The Group

Yael Harris, PhD, MHS
CEO

  • Dr. Yael Harris, PhD, MHS, is the Founder and CEO of Laurel Health Advisors. Dr. Harris has over three decades of experience designing and leading national and local programs to improve quality and access to care in underserved communities, reduce healthcare disparities, facilitate interoperability among health care systems, and improve rural health systems with a focus on patient-centered design principles that are informed by community needs assessments.

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    During her 16-year career within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Yael served in leadership positions at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA), and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health (OASH). As Vice President of Health Research at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), she oversaw a large team of researchers conducting projects for federal, state, and local clients.

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    Yael is a nationally recognized leader in long-term and post-acute care, quality measurement, telehealth, interoperability, rural health, health disparities, mental/behavioral health policy, healthcare associated harms, and opioid use disorder. Yael has received national recognition for her work from HHS. She has over two-dozen publications and is a highly sought-after public speaker who has spoken at numerous national conferences.

Jason Goldwater, MA, MPA
President & COO

  • Jason C. Goldwater is currently the President and Chief Operating Officer for Laurel Health Advisors, LLC, where he oversees business development, operations, and client delivery activities. Mr. Goldwater has been in the field of health information technology (health IT), quality measurement, rural health, and health services research for 27 years and has led a number of projects on research and evaluation of health IT on access to care, electronic clinical quality measure development and implementation, Medicaid payment, and health care reform. Mr. Goldwater most recently served as a Senior Research Scientist at Index Analytics, LLC, where he served as a Technical Lead for the Qualified Entity Certification Program (QECP).

    Mr. Goldwater has written and spoken extensively in the areas of telehealth, blockchain, quality measurement, and digital health, and how it can impact populations such as the homeless and the chronically ill. He also serves as a peer reviewer for journals such as Health Affairs and the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. Mr. Goldwater also spent a decade with the Federal Government, designing software applications to assess the quality of care for older adults in nursing homes and hospitals; examining how State Medicaid data could be used for public health; and how to incorporate public health initiatives, such as immunizations, into State Medicaid programs. Mr. Goldwater has both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Emerson College and a Master’s of Public Administration degree from Suffolk University.