Thomas F. Sullivan
Regional Administrator, Region VIII (Denver) |
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Thomas F. Sullivan was named Denver Regional Administrator for the Administration for Children and Families in September, 2002. Mr. Sullivan has more than 30 years experience in planning, designing, developing, managing and evaluating human service and public health programs while working in both the public and private sectors. He lead one of the first evaluations of the local health components of Head Start and as a result designed developed, tested and proved both the feasibility and cost effectiveness of a technical assistance program to the local Head Start health components provided by Board Certified pediatricians. Working with the Head Start Executive Director and his staff, he was able to convince the President and Board of the American Academy of Pediatrics to adopt this program providing technical assistance to each of the local health components of the Head Start Program. The Academy's membership provided the assistance under contract. When he was appointed Director of the Office of Long Term Care Standards Enforcement
in the Boston regional office of HHS he was responsible for consolidating staff
and functions from three regional agencies. The new office was responsible for
monitoring the health quality, fire safety and handicapped accessibility of nursing
homes and other health facilities in New England. He and his newly consolidated
staff were responsible for the first time implementation of new regulations of
several categories of health facilities which were newly eligible for Medicaid
reimbursement. As such they had to negotiate contracts and budgets with each of
the state health departments, provide training on the new regulations to the staff
in each state, while developing interpretive guidelines on the implementation
of these regulations. He provided administrative direction to a contract to provide general surgical, burn, trauma and emergency services for the San Bernardino Medical Center in southern California. At the same time he conducted a major evaluation of the Oklahoma system for delivering services to people with developmental disabilities. This evaluation combined with a comparable one in Connecticut demonstrated that higher quality care could be provided at lower total cost in small community residences and lead to a shift away from service delivery in large, isolated institutions. He has testified as an expert witness in the Federal courts on these issues, set up and lead seminars for Congressional and Executive Branch staff and testified before state legislative committees in New England and Oklahoma. As a result of his efforts on behalf of people with developmental disabilities he was awarded the Outstanding Public Service Award by the Connecticut Association for Retarded Citizens. As Director of Analysis and Evaluation in the Food and Nutrition Service at USDA he and his staff analyzed all administrative, regulatory and legislative proposals concerning the Federal food assistance programs and evaluated directly or under contract a wide variety of issues affecting these programs. One of these contracted studies debunked the exaggerated claims about the size of the homeless population in this country. His office was assigned lead responsibility for evaluating the state and local welfare reform initiatives being tested at that time. These evaluations provided the basis for the welfare reform legislation signed in 1996. He has undergraduate degrees in economics from Boston College and in philosophy from St. Paul's College in Washington, DC and an MBA from Harvard.
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