Katya Mauritson
Denver,CO
Summary
Innovative leader with strong background in developing inclusive policies and processes, managing complex projects, and achieving strategic objectives. Excels in grants management, workforce development, and program improvement.
Overview
26
26
years of professional experience
Work History
PROGRAM SERVICES TEAM LEAD, SENIOR DENTAL OFFICER, SENIOR PROJECT OFFICER
04.2024 - Current
- GS-14/Step 4, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Oral Health, Led national oral public health funding initiatives, aligning them with strategic goals
- Facilitated the development, publication, and allocation of two new Notice of Funding Opportunities, allocating over $6.3 million in annual grants
- Ensured strategic alignment of cooperative agreements and funding opportunities with CDC mission and values and divisional strategic plan
- Developed strategies and processes that ensured the inclusion of equitable and inclusive approaches to reducing oral health disparities
- Strengthened internal communication and transparency through digital platforms
- Collaborated with the Informatics Team to create the division’s first SharePoint sites for grants management, internal and external communication processes, and to capture standard operating procedures for succession planning
- Increased efficiency, reduced administrative burden, and improved accountability for funded recipients and divisional staff
- Developed division’s first rapid reporting process to inform leadership of recipients’ successes and challenges
- Enabled the division to provide more timely, focused, and appropriate technical assistance and resources, based on recipient needs
- Championed divisional strategic planning efforts to enhance equity-focused topical areas and program effectiveness
- Provided multiple trainings and tools to upskill staff’s ability to implement and support equity-focused strategies and activities
- Developed new approaches to integrate field strategies into the division’s strategic plan and research agenda including new data collection activities to enable cost benefit analyses for program interventions, including capacity building resources
- Led organizational and cultural transformation within the team
- While supervising four Project/Program Officers and one contractor, addressed longstanding challenges related to team dynamics and perceptions of hierarchy
- Fostered a more collaborative environment, improving cross-team effectiveness
- Developed and implemented new performance standards to support staff professional development and team effectiveness
- Provided subject matter expertise and technical assistance in specialized areas
- Served as the agency’s primary point of contact for oral health strategies to support people with disabilities and perinatal populations
- Advised on clinical quality improvement strategies, data collection, and evaluation models to increase the reach of recipients’ community-based programs and surveillance efforts
- Demonstrated flexibility, adaptability, and resilience in times of change
- Learned multiple, complex federal grant making processes within a short period of time
- Performed multiple roles within the division, including the temporary Project/Program Officer and Special Projects Lead.
SPECIAL ADVISOR, SENIOR DENTAL OFFICER
01.2022 - 04.2024
- 0 FTE, GS-14/Step 2, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Oral Health –
- Reviewed and provided feedback on multiple global and national public health documents, including:
- World Health Organization Draft Oral Health Action Plan (2023-2030): Included strategies to identify, prevent, and reduce the harm of predatory clinical dental practices
- Draft National Oral Health Equity Plan: Incorporated equity science and the agency’s priorities related to Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), health equity (HE); and diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging (DEIAB)
- Served as divisional point of contact for SDOH, HE, and DEIAB strategies
- HHS Initiative to Strengthen Primary Health Care: Served as one of two divisional representatives, providing subject matter expert from the field, strategies related to oral health equity, multidirectional integration/whole-person approaches to health, multi-sectoral partnerships, and other community-focused strategies
- Served as the divisional representative for the following national and agency initiatives:
- Equity Technical Assistance Center’s (ETAC) learning communities (Equity and Customer Experience in Grants, Equitably Engaging Individuals with Lived Experience): provided feedback from the field and used ETAC resources when drafting divisional funding announcements
- CMS Oral Health Initiative: Met regularly to draft divisional feedback and share with CMS, with a focus on guidance related to field work, research, and implementation science to support the development of Medicaid and CHIP oral health priorities for the next five years
- CDC's Anti-Racism Sprint Team: Selected to be part of a small work group to gather effective practices, tools, and strategies for anti-racism efforts
- Provided field examples that were developed under my direction to upskill state workforce and partners working in oral public health
- CDC’s Disability, Inclusion, and Accessibility Scientific Workgroup: Consulted with the Association of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry and CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and developmental Disabilities on strategies to integrate oral health into overall health initiatives, including workforce development activities, policies, and collaborations
