Lauren Niles
Lauren Niles

Lauren Niles

Principal

Health Management Associates

Washington, DC

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Lauren Niles, DrPH, MPH is an experienced and passionate healthcare quality subject matter expert and researcher. She has experience with the development, specification, maintenance, and use of clinical quality measures for use at the state, managed care, and provider levels of accountability.  

Dr. Niles has a successful track record of designing and conducting health systems and policy research using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches at the federal, state, and provider organization levels. She also has significant experience with stakeholder engagement and facilitation processes. She is a subject matter expert in behavioral health quality, including both mental health (MH) conditions and substance use disorders (SUD), and development of quality infrastructure models to support improvements within behavioral health systems.  

Prior to joining HMA, she was a senior research associate with the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). In this role she led the development and maintenance of Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) health plan-level performance measures in MH, SUD, and high-risk prescription opioid use. She has significant experience with the development, maintenance, and endorsement processes related to quality measurement at the state, health plan, and provider levels. 

She earned her Doctor of Public Health in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; a Master of Public Health in epidemiology from George Washington University; and a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology and physiology from the University of Maryland. Dr. Niles received the John C. Hume Doctoral Award from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2021. She is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM).