PRINCETON: Resident to head state agency

By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
   Mary E. O’Dowd of Princeton is the new commissioner of the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
   She has been acting as commissioner since April and was officially sworn in on June 3 by Gov. Chris Christie.
   ”With her strong background in public health, Mary will be a champion for improving and protecting the health of all New Jerseyans,” said Governor Christie. “I am confident Mary will use her health policy and hospital finance expertise to strengthen the state’s health care delivery system and enhance access to health services for our residents.”
   Ms. O’Dowd, 33, has wide-ranging experience in health care policy and hospital management and finance.
   ”I’ve always been interested in health care,” she said “I grew up in a family that was focused on health care.”
   Ms. O’Dowd has identified three core areas for her term as commissioner. Her first is empowering people to make healthier choices.
   ”Healthy people equal healthy communities,” she said.
   Her second goal is end of life care.
   ”I’m working with people, facilities and the general public to make sure patients’ choices at the end of life are honored and they are cared for the way they want to be.”
   Thirdly, she would like to streamline the department and make it more efficient.
   ”(I’d like to) find ways for us to improve our internal operations to serve our constituents and institutions,” she said. “This will include finding efficiencies, working smarter and better-serving our regulated community,” which includes local hospitals, nursing homes and laboratories.
   Ms. O’Dowd was biology major at Douglass College at Rutgers University, where she discovered the field of public health.
   ”This is an area where you can touch people in so many ways,” she said “It’s so broad-ranging you can make a significant impact on people’s lives in so many different ways. It’s everything from disease surveillance and protecting people with basic measures from vaccines to hygiene, helping hospitals to improve the quality of care they provide to their patients.”
   The commissioner has worked at the department for three and a half years under two administrations as acting commissioner, deputy commissioner and chief of staff. She is a graduate of Douglass College, Rutgers University and holds a master’s degree in public health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.
   Ms. O’Dowd served as deputy commissioner of the department for a year before being nominated by Governor Christie on March 25 to serve as the state’s health commissioner.
   Prior to joining the department, Ms. O’Dowd completed a fellowship in hospital finance at NYU and then worked for three years in the emergency department at NYU.
   As deputy commissioner, O’Dowd helped to increase funding for hospitals and reformed charity care to make it more transparent and predictable. Despite an unprecedented fiscal crisis in the current state fiscal year, Commissioner O’Dowd worked closely with Governor Christie to add $85 million in charity care to the department’s budget.
   She also worked with Governor Christie to ensure that funding was preserved for the state’s popular discount prescription drug programs for seniors. Nearly 164,000 low-income seniors and disabled residents benefit from Pharmaceutical Assistance to the Aged and Disabled (PAAD) and Senior Gold.
   ”I’m honored to take on this role and serve the state of New Jersey and work with some of the dedicated professionals,” she said. “I consider it a privilege.”
   Ms. O’Dowd recently moved to Princeton with her husband, Kevin. They are expecting their first child at the end of the month.
   She grew up in the Community Park neighborhood when she moved to the Princeton area when she was in sixth grade.
   A Princeton High School graduate, she moved back to Princeton at the beginning of the month.
   ”I’m expecting my first child, and my mother lives in Princeton, so I wanted to be close to family to balance work and family a little easier,” she said.