Team

Miriam Harmatz, Executive Director

Miriam, one of Florida’s leading Medicaid advocates, is a former senior health law attorney at Florida Legal Services and adjunct professor in the Health Law Clinic at Florida International University College of Law.  As a young child with a health issue,   Miriam learned that everyone must have insurance and that healthcare is a human right.  She wrote her senior college thesis on why Congress failed to pass a national health insurance bill in 1974, and as a legal services attorney for 30 years she focused on ensuring access to healthcare for her clients.
Miriam has been lead counsel on multiple federal court cases resulting in statewide relief for Medicaid beneficiaries. These successful outcomes, including federal court cases of first impression and with national import, are the result of highly collaborative work with national experts, Florida legal aid lawyers and pro bono attorneys.  On a local level, Miriam led collaborative efforts that improved access and transparency at Miami-Dade County’s publicly funded hospital. This work includes administrative complaints successfully challenging outpatient and inpatient admission deposit policies, discrimination against foreign-born county residents, and violations of consumer protections provided under the ACA,  the first complaint of its kind in the nation.

Because Florida has not yet expanded Medicaid under the ACA, Miriam has focused on outreach and education detailing the tremendous human and economic benefits of extending coverage and the adverse impacts in failing to do so.  And since the 2016 election, she has been part of the massive advocacy effort devoted to defending the ACA and Medicaid.

Matt Childers,  Director of Research and Policy

Matt is a political scientist with expertise in political and social behavior, public opinion, survey research, government institutions, research design, and data analysis. He has over twelve years of experience conducting public opinion research on economic and health policy issues in national, state, and local elections.

His research has been published in leading political science and medical journals including Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Matt is available to work with partners on research and strategic efforts that will improve understanding of publicly funded health care programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, the ACA and CHIP and their impact in Florida.

Katy DeBriere, Legal Director

Katy, managing attorney of the Northeast Florida Medical Legal Partnership (NFMLP), is a highly regarded and committed health lawyer. Like Miriam, she has experience both in identifying and addressing systemic issues through impact litigation and in representing a large number of individual clients with Medicaid eligibility and services issues.

Katy began her legal career in 2008 as an Equal Justice Works fellow.  Her two year fellowship generated several state court of appeals successes, two 42 U.S.C. 1983 suits, and culminated in a successful facial constitutional challenge to a state statutory scheme for the commitment of persons with developmental disabilities.
Within a year of being hired to direct the NFMLP, Katy secured significant funding for the partnership-- the first time external funding has been obtained in the project’s 12-year history. Katy has taken a lead role in developing a statewide medical legal partnership (MLP) network and recently received funding to provide a series of webinars on public benefits programs available to low income Floridians, including the Medicaid program.

Alison Yager, Director of Policy Advocacy

Alison is an attorney with over 20 years of experience in the non-profit and government sectors advocating on behalf of women, children and marginalized individuals.  She comes to Miami from New York, where she served most recently as the Director of Policy Initiatives for Maternal, Infant, and Reproductive Health at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.  Her work included collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to identify new policy and program initiatives, conducting analyses and developing policy briefs to support the generation of policy initiatives, and advocating for or against enactment of policies at all levels of government.
After graduating from UCLA School of Law’s Program in Public Interest Law and Policy in 2001, Ms. Yager was awarded an Equal Justice Works fellowship to provide legal services to young people at The Door's Legal Service Center in Manhattan, and subsequently worked as a Staff Attorney serving young people experiencing intimate partner violence at Break the Cycle- New York (now Day One).  From 2006 to 2014, Alison worked at HIV Law Project in New York, first as a Staff Attorney and then as Supervising Attorney for HIV Policy.  She began her career as a Community Organizer for the Children’s Defense Fund-NY.

Michelle Adams

Michelle Adams is a bilingual Miami native with a strong connection to her Cuban and Puerto Rican heritage. As a teenager, she volunteered with several local Miami homeless coalitions which inspired her commitment to social and health justice. In college, she went on several medical mission trips where she assisted doctors in South America with translating, performing medical procedures, and providing basic medical prevention. These experiences solidified her plans to pursue a career in public health and health policy.
After graduating from Florida State University, she worked in remote areas of Peru on a project dedicated to developing a hygiene initiative. Her work included outreach and education teaching local residents sustainable hygiene practices.  She has been working at FHJP since its beginning on a variety of activities including outreach, education, research, writing, and administrative support. Michelle plans to attend law school in the fall of 2019 and will continue her advocacy work in health and public policy.

Brett Brumund

Brett, a recent graduate of University of Miami School of Law and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, is a passionate and well-equipped advocate for health justice. Brett grew up in Hampton Roads, Virginia where his father worked as an epidemiologist and his youth was filled with stories of his dad’s public health work in the field, including work with migrant farm workers in some of Virginia’s most rural and economically depressed areas.

Brett has long understood the connection between health outcomes and the environment and how environmental challenges have a disparate health impact on low income communities.   These experiences inspired Brett to obtain both a law degree and a master’s degree in marine ecosystems and society.  His legal education provided Brett with basic advocacy tools and his masters in marine ecosystems and society informs his ability to explain how environmental issues impact health outcomes and the importance of ensuring health care access, particularly in light of Florida’s climate challenges.

Blanca Mesa,  Client Outreach and Communications Consultant

​Blanca is an attorney, journalist, and communication expert.  Blanca, a former Legal Services of Greater Miami public benefits attorney, also worked as the Communications Director for the Mayor of Miami-Dade County. 

After the ACA was implemented, she worked as a licensed federal navigator for the ACA health marketplace. She recently helped develop and manage a story bank of over 150 Floridians in the coverage gap willing to speak with the press.
​Blanca has a strong history of public service and community involvement. In 2016, she was named “Best Citizen” by Miami New Times and in 2017, Miami Today newspaper honored her as “Best of Miami” for her community environmental work. 

Blanca is available to work on documenting the stories of individual low income Floridians willing to engage on outreach and education regarding Medicaid, as well as other safety net programs that impact the social determinants of health.