Team | National Advisory Committee

Meg Comeau, M.H.A., Project Director
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Meg Comeau is the Project Director for the Catalyst Center. She is responsible for direct day-to-day operations and management. Ms. Comeau has a master’s degree in Healthcare Administration from Simmons College. She has earned several honors, including the Linda Roemer Award for Excellence in Community Service from Simmons College, a Young Investigator Award from the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies for her work with Elaine Meyer, R.N., Ph.D. on parental design preferences in the pediatric intensive care unit and the 2000 David S. Weiner Award for Outstanding Leadership in Child Health from Children’s Hospital Boston. Ms. Comeau is a member of the Upsilon Phi Delta Honor Society for healthcare management and the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Prior to joining the Catalyst Center in the summer of 2005, Ms. Comeau was a member of the Children’s Hospital Boston Center for Families staff for seven years, where she was the coordinator of the Family Initiatives program. In that role, Ms. Comeau was responsible for facilitating family input into hospital policy and programming design. Her major projects focused on issues related to pediatric palliative care and bereavement support, health care quality and improving parent/professional communication. She was the parent co-chair of the Family Advisory Committee, chair of the Family Faculty program and a member of the Ethics Advisory Committee. Ms. Comeau continues to be a faculty member with the Program to Enhance Relational and Communication Skills (PERCS) at Children’s. She is also the chair of the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Consortium for Children with Special Health Care Needs.

Carol Tobias, MMHS, Principal Investigator
Carol Tobias, MMHS, is the co-Director of the Catalyst Center with Deborah Allen. She is an Assistant Professor in the Health Services Department at the Boston University School of Public Health and the Director of the Health and Disability Working Group (HDWG). HDWG is a research, training and technical assistance center that focuses on health care issues for people with disabilities across the lifespan and spectrum of disability. Ms. Tobias has directed projects to evaluate innovative care delivery models for adults and children with disabilities; to develop performance standards, quality measures and reimbursement systems for health care systems; to identify and promote best practices in health service delivery; and to examine barriers to care for people with disabilities. Recent activities include a national multi-site evaluation of outreach strategies to bring people living with HIV into medical care, a cost-effectiveness evaluation of a community health center-based program to serve Medicaid members with disabilities, a national assessment of consumer-oriented or directed care for people with disabilities, and consultation to two managed care plan work groups to improve the delivery of services to Children with Special Health Care Needs and Adults with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses who receive services through the Medicaid program.

Prior to her employment at Boston University, Ms. Tobias was the Assistant Director of Ambulatory Programs at the Massachusetts Medicaid program where she had responsibility for managed care programs, an insurance buy-in program for adults and children with disabilities, developing HIV/AIDS policies and services, administering waiver programs for people with disabilities and establishing reimbursement policies for new services and treatments.

Deborah Allen, Sc.D, Co-Principal Investigator; Director of Technical Assistance
Deborah Allen is the Director of Technical Assistance for the Catalyst Center. Dr. Allen came to the Boston University School of Public Health in March 2002, as Senior Research Associate at the Health and Disability Working Group and Associate Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health. She has a master’s degree in Health Policy and Management, and master’s and doctoral degrees in Maternal and Child Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Before coming to BU, Dr. Allen was the director of the Division for Special Health Needs of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for 11 years. The division included the state’s Title V program for children with special needs and their families and the Office on Health and Disability, concerned with health needs of individuals with disabilities of all ages. It also administered Massachusetts’ Early Intervention Program for infants and toddlers with special needs.

Dr. Allen’s academic and research interests include design and implementation of health services for children and adults with disabilities, the role of public health in disability services, family participation in health policy and program development and transition for youth with disabilities. A major focus of her work is achievement of the national 2010 objectives for children with special health care needs.

Dr. Allen is Secretary of the Maternal and Child Health Section of the American Public Health Association and co-chairs the section’s Children with Special Health Care Needs Committee. She has served on the Boards of the Martha Eliot Health Center in Boston, and the national AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth and Families. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Federation for Children with Special Needs and the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Consortium for Children with Special Health Care Needs.

