Dr. Katherine Tulenko

Dr. Kate Tulenko serves as the Deputy Director of HRHQS, the US government’s $300 million global health workforce project, where she is responsible for health worker education and health service quality. As the largest health workforce program in the world, HRHQS aims to help countries implement sustainable solutions to the health workforce crisis and make the global health team more effective and efficient. She is currently writing a book on how the global health workforce shortage will affect the United States as its population ages.

Previously Dr. Tulenko served as a health specialist in the World Bank where she advised ministries of health on creating improved health systems to deliver care to their populations. She coordinated the Bank's $2 million Africa Health Workforce Program which conducted research and funded programs at the country level to better understand and resolve the health worker shortage with an emphasis on labor market and private sector solutions. She has also worked extensively on issues of maternal and child health; global aging; HIV/AIDS; water, hygiene, and sanitation; and public-private partnerships for health. Dr. Tulenko has worked with the bipartisan Hope Street Group to develop a series of issue papers on national health reform for the Obama administration. She is the co-founder and medical director of Living Solutions, a company that provides seniors and people with disabilities with services to help them "age-in-place" rather than having to move to nursing homes.

Dr. Tulenko has a Bachelors in Biochemistry from Harvard University (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), a Masters in Philosophy in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge (Emmanuel College), an MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and a Masters of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (Delta Omega). In 2002 she received a Rainer Arnhold Fellowship for innovation in global development. She is a board certified pediatrician and a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Tulenko has academic appointments at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the George Mason College of Health and Human Services.