Judith Steinberg, MD, MPH

Dr.  Steinberg served as a health policy official in the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  With her primary health care, infectious disease, public health, and health policy expertise, Dr. Steinberg led collaborative efforts across HHS and advanced federal policy and programs. 

She recently served as a Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health and lead for the HHS Initiative to Strengthen Primary Health Care, which aims to improve the health of all people in our nation and health equity by strengthening the primary care foundation of our healthcare system.  

At HHS, Dr. Steinberg initially served as the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the Bureau of Primary Health Care, part of the Health Resources and Services Administration.  As the clinical leader of our nation’s safety net program for primary care, she engaged clinical leaders at health centers across the country to advance health care access, quality of care, HIV AIDS care, workforce wellbeing, and the integration of behavioral health and primary care.  Later, she served as the CMO of the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy, part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health.  There she provided clinical expertise and leadership in implementing the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. Initiative and developing national strategies on HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and vaccines.

Before joining the federal government, Dr. Steinberg was Deputy CMO and Senior Director of the Office of Healthcare Innovation and Quality at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division.  There Dr. Steinberg and her team supported Massachusetts health care reform, contributing to the design and implementation of new healthcare delivery and value-based payment models that included primary care transformation.  Dr. Steinberg practiced primary care and infectious disease medicine at community health centers and safety net hospitals in MA for nearly 30 years.

Dr. Steinberg was an associate professor of medicine, and family medicine and community health at UMass Medical School and an assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. She earned her medical degree from the University of Texas and completed a residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and an infectious disease fellowship at Beth Israel/Brigham and Women’s Hospitals in Boston.  She was a Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University fellow in minority health policy and received a master’s degree in public health from Harvard University.