Rural Health Webinar Series
This webinar is Part 3 of our 2026 Rural Health Webinar Series. Attend at least four of our five sessions, complete a brief knowledge check and earn an AHCJ Certification in Covering Rural Health for your resume. Learn more »
The biggest cuts in Medicaid’s history take effect on January 1. Enacted as part of the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Law,” the legislation will cut approximately $1 trillion over the coming decade from Medicaid, a joint federal-state health program for people with low incomes. It also requires certain people who became eligible for Medicaid under the ACA expansion to prove that they are meeting new federal work requirements. And it constrains how states finance their portion of Medicaid. These changes will ripple through the entire health system but will hit the already vulnerable rural health providers (and the populations they serve) particularly hard.
Joanne Kenen
Journalist-in-residence, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Joanne Kenen is an experienced public health and health care journalist who has been the journalist in residence at the Bloomberg School of Public Health since late 2021. She also co-teaches a course about how the changing economic and political media landscape in the United States affects public health. During the decade before she came to the Johns Hopkins University, Kenen was at Politico where she oversaw the prize-winning health reporting team—from the implementation of the ACA through the coronavirus pandemic.
Her work has appeared in numerous national publications: Politico and Politico Magazine, KFF Health News, the Washington Post, Stat, the Atlantic, Health Affairs and many other outlets. Kenen has guest lectured at numerous universities and done training for health journalists both through the Association of Health Care Journalist and the USC Center for Health Journalism. She is a regular on KFF’s “What the Health” podcast. Honors & Awards
Akeiisa Coleman
Assistant Vice President, Medicaid, Expanding Coverage and Access, The Commonwealth Fund
Akeiisa Coleman, M.S.W., is assistant vice president for Medicaid, Expanding Coverage and Access at the Commonwealth Fund. She is responsible for the Medicaid and state-facing grants. She was promoted from program officer in July 2021. She advises on strategy around federal and state policy, contributing to Fund research and publications and helping to execute projects and events to inform and educate policymakers at the state and federal level.
Prior to joining the Commonwealth Fund in August 2018, Coleman was a senior policy analyst with the National Governors Association (2015-2018), where she managed multiple projects related to social determinants of health, Medicaid, and behavioral health. She provided technical assistance to state leaders, including governors’ health policy advisors, Medicaid directors, secretaries of health, and other senior state officials on key policy issues and best practices.
From 2008–2015, she was a health policy associate with the Missouri Foundation for Health, where she wrote and edited reports on the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, Medicare, and health disparities and assisted in the development of grant programs and requests for proposals. While working full-time as a health policy associate, she was also a clinical social worker at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis from 2009–2015.
Prior to those positions, she was a project coordinator at the Center for Mental Health Services Research in St. Louis, a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs, and an AmeriCorps member. Coleman earned an M.S.W. from Washington University in St. Louis and a B.A. in sociology from the University of Southern California.
Stuart Portman
Medicaid Director, State of Georgia
Stuart Portman serves as Executive Director for the Division of Medical Assistance Plans in the Georgia Department of Community Health, where he oversees Medicaid and CHIP operations statewide.
Prior to this role, he served as Senior Health Policy Advisor on the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance and in legislative roles for Senators Orrin Hatch, Chuck Grassley, and Mike Crapo, focusing on Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and a broad range of health policy issues including health information technology and Food & Drug Administration policy.
Stuart holds a Master of Public Health degree in health policy from the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology and Political Science from the University of Denver. He is a proud native of St. Louis, Missouri.
Meghan Groen
Chief deputy director for Health Services, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services
Meghan Groen oversees Michigan Medicaid in her role as chief deputy director for Health Services for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. She also oversees long term care and programs for people with developmental disabilities. Earlier, she was a health policy adviser to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and helped oversee creation of the Healthy Moms Healthy Babies initiative to address health disparities.
