Natalie S. Burke
CommonHealth Action
Co-Principal and Founder — CommonHealth ACTION, Washington, DC.

For the past 10 years Ms. Burke held positions in public health focused on programming, facilitation, budget systems, communications, policy, and organization and staff development. Current clients include the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and the New Orleans-based Center for Empowered Decision Making. Through these activities she provides technical assistance for public and community health capacity-building programs, eliminating health disparities, non-profit technical communications and research, and assisting post-Katrina recovery efforts in New Orleans. Ms. Burke is actively engaged in the conceptualization and implementation of the Design Labs sponsored by the Joint Center Health Policy Institute in support of Place Matters partnerships focused on addressing the social determinants of health.

Prior to founding CommonHealth ACTION, seven years of her work included managing the overall operations of the Turning Point National Program Office at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) in Washington, DC. In addition to managing budgets in excess of $10M, her primary focus was the development and implementation of the National Forum Program, which provided educational and networking opportunities for hundreds of partnership participants. In this capacity, she worked with NPO staff and national partners on program design, concept papers, evaluation, and provision of technical assistance to community-based public health partnerships. Ms. Burke also served as co-supervising producer for the Turning Point documentary, The Edge of America: Struggling for Health and Justice.

From 2000 to 2002, Ms. Burke was also responsible for the Operations, Public Affairs and Membership, and Workforce and Leadership Development staff teams at NACCHO. In that capacity and as a member of the Management Team, she oversaw and facilitated organizational processes and functions, and provided coaching and guidance for staff professional development. She coordinated the production of Turning Point publications and other major communications efforts and provided oversight for the implementation of the NACCHO-wide communications plan and capacity building. In 2003, she assumed program management responsibilities for the CDC-funded Birth Defects Project.

In 2004, Ms. Burke was selected for the Kellogg Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Public Health and she participated in the Kellogg US-Mexico Trans-Border Study Tour. A graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in Government and Politics, prior to joining NACCHO, Ms. Burke worked on federal health policy analysis at the National Health Policy Forum as a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Intern and at the National Institutes of Health.

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