- Good Health and Wellness in Indian Country (GHWIC) Notice of Funding Opportunities: Provided strategies, field examples, and federal resources for GHWIC implementation guide to support Tribal oral health
- Developed and presented the first Division of Oral Health presentation to GHWIC grantees during their annual conference
- Provided technical assistance to GHWIC grantees and served on an internal workgroup focused on developing workforce capacity to appropriately serve Tribal communities
- Developed language and strategies to integrate oral health strategies and activities into funding announcements to support state educational systems through CDC’s Healthy School Branch (CDC-RFA-DP-23-0002: School-Based Interventions to Promote Equity and Improve Health, Academic Achievement, and Well-Being of Students), CDC’s Healthy Tribe Program (CDC-RFA-DP-24-0025
- A Cultural Approach to GHWIC, and an unfunded draft opportunity that sought to address social determinants of health, promote health equity, and reduce disparities in chronic diseases
- Served on three agency funding Objective Review Panels, providing expertise in perinatal health systems (CDC-RFA-DP22-2207: Statewide Perinatal Quality Collaboratives), public health & clinical workforce development (OE22-2203: Strengthening U.S
- Public Health Infrastructure, Workforce, and Data Systems), and school health programs (CDC-RFA-DP-230002: School-Based Interventions to Promote Equity and Improve Health, Academic Achievement, and Well-Being of Students)
- Supported development of divisional strategic action planning
- Provided best practices on building flexible and resilient systems and workforces, culture change, and change management
- Identified and planned a process to address the need for reputational analysis to identify gaps in partnerships or concerns from existing partners that may need to be addressed to increase plan buy-in from others
- Identified the pressing need for the division to provide leadership and content in the area of health information exchange (HIE)
- Supplied Use Case examples, based on previous state work, to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) during comment period to demonstrate the inclusion of oral health in HIE strategies
- Connected with health informatics teams supporting dental systems in the Veterans Administration, CMS, Indian Health Service
- Collaborated with center-level informatics team to submit oral health use cases to ONC and enable other agencies to draft additional comments
- Provided use cases developed while in Colorado, updating content to reflect CDC and other national priorities.
DENTAL DIRECTOR and ORAL HEALTH UNIT MANAGER
STATE
08.2011 - 01.2022
- FTE, supervising 7.0 FTE Colorado Department of Public, Directed programs that led to a drop in prevalence of decay among children from 45 percent to 31 percent in under ten years
- Developed and directed Colorado’s Regional Oral Health Specialist (ROHS) Program
- Within six years of the implementation of the model, oral health outcomes of children in rural counties were significantly better than those of children in urban counties
- This trend was also found in a 2024 assessment
- The ROHS model covered half of Colorado's rural and frontier populations and doubled the number of perinatal, school-based, and adult preventive oral health programs across 21 rural and frontier counties
- Expanded ROHS role to integrate interventions for tobacco use, substance use disorder; HPV & COVID-19 vaccinations; and obesity, diabetes, and heart disease prevention & management programs
- ROHS models also support Tribal communities, people with disabilities, older adults, migrant workers, and other populations with access to care barriers
- Directed training of non-dental service providers in oral health interventions, including staff of medical, behavioral health, community health worker, educational, and social services programs
- Directed development of Colorado’s Framework to Advance Oral Health Equity, based on community listening and focus group sessions, guidance from multiple community-based organizations, and other partners representing communities experiencing extreme oral health disparities
- Convened a geographically, culturally, and racially diverse Plan Design Team of nonprofit organizations and direct service providers from multiple sectors representing Tribal communities, rural/frontier local public health agencies, early childhood councils, special healthcare needs program, and social service groups to guide development of the framework
- Charged the group to help develop processes for government transparency, and accountability while focusing on community-driven strategies
- Consulted on development of Colorado’s comprehensive adult Medicaid dental benefit in 2013-2014
- Provided guidance and research to inform Medicaid and CHIP benefits
- Currently, approximately 1.7 million people in Colorado are enrolled in public benefits, enabling access to comprehensive oral disease prevention and management services
- Directed Colorado’s Perinatal and Infant Oral Health Quality Improvement expansion grant, funded by HRSA
- Oversaw development of a prenatal clinical change package and integrated it into the department’s Clinical Quality Improvement (CQI) toolkit
- Trained approximately 2,200 clinical and public health professionals and students in provision of oral health preventive services for pregnant people and very young children in clinical and community settings
- Enabled development of Cavity Free at Three technical assistance activities to improve sustainability at a clinical level
