WASHINGTON– The chairman of the board of directors of Healthcare Ready, a nonprofit organization established in 2007 to help strengthen the US healthcare system and assist all communities in planning for, responding to, and recovering from disasters and disease pandemics, today announced Tom Cotter, MPH, as its new executive director. Cotter officially assumes this role on June 20, 2022.
Over his 15-year career as a public health and emergency management professional, Cotter has piloted and launched innovative international strategies to localize emergency response operations and build sustainable response functions worldwide. Most recently, Cotter served as the director of emergency response and preparedness for Project HOPE, a renowned global health and humanitarian relief organization. Prior to that role, he led response operations at Americares, where he developed and managed a multi-million-dollar project to increase its response capacity.
“As Healthcare Ready’s new executive director, I look forward to continuing the organization’s 15-year history of bridging the private sector healthcare supply chain with public health and emergency management to improve the nation’s preparedness, response, and recovery efforts,” said Thomas Cotter, MPH, Healthcare Ready’s new executive director. “My years of first-hand experience managing global and domestic crises from war-torn regions like Ukraine to natural disasters in Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and on the Navajo Nation (among others), will help me fulfill Healthcare Ready’s mission-driven work to identify and address health equity so that all patients have access to critical healthcare resources when they need them most.”
“Tom is a public health and emergency management leader who brings a unique global perspective cultivated through more than a decade of experience helming many complex and conflict-driven health responses in the U.S., Haiti, and the Philippines, among many others, to Healthcare Ready,” said Perry Fri, Executive Vice President, Industry Relations, Membership and Education, Healthcare Distribution Alliance, and Chairman of Healthcare Ready’s Board of Directors. “Tom’s years of experience as a preparedness and emergency management expert in leading international organizations will help Healthcare Ready expand its capacity-building efforts throughout the nation, strengthen our health supply chain, and help communities become more resilient in the face of a crisis.”
Cotter’s educational background is heavily focused on complex humanitarian disaster relief management and emergency response. He has a Master of Public Health degree from Boston University School of Public Health and a certificate from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Cotter received his Bachelor of Arts in Public and Community Service Studies at Providence College in Rhode Island and attended the University of the Philippines as part of an international research team focused on the socioeconomic determinants of health. Cotter has also served as an emergency response coordinator for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services since 2013.
