Elizabeth M. Duke was named administrator for the Health Resources and Services Administration on March 6, 2002, after serving as acting administrator for the previous year.

HRSA is one of 11 operating divisions in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The agency uses its $7 billion annual budget (FY 2008) to expand access to quality health care for all Americans through an array of grants to state and local governments; community-based health care providers; and health professions training programs. These HRSA-supported grantees provide direct health care services to 20 million people each year.

Duke has led HRSA 's implementation of the President's Health Center Initiative, which has created or expanded more than 1,100 service delivery sites since 2001 and boosted the number of patients served annually from about 10 million in 2001 to more than 16 million in 2008. HRSA -supported health centers deliver high-quality preventive and primary care to patients regardless of their ability to pay at more than 7,000 clinical sites across the United States . HRSA recently implemented another Presidential initiative meant to extend health center services to residents in some of America 's poorest areas.

Duke also has led Federal efforts to boost organ donation and transplantation. Since 2003, the HRSA-sponsored Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative has brought together donation professionals and hospital leaders to share strategies for raising donation rates in their facilities to 75 percent of eligible organ donors. In 2008, 362 of the nation's leading hospitals had achieved the 75 percent rate, compared to 55 hospitals in 2003. In 2007, 28,357 organs were transplanted, an increase of almost 10,000 since 1995.

At HRSA, Duke also administers:

• the $2.1 billion Ryan White program, which affords life sustaining medication and health care to more than 500,000 low-income people living with HIV/AIDS – about half the diagnosed population in the U.S.
• $800 million in block grants to states for targeted health programs designed to combat infant and maternal illness and mortality.
• a broad range of scholarship, loan, debt repayment and grant programs that train physicians, nurses and allied health professionals for work in regions of the country where health care is in short supply; and
• cooperative networks of hospitals and clinics that link rural health care providers to diagnostic centers, improving patient outcomes and cost savings.

Inside HRSA , Duke has streamlined the agency to make its six bureaus and 15 offices more cohesive and accountable. She created a single, agency-wide process for handling grant applications and awards, and consolidated the agency's disparate communications organs into one office to promote consistent and timely delivery of information to the public and Congress.

Additionally, Duke created the HRSA Scholars Program in 2001 to attract talented new employees to support the agency's mission of expanding access to quality health care for all Americans. Its cornerstone is a year-long training and development curriculum that rotates scholars among four program and administrative areas. Duke created the program after viewing staffing forecasts showing that many of HRSA's most experienced employees soon would be eligible for retirement. More than 250 graduates of the Scholar program are now on staff at the agency.

Before coming to HRSA, Duke served as deputy assistant secretary for administration in another HHS operating division, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). In that post, she was in charge of grants policy, financial management, internal and state systems, human resources and administrative functions.

Duke also has more than 12 years of experience as both acting assistant secretary and principal deputy in HHS' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget (OASMB) – currently called the Office of Resources and Technology, which includes HHS' chief financial officer, management control officer and chief information officer.

She oversaw major organizational changes carried out within the framework of the Department's Continuous Improvement Program, reinvention efforts to streamline HHS personnel, and an initiative focusing on regional restructuring. In the mid-1990s, she led the Department in implementing the Congressional mandate to separate the Social Security Administration from HHS – an effort that saw no personnel grievances filed.

In 2006, Duke received a Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Executive, the most prestigious award offered by a U.S. President to Federal senior executives and professionals. She was one of only six 2006 award recipients from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Duke entered Federal service at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), where she rose to the rank of deputy assistant director and director of policy and systems in OPM's Office of Training and Development from 1984-86. From 1978-84, she was director of the Government Affairs Institute in OPM's Office of Executive and Management Development. The institute trains Federal executives in such responsibilities as testifying before Congress, developing budgets and managing large bureaucracies. Before joining the government, Duke was a professor of political science and spent two years as a research writer for Congressional Quarterly, a Washington, D.C.-based publication that covers Capitol Hill and Federal agencies.

Duke earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Douglass College of Rutgers University, a master's degree in political science and African studies from Northwestern University, and a doctorate in political science from George Washington University. She stays connected to academia by teaching political science and American government courses at Washington-area universities and by mentoring graduate students.

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