Lauren Murray – NPWF Lauren Murray is the director of consumer engagement and community outreach at the National Partnership for Women & Families. In this role she works in partnership with foundations, federal government leaders, health care providers, community-based organizations, consumers and others to develop and implement strategies for improving the quality, safety, efficiency, and patient- and family-centeredness of the health care delivery system. At the heart of this work is facilitating positive partnerships between consumers and other stakeholders, with a focus on consumer coaching and knowledge enhancement, as well as assisting all stakeholders’ understanding of consumer engagement best practices.
Prior to joining the National Partnership, Lauren worked at both the National Quality Forum and National Committee for Quality Health Care. As NQF’s director of member engagement, she was responsible for collaborating with its member leaders to meet the diverse needs of the organization’s multi-stakeholder groups, including consumers, community and public health organizations, employers, health professionals, health plans and others. While there, she devised a strategy to populate and ensure greater diversity on technical committees, developed a leadership orientation program, created a personalized member outreach campaign, managed development and implementation of educational offerings, and ran the National Quality Healthcare Award program.
Lauren received a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from the University of Virginia and has graduate training in medical anthropology and public health, where she has researched the efficacy of multi-stakeholder health care collaborations and issues related to U.S. maternity care. Fueled by her passion about quality maternity care, Lauren has training as a birth doula, childbirth educator, and is currently pursuing board certification as a lactation consultant. She serves on the Lamaze Institute for Safe and Healthy Birth Steering Committee, the Lamaze Committee for Consumer Education, served as Lamaze’s liaison to the National Quality Forum, and was active with Childbirth Connection, a national nonprofit organization working to improve the quality of maternity care through research, education, advocacy and policy.