Team

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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.  She founded the Florida Health Justice Project (FHJP) in late 2017.  

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 Affordable Care Act (ACA),  the first complaint of its kind in the nation.

Because Florida has not yet expanded Medicaid under the ACA, Miriam leads FHJP's collaborative advocacy detailing the tremendous human and economic benefits of extending coverage and the adverse impacts in failing to do so.  
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Alison Yager, Deputy Executive Director

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.
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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.
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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 works 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.
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​Shenae Samuels-Staple, Ph.D., Health Policy Research Specialist

Shenae is a research scientist with an expertise in health policy research focused on addressing health disparities and access to care issues among vulnerable populations. Her passion for the work of FHJP stems from the premise that everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic background, deserves access to quality and affordable health care. Her prior research experiences include the Florida Medicaid Reform Evaluation Project, the CDC-funded Florida Office on Disability and Health’s Right To Know Campaign, and the University of Florida Health Disparities and Research Intervention Program. Her research with the Florida Medicaid Reform Evaluation Project led to a co-authorship of the Medicaid Program Flexibility counterpoint in the book, “Debates on U.S. Health Care.” Her doctoral dissertation examined the impact of state Medicaid expansion on access to care and utilization among individuals with ambulatory care sensitive conditions.

Shenae holds a Ph.D. in Health Services Research and a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree with a concentration in Public Health Management and Policy from the University of Florida.
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​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 works 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.
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Melissa Lipnick, Law Clerk

Melissa is a rising third-year law student at the University of Miami School of Law. Her enthusiasm for the work done by FHJP stems from her interest in lessening health disparities and her belief that healthcare is a human right. She is passionate about finding ways to overcome the barriers related to accessing healthcare, particularly those access challenges faced by immigrants and those of a lower socio-economic status.

During her second year of law school, Melissa was a legal intern at the Health Rights Clinic, a clinic that focused on improving access to healthcare for low-income individuals. This was achieved through helping clients gain access to public benefits such as social security or attain legal immigration status. Prior to law school, Melissa served as AmeriCorps member with City Year Miami, an organization that focused on educational interventions to stop the school to prison pipeline. Melissa attended the University of Miami for Undergrad and obtained a BS in Public Health.