I salute you
and thank you because it's because of the work that you do I come to work
in the morning at the Health and Human Services with a big smile on my
face and ready to roll up my sleeves and do what I hope will be good and
important and long lasting things for our country's children. I bring
greetings from David Hansel, the assistant secretary at the Administration
for Children and Families and Joe Lombardi, the Deputy Assistant
secretary. I'm going to -- we struggle even those of us who work in this
office, Deputy Assistant secretary. Interdepartmental liaison for early
childhood development. It's a rather long title for the office but it is
actually quite important and quite meaningful. I had the pleasure of
working with Joan and Olivia golden as part of the transition team before
the election and just after the election of the our task was to review the
administration on children and families and one of the things that we
found was that there was with *** the kind of communication across our
agency with respect to early childhood health that we wanted to see. One
of the tasks in coming in to this new administration was to have an office
that is newly formed, which is this office, that really does look across the
agency, across the department, and interdepartmentally to create linkages
that are meaningful and make our work more efficient and effective. So