Melinda Abrams, M.S., assistant vice president at The Commonwealth Fund, directs the Patient-Centered Coordinated Care program. Since coming to the Fund in 1997, Ms. Abrams has worked on the Fund's Task Force on Academic Health Centers, Commission on Women's Health, and most recently, the Child Development and Preventive Care programs. Ms. Abrams played a lead role in conceptualizing and launching the Fund's Assuring Better Child Health and Development (ABCD) initiative, which awarded grants to state Medicaid programs to encourage innovation in the financing and delivery of preventive and developmental services provided to low-income, young children. Ms. Abrams has sat on a number of national advisory committees, including the National Initiative for Children's Health Quality (NICHQ), the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative and AcademyHealth’s Child Health Services Research Forum. Currently, Ms. Abrams is on the Board of Managers of TransforMED and the Board of Governors of the National Patient Safety Foundation. In addition, Ms. Abrams is a peer-reviewer for the Annals of Family Medicine. Ms. Abrams holds a B.A. in history from Cornell University and an M.S. in health policy and management from the Harvard School of Public Health.