Insight Matters
Winter, 2004

Welcome, Janet Shaw - New OPA Executive Director

The OPA Council is delighted to announce the appointment of Ms. Janet Shaw as the new Executive Director of the OPA, effective January 5, 2004. Janet brings great enthusiasm and expertise to the position and will help us keep OPA strong in the years to come.

Janet joins the OPA with an extensive and successful background in health care association management having represented and served the needs of Ohio physicians as a member of the Ohio State Medical Association staff for the past twenty years. During her tenure with the OSMA, Janet held several executive positions and served on numerous strategic work groups that resulted in significant contributions to the organization's priorities including advocacy, education and representation.

For the past eight years, Janet was senior director of education and was responsible for extensively increasing educational programming that provided practical and vital solutions for medical practice management and that resulted in significantly increasing non-dues revenue. Janet also helped the OSMA gain national recognition for its success in becoming a premier accrediting body for CME in Ohio. Prior to her contributions in the area of education, Janet directed an OSMA outcomes management pilot project and served nine years as associate director and ombudsman working to resolve reimbursement issues with both government and third-party payers.

Before joining OSMA Janet worked with medical students and residents while employed by Grant Hospital in Columbus and worked in the physician reimbursement and policy areas for Ohio's Medicaid program.

Janet has a Bachelor of Science, Health Services Administration and a Masters of Business Administration from Franklin University, Columbus, Oh.

Over the past year, Janet has become quite involved from a volunteer and advocacy standpoint for mental health issues both nationally (through NAMI) and in Ohio. She has participated in NAMI's Family-to-Family program and has been certified as a trainer for NAMI's Hand-to-Hand program.

Janet resides in Powell, Ohio with her husband, David and their teenage son and daughter.

In addition to directing OPA activities including membership recruitment/retention, legislative representation and mental health advocacy, as well as public relations/education, Janet will represent the OPA well in our relationships with our colleagues at the chapter, area and APA level. In addition, Janet will coordinate the activities of OPAC and will help to identify opportunities for collaboration with our partners in mental health through the efforts of the OPA Education and Research Foundation.

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