Marcia Brand, Ph.D., was named director of the federal Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) on January 4, 2001.

HRSA works to fill in the health care gaps for people who live outside the economic and medical mainstream. The agency uses its $7.2 billion annual budget (FY 2004) to expand access to quality health care for all Americans through an array of grants to state and local governments, health care providers and health professions training programs.

As director of ORHP, Brand is responsible for health policy, research, and grant activities that promote better health care services in rural America. These programs include the Rural Outreach Grant Program, which requires partnering among grantees to improve health service delivery, and the Rural Network Development Program, designed to further collaboration among rural health care organizations. Working with a staff of 23 in an office established by Congress in August 1987, Brand oversees a $160 million FY 2004 budget. The office advises HHS on matters affecting rural hospitals and health care, coordinates related HHS activities, and maintains a national Rural Assistance Center as the department's "single point of entry" for rural health inquiries.

Brand led efforts in planning and implementing the State Planning Grant Program in 1999-2000 to help states explore options in providing health care coverage for their uninsured residents. She coordinated HRSA's State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) from 1997-2000 and during the same period worked on the Secretary's Initiative on Children's Health and the President's Interagency Task Force on Children's Health Insurance Outreach, aimed to increase enrollment in SCHIP and Medicaid.

In 1997, Brand served as senior advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health, during which time she worked on the Secretary's Initiative on the Future of Academic Health Centers and prepared a report to the Secretary on the challenges facing academic health centers. From 1995 to 1997 she served as deputy director of the Office of Research and Planning for the Bureau of Health Professions.

Brand earned a doctoral degree in higher education from the University of Pennsylvania and masters and bachelor of science degrees in dental hygiene from Old Dominion University.

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