- Developed Colorado’s Diabetes Cardiovascular Disease Oral Health Integration project, based on emerging research on the impact of integrated medical and dental systems
- Ensured oral health was included in the developments of an integrated Clinical Quality Improvement toolkit
- Funded medical, dental and behavioral health safety net systems to identify patients with (pre)diabetes, (pre)cardiovascular and oral diseases and refer for additional treatment needs
- Directed the Primary Care Association to provide technical assistance to community health center grantees
- Facilitated spread of the project by alignment of clinical quality improvement building blocks across cancer screening, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, oral health, and tobacco cessation clinical tools
- Directed training of medical, behavioral health, and dental clinicians, students, contractors and others to enable integration strategies and meet social service needs of patients
- Planned and directed cost benefit analysis of regional Medicaid utilization data to identify links between access to preventive dental services and diabetic outcomes (emergency department analysis here)
- Convened a multi-state workgroup to advance oral health information exchange strategies, prioritizing safety net partners and integration of public health, clinical, and social service datasets
- Collaborated with the State Office of eHealth Innovation to include workgroup strategies an use cases in the Colorado Health IT Roadmap
- Led statewide survey to assess, analyze and create a geographic information system map for communities to identify which dental clinics were open during the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown
- Survey focused on access to services for underserved communities, insurances or payment models accepted, language translation services, willingness to be deployed for COVID-19 responses, and workforce behavioral health and economic relief needs
- Collaborated with the state Medicaid office and regulatory department to enable teledental services and to train dental teams to provide COVID-19 vaccinations and to be deployed on clinical response teams
- Directed development of Colorado’s COVID-19 Safety Net Dental Program Response Project
- Convened three dozen safety net organizations and other partners to capture and share pandemic response practices, including implementation of newer practice act policies
- Modeled project to focus on protecting and improving the health of underserved, poorly-served, never-served, and newly-underserved Coloradans
- Pilot tested collaborations between rural clinical safety net and Aging and Disability Resource Centers services programs to provide older adults with access to dental care and nutritional services
- Named Delta Dental's Smile Power Hero of the Week for this and other dental COVID response work
- Collaborated with the Primary Care Association, the Primary Care Office and other partners to use interprofessional approaches to increase concordance between clinical and public health providers and the communities they serve, delivery of culturally and linguistically appropriate care, and improvement of population health
- Directed development of Colorado’s Oral Health Workforce Diversity Plan to leverage opportunities across workforce partnerships to improve pipeline programs
- For example, led discussions across state departments of higher education and public health, Area Health Education Centers, and community colleges to identify areas of alignment and gaps in programs
- Directed development and implementation of over two dozen in-person and virtual training series for dental, health navigation, hygiene, medical, nursing, physician assistant and public health students and professionals to increase the reach and effectiveness of community-based oral health programs
- For example, developed four ECHO (Extension for Community Health Outcomes) virtual learning series
- Curricula included: social determinants of oral health and equity, leveraging interprofessional care to decrease chronic disease burden, and teledentistry to improve community health
- Directed five communities of practice to enable peer to peer learning
- Audiences included school, early childhood, medical and dental clinicians, and public health professionals
- Served as one of three State Dental Director Representatives at the 2018 Surgeon General Report on Oral Health Convening, providing direct input for the report
- Received requests for follow up information and reviewed sections of the report for content
- Directed Colorado’s Oral Health Winnable Battle to increase access to evidence-based interventions and decrease decay rates
- Surpassed dental sealant goal – reaching 57% in 2016 (2020 goal was 55%)
- Coordinated stakeholder efforts of over 30 organizations to reach goals
- Directed the development of Colorado’s Oral Health Priority Community Methodology to prioritize counties with high oral health burden that correspond with the unit’s priority populations
- Directed inclusion of oral health data in the department’s public facing chronic disease dashboard VISION/Visual Information System for Identifying Opportunities and Needs
- Piloted multiple risk factor analyses and messaging, such as smoking, mental health and oral health status
- Served as a national panelist on CareQuest Partnership’s System Transformation: A Three Domain Framework
- Redirected framework to ensure more community-focused language and strategies
- Provided input on strategies to promote and improve dental and primary healthcare access, quality, and costs, including a focus on never and poorly served communities
