Leslie Tucker

Leslie has more than three decades’ experience and leading policy development, advocacy and implementation at the state and federal levels, working with many of the nation's leading public, private, academic and philanthropic organizations dedicated to improving health care. Despite this background, two of Leslie’s immediate family members suffered repeated, catastrophic medical harms even as she was at their bedsides trying to protect them.

Today, in her role as Senior Policy Advisor for the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM), Leslie leads a multi-stakeholder effort to make diagnostic quality and safety a priority across federal health programs, and has helped bring $50 million in additional federal funding to the field.   Prior to joining SIDM, she served as VP, Policy, for the American Board of Internal Medicine, the nation’s largest medical specialty certifying board, and the ABIMF Foundation Choosing Wisely ™ Campaign, working to advance medical professionalism as a force for improving quality.  Previously she was a Senior Program Office at The Pew Charitable Trusts and earlier, Director of the Washington Office for a successful Pew-funded CDC/public health infrastructure funding initiative that helped enact and stand up the CDC/ATSDR Environmental Health Tracking System.  At the state level, Ms. Tucker led Strategic Planning, Policy and Outreach at the Rhode Island Department of Human Services, implementing welfare reform and Medicaid SCHIP expansions that were widely regarded as national models.  Ms. Tucker's earlier policymaking experience includes government relations and rural practice support for the American Academy of Family Physicians; senior legislative health staff to U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY); and health staff to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Aging.  She has served on multiple advisory boards and Technical Expert Panels including several related to diagnostic quality measurement.  Ms. Tucker received her B.A in Political Science from Yale and completed coursework toward an MPH (biostatistics/epi) at George Washington School of Public Health.