Mar 23, 2023
SHEPHERDSTOWN ROTARY CLUB INDUCTS NEW MEMBER
The Rotary Club of Shepherdstown has inducted Marcia Brand as a new member.
The induction ceremony was held at the Club's March 21 breakfast meeting at the Bavarian Inn.
The accompanying photo shows Brand, center, with Club President Sean Murtagh, left, and Club member John Loeffler, right.
Ms. Brand has held national leadership positions in the field of oral health care and rural health care, and she is currently a consultant and advisor on those matters.
She had a long career with the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that works to fill in the gaps for people who live outside the economic and medical mainstream. From 2009 to 2015, she was HRSA's deputy administrator. Before that, she was associate administrator of the agency's Bureau of Health Professions from 2007 to 2009, and director and associate administrator of its Office of Rural Health Policy from 2001 to 2007. Earlier, she led efforts to plan and implement a state planning grant program, which helped states explore options for providing health care coverage for uninsured residents, and she coordinated HRSA's efforts to implement the Children’s Health Insurance Program. As a senior advisor to the deputy assistant secretary for health, she also worked on the Secretary’s Initiative on the Future of Academic Health Centers.
After leaving the federal government, Brand served from 2015 to 2017 as executive director the National Interprofessional Initiative on Oral Health, a foundation-funded effort to improve oral health.
Before going to Washington, Brand was a faculty member of the dental hygiene departments at Thomas Jefferson University and Old Dominion University. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in dental hygiene from Old Dominion University and a doctoral degree in higher education from the University of Pennsylvania.
Shortly after receiving her Ph.D., she worked from 1989 to 1991 as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, through a legislative fellowship sponsored by the Association of Schools of Allied Health Professionals.
Locally, Brand served as the chair of the Board of Governors at Shepherd University from 2015 to 2018 and led the university's presidential search process in 2015. A native West Virginian, she grew up in Martinsburg.
The Shepherdstown Rotary Club comprises two groups of members: a morning group that meets weekly on Tuesdays, and an evening group that meets bi-weekly on Wednesdays. Both groups meet at Shepherdstown's Bavarian Inn.
Brand has joined the morning group.
To learn more about the Shepherdstown Rotary Club, including how to become a member, contact info@shepherdstownrotary.org.