NAHDO serves as an advocate for state health data agencies and often communicates with state legislators about best practices and data system trends across states. We recognize the unique challenges our members face when translating complex technical data, privacy, and reporting issues for budgetary hearings, sunset reviews, and before or after the release of high-profile public reports. Legislative communication and outreach is a continuous process, especially in 2015 with leadership positions shifting in many states.
Please join NAHDO for our free 2015 membership webinar: 
What Is Your Elevator Speech? Tips and Insights for Communicating With State Legislators.
WHEN: January 20, 2015 at 2:00 p.m. ET
Speakers:
- Dick Cauchi, National Conference for State Legislatures (NCSL): NCSL is a bipartisan organization serving lawmakers and staff of the nation’s 50 states, territories, and Commonwealths. (See bio, below.)
- Norm Thurston, Ph.D., Director of the Utah Office of Health Care Statistics (APCD/Hospital Discharge System) and a newly-elected Representative to the Utah House. (See bio, below.)
This timely topic is directed toward agencies responsible for implementing statewide health care data systems (hospital discharge, APCD).
This is open to NAHDO members, state health data agencies, and others interested.
Contact Carly Barrell Alleman at cbarrell@nahdo.org or at 801 532.2299 for more information or if you have a question about registration.
Bios
Richard Cauchi
Program Director, Health Program, National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) in Denver, Colorado
Richard Cauchi is a Health Program Director at the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Denver office, where he directs projects and research on health insurance, pharmaceuticals, health costs and finance and health reforms. He joined the NCSL staff in 1997. He has authored reports and presentations on state insurance reforms, cost containment innovations and state responses to health reforms. He provided briefings on health policy at numerous national meetings and more than two dozen state legislative committees. He has addressed the Council on Health Care Economics and Policy, the State Attorneys General Program at Columbia University Law School and the Mexico Federal Legislature. He has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Modern Healthcare, MSNBC and National Public Radio.
Prior to joining NCSL, Richard spent more than 20 years working on policy analysis and tracking bills in the Massachusetts State Legislature, including a 7-year stint working on Medicaid, health and human services budgets at the state-supported Massachusetts Law Reform Institute in Boston. He helped to draft the Massachusetts Children’s Health Insurance Plan in 1995-96, which became a model for the 1997 federal CHIP program. He majored in history at Tufts University, where he also completed graduate courses in Asian studies. He presently resides in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.
Dr. Norman Thurston
Director, Office of Health Care Statistics, Utah Department of Health
Dr. Thurston has been a policy analyst and health economist for the Utah Department of Health for the past eleven years. Currently, he is the Director of the Office of Health Care Statistics which is responsible for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of data related to health care cost and quality for the State of Utah.
Previously, he served as the policy advisor and executive staff for health system reform efforts in the State of Utah.
Before joining the state, Dr. Thurston worked for eight years as an assistant professor of economics at Brigham Young University. He has published several articles on health care markets in nationally recognized economics journals. He is a life-long resident of Utah, growing up in Morgan County. He has native-level fluency in Spanish and was a Fulbright Scholar teaching economics in Argentina in 2001.
Dr. Thurston has a Masters and Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University, and an undergraduate degree in Spanish and Agribusiness Management from Brigham Young University. His areas of specialty include insurance markets, health care provider markets, labor markets, and public finance/economics.
In November, 2014, Dr. Thurston was elected to represent District 64 in the Utah House of Representatives.