The Honorable Michael O. Leavitt
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, SW, Suite 615F
Washington, DC 20201
Dear Secretary Leavitt:
We are honored to nominate Dr. Carol Diamond, Chair of Connecting for Health and Managing Director of the Markle Foundation, as a voting member of the American Health Information Community (AHIC). The organizations we represent and more than 100 others have been deeply engaged in Markle’s Connecting for Health Collaborative (CFH), the multi-sector effort that has advanced the goal of nationwide electronic health information exchange based on open common standards. Dr. Diamond has led this effort, which has forged a remarkable consensus on key principles nearly identical to those underpinning the AHIC. We view Dr. Diamond’s participation in the AHIC as the continuation of this very important collaborative work. As the Chair of this multi-stakeholder process, Dr. Diamond is widely recognized as a key decision maker in health IT, as is the entire CFH collaborative. We firmly believe that the current national effort on health IT would not be as mature and productive as it is without the leadership of Dr. Diamond and CFH. This belief is so deeply held that we spontaneously nominated Dr. Diamond for the AHIC at a recent meeting of the CFH Steering Group, the 75-person governing board of the collaborative.
