Karen Minyard, Ph.D. is the chief executive officer of the Georgia Health Policy Center at Georgia State University. She has led the center since 2001 and is also a research professor with the Department of Public Management and Policy in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Minyard connects the research, policy, and programmatic work of the center across issue areas including: population health, health and health care financing, health in all policies, long-term services and supports, rural health, child health and well-being, behavioral health, health system transformation, and community health systems development. Minyard has applied a realist approach to much of her work over the last six years. This work involves multiple projects, the largest of which included eight rounds of sensemaking over five years to revise the original literature based theory about health system transformation.
She received a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree in nursing from the Medical College of Georgia, and a doctoral degree in business administration with a major in strategic management and minor in health care financing from Georgia State University.