Sara S. Bachman, Ph.D, Director of Research
Sara S. Bachman, Ph.D. is the Director of Research for the Catalyst Center. Dr. Bachman is Associate Professor in the Research Department at the Boston University School of Social Work. She has twenty years’ experience with health policy research and program evaluation, especially in the area of state health policy for youth and adults with disabilities or complex health and social conditions. With Dr. Allen, Dr. Bachman directs a project to develop a research infrastructure to investigate disability issues with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health,; the project has a special focus on youth transitioning to adulthood. With Ms. Tobias, Dr. Bachman previously completed a NIDRR funded study to examine health care access issues for persons with disabilities as well as a Robert Wood Johnson funded grant about state approaches to providing substance abuse treatment services to Medicaid recipients with disabilities who are enrolled in managed care plans. Dr. Bachman is currently Co-Principal Investigator of two program evaluations sponsored by SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. One is an evaluation of an outreach and case management program for injection drug users at risk for HIV and the second is an evaluation of an outreach and case management program targeting men who have sex with men. Her work includes surveys of consumers with disabilities, surveys of providers who offer health care to people with disabilities, and interviews with state policymakers who establish systems of care for people with disabilities. Previously, Dr. Bachman also led an MDPH-funded project to study physician perceptions about care provision and care coordination for young people with disabilities who are in transition. Dr. Bachman has an M.S. in Epidemiology from the University of Massachusetts School of Public Health, and this perspective has informed her approach to understanding disability and public health issues. Dr. Bachman received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University’s Florence Heller School where she was a Pew Health Policy Fellow. Dr. Bachman teaches Research Methods to Master’s and Doctoral students at the Boston University School of Social Work. She chairs the School’s Program Assessment Committee, and serves on the Boston University Institutional Review Board. She has been nominated by students three times to receive the School’s Teaching Excellence Award.

Susan G. Epstein, M.S.W, Director of Dissemination
Susan G. Epstein, M.S.W., Co-Investigator for the Catalyst Center project, has over 20 years of experience developing and implementing new policy initiatives for CYSHCN, including financing arrangements and tools for quality improvement. Ms. Epstein is responsible for directing the design of dissemination products and participating in the technical assistance aspects of the project.

She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of New England SERVE, a health policy and planning group working to promote quality systems of care for children with special health care needs and their families since 1983. Ms. Epstein has had a thirty-year career focused on enhancing the quality of care for individuals of all ages with disabilities and special needs. Her expertise is in program planning and evaluation, state and community-based needs assessment, and building models that support consumer- professional collaboration.

Ms. Epstein established the MA. Consortium for Children with Special Health Care Needs in 2000, a public-private partnership committed to making the national Health People 2010 goals a reality for children with special health care needs in Massachusetts. She serves as chair of that fast-growing and dynamic forum for policy discussions and information exchange. Her research interests and recent publications focus on developing quality measures for family-centered care, promoting medical home partnerships, and assessing the quality of managed care for children with special health needs. She serves on the Boards of Directors of three leading health care organizations in the state: Massachusetts Health Quality Partners, a broad-based coalition of physicians, hospitals, health plans, purchasers and government agencies working together to promote improvement in the quality of health care services in Massachusetts: Commonwealth Care Alliance, and Understanding Our Differences, Inc, a nationally recognized disability awareness organization. Ms. Epstein holds B.A. and M.S.W. degrees from the University of Michigan.

Lynda Honberg, M.H.S.A., MCHB/HRSA Project Officer
Director, Health Insurance and Financing Initiative
Division of Services for Children with Special Health Needs
Maternal and Child Health Bureau
Health Resources and Services Administration

Ms. Honberg has over 25 years experience in managed care in both the private and public sectors, and is recognized as an expert on the issues of caring for special populations in managed care. In her current position, Ms. Honberg is responsible for a $3.5 million initiative to assure that children with special health care needs have access to adequate health insurance. She is also responsible for a new initiative to improve access to care for children and youth with epilepsy. Ms. Honberg was previously the Director of Managed Care for the HIV/AIDS Bureau where she developed managed care training and technical assistance programs for Ryan White C.A.R.E. Act funded programs.

Ms. Honberg worked for eight years as the Director of Operations for the George Washington University Health Plan of Washington, D.C., a 50,000 member HMO, where she was responsible for provider relations, member services and health center operations. Her other experiences include developing an IPA for Blue Cross-Blue Shield of the National Capital Area and advising employers and unions on health benefit packages. For several years, Ms. Honberg also worked for Office of Health Maintenance Organizations managing grants to develop and finance HMOs.

Ms. Honberg has a Masters in Health Services Administration from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Bachelors in Health Education from State University of New York at Cortland. She is the proud mother of a very special little girl and is the coordinator for a local parent support group.