(Washington, DC)  The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) appointed Cary Sennett, MD, PhD, as President and CEO. Sennett was recently a Vice President at WellPoint, one of the largest health benefit companies in the U.S. AAFA is the leading national nonprofit patient advocacy organization serving more than 60 million Americans with asthma and allergic diseases. AAFA will continue to expand its mission in research, education and advocacy under Sennett’s leadership. Sennett brings more than 25 years of experience working with payors, providers, policymakers and other mission- driven healthcare organizations that serve patients. "Cary will lead AAFA through the evolving health and policy landscape," according to Lynn Hanessian, Chair of AAFA’s Board of Directors, "and he will help us serve the needs of people living with asthma and allergic diseases in traditional and novel ways." Sennett will begin work at AAFA in June at AAFA’s headquarters located in the Washington, DC area."

For more information, contact:
Mike Tringale, SVP External Affairs
mike@aafa.org, 1-202-466-7643, x272

Dr. Sennett has more than 25 years of experience working with both public and private sector organizations to improve the quality and value of health care in the United States. After five years working in managed care, using large health care datasets to inform organizational efforts to measure and improve quality, he played, as Executive Vice President at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), a leadership role in building out the NCQA’s national standard measurement set (HEDIS® ) and establishing a value-based purchasing dynamic in managed care.

He is a nationally recognized expert in quality measurement, and in the design and evaluation of innovative programs to improve quality and control costs. Prior to joining the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA), Dr. Sennett was a Vice President at WellPoint, one of the nation’s largest health benefits companies. He has previously served as President of IMPAQ International, a policy research firm, and as a Fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, and as Managing Director for Health Care Finance Reform at Brookings’ Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform. Before his work on health care policy, Dr. Sennett served as Chief Medical Officer at MedAssurant (now Inovalon) and as Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at Ingenix, and held leadership positions in organized medicine at the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American College of Cardiology.

Dr. Sennett serves as the President (Chair) of the Board of the National Education Association Health Information Network (NEA HIN) and as a member of the Board of the Informed Patient Institute (IPI). He was as founding member of the Executive Committee of the AMA Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (AMA-PCPI) and served as Vice-Chair from 2006 to 2009. He is a frequent author and speaker on health care reform, payment innovation, and quality improvement in health care.

Dr. Sennett earned his medical degree from Yale University and his PhD from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He trained in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and is a Board Certified Internist and Fellow of the American College of Physicians.