- Developed legislative proposals that doubled state funding for community-based oral health programs, including water fluoridation and school sealant programs
- Drove 100% increase in annual average budget
- Awarded all oral health federal competitive grant opportunities available to public health agencies
- Led Colorado to be the state with the longest history of optimizing federal funding for state oral health programs and the only state awarded two cycles of the CDC’s medical-dental integration grants (CDC-RFA-DP16-1609 and CDC-RFA-DP18-1810)
- Served as state public health representative on Colorado’s Medical Assistance and Service Advisory Council for Medicaid benefits
- Disseminated research on the cost effectiveness and quality of teledental and integrated models of care delivery
- Consulted on Colorado’s Medicaid adult and other dental benefits, providing cost benefit analyses to support higher reimbursement for dental sealants and other community-based services
- Worked with for-profit stakeholders to reach consensus on ways to incentivize evidence-based services
- Develops, directs, oversees implementation, evaluates, and continuously improves public health programs and statewide plans focused on improving oral health outcome
- Focuses programs on underserved communities (e.g., people with disabilities, communities of color, rural communities, low-wage earning families)
- Develops strategic goals for oral health programs, using person-centered health systems change approaches
- Directs state’s Oral Health Unit and public health programs, including Maternal and Child Health oral health programs
- Ensures implementation of evidence-based and evidence-informed programs
- Provides expert guidance and scientific research to legislators, philanthropies, training programs, community-based organizations, professional associations, clinical systems, consumer interest groups, and other partners to appropriately assess community needs, gaps in services, develop strategies, and implement programs
- Develops evaluation and surveillance processes and reports, messaging results and recommendations to priority audiences, such as decision makers, communities, and public health partners
- Performs complex analytics of healthcare and public health programs, policies, and funding mechanisms to make recommendations for state and local partners to improve services
- Directs data analyses and formulates data reports, issues briefs, policy statements, legislative recommendations, and other issues on oral health needs and interventions
- Develops and tests models of care and public health interventions
- Directs continuous evaluation and improvement of programs and plans through analytical studies and evaluations to assess and improve the effectiveness of programs
- Identifies and responds to emerging key oral health issues and environmental/contextual changes to predict their impact on public health programs
- Coordinates internal processes and staff
- Oversees unified approaches to program improvement for internal staff and contractors
- Establishes collaborative efforts with safety net partners
- Develops and enhances programs to support safety net programs
- Assures that program staff collaborate with relevant community, state, and national partners to implement high quality and culturally and linguistically appropriate services
- Serves as a public health and healthcare workforce expert for local, state, and national primary healthcare policies, needs, and resources, with a focus on community-based care
- Collaborates with stakeholders to develop, implement and enhance local and national programs that enable high quality and culturally appropriate services that minimize cost
- Informs healthcare practice acts, reimbursement legislation, rules, and other policies to enable increased access to community-based care for underserved populations
- Initiates and develops modifications of dentistry and dental hygiene programs to improve the quality of healthcare
- Collaborates with philanthropies, other state agencies, academic programs, community-based organizations and national partners to align plans and programs
- Utilizes professional knowledge of local and national health professional programs, healthcare, and community needs to develop and promote programs to improve healthcare access, quality, costs
- Manages programs and teams, overseeing performance management and professional development processes for staff
- Ensures consensus across teams regarding programmatic priorities, division of labor, and redirection of programs
- Approves allocation of funding, grant reporting, and other programmatic processes
- Serves as a workforce development expert for public health and healthcare training programs and continuing education opportunities.
ASSOCIATE DENTIST
01.2003 - 01.2011
- Leveraged bilingual communications and personal background to provide culturally appropriate care and connect with predominantly Latin(x) patients from underserved communities, regardless of insurance status
- Diagnosed, prevented, managed, and treated oral diseases and injuries with minimally invasive services to improve outcomes and decrease costs of several thousand patients
- Developed and oversaw grants to support older adult patients with disabilities and significant oral health needs
- Developed and implemented community-based screenings and referrals to specialty dental, medical, and behavioral health services
- Provided care to poorly served patients with extreme oral health disease with mobile programs, including children with special health care needs and older adults in long-term care facilities
- Settings included 24-hour facilities, early childhood programs, school settings, and home settings.
