Chris Jennings

founder and president

Chris Jennings is an over three decades-long health policy veteran of the White House, Congress, and the private sector. He is the President of Jennings Policy Strategies, a nationally respected health care consulting firm that assists foundations, consumers, purchasers, health systems, and aligned stakeholders committed to quality, affordable health care for all. In 2014, he departed from his second tour of duty in the White House where he served President Obama as Senior Advisor for Health Policy and Coordinator of Health Reform. He served in a similar capacity in the Clinton White House for nearly eight years.

Outside of government service, Mr. Jennings has been a senior health policy advisor to ten Presidential campaigns, the 2008, 2016, and 2020 Democratic Platform Drafting Committees, as well as multiple gubernatorial and Senate candidates. Most recently, he served as an advisor to the Biden Transition Team and as one of his members of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force. Recognizing his pragmatic nature and experience with key Democratic policymakers, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) utilizes Chris as a senior advisor on a broad array of their ongoing health reform projects, including reports and recommendations related to access, delivery reforms, cost containment, and long-term care. In 2023, he was recognized by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the most influential non-governmental experts in public policy debates.

From his positions in the executive branch, Mr. Jennings helped implement the Affordable Care Act’s access and delivery reform provisions (for President Obama) as well as playing leadership roles in the development, passage, and implementation of bipartisan health reforms, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) of 1997 and major Medicare reforms in the Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 (for President Clinton).

In his decade of service in the U.S. Senate, he served as the Deputy Director of the Special Committee on Aging for three Senators (Glenn, Pryor, and Melcher) and led major reform efforts in the areas of long-term care, prescription drug coverage/cost containment, and rural health care. In this capacity, he also served in a major role for the U.S. Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care (also known as the “Pepper Commission”).

In addition to his consulting work and his collaborations with think tanks, Mr. Jennings is a go-to health policy and political commentator with national media and a contributor to publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, and the Atlantic. He is also a board member of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review as well as the David Winston Health Fellowship.

Michael Dahl

legislative assistant

Michael joins Jennings Policy Strategies as the Legislative Assistant to Chris Jennings after working in various academic, policy, and direct service settings.

Michael has engaged with public policy in the field most recently as a health policy analyst with the Associated Medical Schools of New York where he worked on a range of issues, including managing a scholarship program for students historically underrepresented in medicine. Before this, Michael served as an AmeriCorps VISTA at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Health Interprofessional Programs and affiliated FQHC, the Community-University Health Care Center (CUHCC). As a VISTA he helped develop programs for health professional students to engage in collaborative settings and design approaches to improve care for underserved populations at CUHCC.

Michael also brings experience from his time as an Emergency Department Technician, a research assistant studying substance use disorder and motivation in the midbrain, and various other customer service roles.

Michael recently graduated from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service with his Master of Science in Public Policy degree. He previously completed his undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences.