Background & Bio
Katie Eilers currently serves as Washington State’s Title V Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Director and Director of the Office of Family and Community Health Improvement at the Washington State Department of Health. In addition to her role as MCH Director, Katie oversees programs related to sexual and reproductive health access including Title X family planning, cancer screening and prevention, community workforce and partnership development, universal and newborn hearing screening, community clinical linkages, and many other bodies of work related to perinatal, infant, child and adolescent health. As a public health nurse, Katie serves on the Washington Center for Nursing Board and co-chairs the Nursing Action Coalition.
After obtaining a master’s degree in public health at the University of California Los Angeles, Katie began her career in the non-profit sector, working both domestically and abroad. She directed a family resource in Compton, California which offered a wide range of services, including home visitation, domestic violence support, healthy eating and active living/diabetes prevention, and child health promotion programs. She transitioned to the international aid sector, joining Joint Aid Management, a non-governmental organization headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa during which she helped implement the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programming in Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa. Upon her return to the United States, Katie attended Seattle University School of Nursing, obtaining her registered nurse license and master’s degree in nursing. She then transitioned to a local public health jurisdiction, overseeing the community health division, which included the maternal and child health, chronic disease, and communicable disease programs. In 2016, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Breakthrough Leader in Nursing. Katie recently completed AMCHP’s New Directors Leaders Cohort and mentorship under Cate Wilcox, Title V Director of Oregon.