GENERAL PRACTICE RESIDENCY, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
07.2002 - 07.2003
- Provided clinical care in hospital-based, operating room, emergency room, and community-based settings
- Focused on providing affordable and high quality care to underserved communities, including care coordination and patient/household oral health education
- Presented complex case studies to other residents and faculty
- Provided training in dental Spanish terminology to residents and fellows in program
- Cared for children with special health care needs.
- Collaborated with medical and behavioral health residents and staff to provide person-centered care to patients served by the hospital’s oncology services.
PRESIDENT and VICE PRESIDENT
STUDENT CHAPTER HISPANIC DENTAL ASSOCIATION, Tufts School of Dental Medicine
01.2000 - 01.2002
- Developed Spanish language dental terminology curriculum for predoctoral classmates and graduate students
- Chosen for highly competitive externship cohort to train in Colorado’s Salud Health Centers, treating children of migrant farmworkers
- Provided mobile care, screenings, and interventions
- Collaborated with faculty to develop and lead community-based outreach programs
- Recruited students to participate in community-based screening and preventive services events in settings with a high number of Spanish-speaking patients, including long term care facilities and elementary schools
- Developed study on patient perception of oral pain.
Education
PUBLIC HEALTH CERTIFICATE -
Colorado School of Public Health
Aurora, CO05.2014
DOCTORATE OF DENTAL MEDICINE -
Tufts School of Dental Medicine
Boston, MA05.2020
GENERAL PRACTICE RESIDENCY CERTIFICATE -
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Boston, MA06.2003
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE - PSYCHOLOGY
College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, VA12.1995
Skills
- Ideation
- Command
- Activator
- Futuristic
- Learner
- Strategic
- Self-Assurance
- Significance
- Individualization
- Maximizer
- Change Management
- Strategic Plan Development and implementation
- Public Health Program Leadership
- Cultural Humility
- Workforce Development
- Diversity
- Training
- Public and Private Insurance Knowledge
- Systems Change and Improvement
- Community Empowerment
- Community Advocacy
- Outreach
- Education
- Policy Change
- Implementation
- Project Management
- Community Needs Assessment
- Planning
- Evaluation
- Quantitative Research
- Qualitative Research
- Strategic Partnerships
- Public Partnerships
- Private Partnerships
- Interprofessional Partnerships
- Program Evaluation
- Program Improvement
- Grants Development
- Performance Management
- Program Development
- Program Implementation
- Cross-functional coordination
Summary
Public health official dedicated to ensuring equity for communities of color and other underserved communities, with additional focus on supporting people with disabilities and rural communities., Leader who collaborates across sectors and organizations to build the needed momentum, infrastructure, and workforce for evidence-based programs., Expert in developing, reimagining, implementing, and continuously improving public health programs.
Publications
- Association between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and a past-year dental visit among American Indian and Alaska Native high school students., submitted for publication
- Integrated Approaches to Preventing and Managing Chronic Diseases., California Dental Association Journal, 12/2022, 734-744
- The Duty of a Dentist to Report Abuse., Journal of the Colorado Dental Association, 02/2020, 30-31
Professional Development
- CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION, Racial Equity Institute, Groundwater Approach, 2023
- GRADUATE, Primary Care Movers and Changers, Regional Institute for Health and Environmental Leadership, 05/01/19
- CERTIFICATE, Prosci Change Management Practitioner, 06/01/19
- GRADUATE, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Institute, 10/01/14
Timeline
PROGRAM SERVICES TEAM LEAD, SENIOR DENTAL OFFICER, SENIOR PROJECT OFFICER
04.2024 - Current
SPECIAL ADVISOR, SENIOR DENTAL OFFICER
01.2022 - 04.2024
DENTAL DIRECTOR and ORAL HEALTH UNIT MANAGER
STATE
08.2011 - 01.2022
ASSOCIATE DENTIST
01.2003 - 01.2011
GENERAL PRACTICE RESIDENCY, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
07.2002 - 07.2003
PRESIDENT and VICE PRESIDENT
STUDENT CHAPTER HISPANIC DENTAL ASSOCIATION, Tufts School of Dental Medicine
01.2000 - 01.2002
DOCTORATE OF DENTAL MEDICINE -
Tufts School of Dental Medicine
GENERAL PRACTICE RESIDENCY CERTIFICATE -
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE - PSYCHOLOGY
College of William & Mary
PUBLIC HEALTH CERTIFICATE -
Colorado School of Public Health