Sonya Schwartz

Sonya Schwartz is a Research Fellow at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families (CCF) where she works with advocates at the state level to improve access to health coverage for low-income children and families. She leads CCF’s work on coverage for immigrant families, monitoring and analyzing policy issues related to health reform implementation, Medicaid, CHIP, health insurance marketplaces, the basic health program, and more.

Sonya was most recently a program director at the National Academy for State Health Policy, where she led State Refor(u)m, an online network for health reform implementation. Sonya has designed and led projects, written papers, produced events, and provided technical assistance on a broad range of health reform and state health policy issues, including implementation of health reform, health insurance exchanges, essential health benefits, coverage expansions through Medicaid and CHIP, and commercial insurance reforms.  Sonya speaks regularly to a wide variety of state and national audiences such as provider and consumer groups, patient advocates, academic institutions, and other think tanks. She also has experience speaking to a variety of news media, appearing on the Diane Rehm Show, Marketplace, and in US News Health, the Los Angeles Times, Politico and Bloomberg BNA.

Prior to joining NASHP in 2005, Sonya worked as an advocate to expand access to health care and nutrition benefits for low-income populations such as immigrants and people living with HIV and AIDS. She holds a JD from the UCLA School of Law Program in public interest law and policy, and a BA in political science and Italian from Middlebury College. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two small boys.