Our Team

As Senior Vice President of CommonHealth ACTION (CHA), Michael Rhein brings leadership to the development of CHA's programs and partnerships, including assisting with the launch and growth of the Institute for Public Health Innovation. For over 20 years, Michael has worked on the local, regional and national levels to improve the public's health, with a particular focus on providing strategic support to communities so they can strengthen service systems and develop effective policy and programs to eliminate health inequities. Michael's work has ranged from developing large-scale national initiatives to working alongside community-based organizations to design and implement local public health efforts.

Throughout his career, Michael has served in an intermediary role helping to translate the resources of government, corporations, and foundations into practical support for communities. This has involved collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Ford Foundation, high-profile national corporations, state and local health departments, community foundations, research institutes, and a host of other public and private partners across the country.

Michael joined CHA in 2010, after serving for nine years with the National AIDS Fund (NAF), most recently as Vice President of Programs. During his tenure, NAF's annual grantmaking to communities nearly quadrupled to over $7 million in 2010 with the launch of multiple major national initiatives to address key challenges in the modern HIV/AIDS epidemic, including evidence-based HIV prevention for women, syringe access, the intersection of HIV/AIDS and incarceration, and human rights organizing and policy advocacy in the Southern U.S. He led the brokering and design of an unprecedented private sector investment to increase access to HIV care, which included $4.7M in first-year funding. Michael was appointed by NAF's Board of Trustees to serve as Acting President May - August, 2009.

From 1996 - 2001, Michael managed grantmaking and technical assistance activities for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's National Program Office of the Turning Point: Collaborating for a New Century in Public Health initiative, based at the National Association of County & City Health Officials. Turning Point was a high-profile foundation investment in public health systems development that included 41 diverse local sites – from New York City to communities in Alaska – engaged in collaborative strategic planning and action to create more responsive, community-based public health systems. Prior to Turning Point, he gained valuable on-the-ground experience through community-level public health work in Los Angeles and Washington, DC.

Michael has served on several local non-profit boards in the Washington area and was selected for the inaugural class of the Non-Profit Roundtable of Greater Washington's Future Executive Directors Fellowship Program. Michael holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California and a Bachelors degree from The George Washington University.