Kathryn Saenz Duke, JD, MPH
Program Director
Medicine for People in Need
Kathryn Saenz Duke, JD, MPH, directs Medicine for People in Need (Medpin), and is the community representative on the Partners in D program planning board.
Medpin is a nonprofit program created in 1999 to help safety net providers in California and other states better understand and manage their pharmacy-related costs and patient care activities. Medpin’s initial project was to design and implement a four-year distribution of $170 million worth of brand-name medications to uninsured patients at community clinics and public hospitals throughout California. Medpin’s ongoing activities aim to improve access to pharmaceutical care for vulnerable populations in California and other areas of the United States through training and education, direct services, policy analysis, research, and linking of academic experts to safety net clinicians.
Regarding Medicare Part D, Dr. Duke has presented and written about the interaction between Part D coverage and ongoing use and design of drug company patient assistance programs for uninsured individuals. Shortly after the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act was enacted, she directed publication of comparisons of Medicare-approved drug discount cards with each other and with other sources of discounted drugs. To assist safety net providers in the early months of Part D drug coverage implementation, she directed Medpin’s partnership with the federally qualified health center Lifelong Medical Care to present a series of teleworkshops and special information materials on Part D issues most relevant to low-income beneficiaries and their safety net health care providers.
Dr. Duke served for a decade as Senior Staff Consultant for Health Policy at the California Senate Office of Research, where her public health and medical-legal issue areas included staffing the Senate Select Committee on AIDS. She has also held faculty positions at the University of California, San Francisco’s Institute for Health Policy Studies, and was manager of scientific affairs at the California Medical Association. Dr. Duke has been a lecturer in public health law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, and is currently health policy instructor through University of California, Berkeley continuing education.
Dr. Duke earned a Master of Public Health and a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley.