Paul Conway

Paul Conway serves as Chair of Policy and Global Affairs and is the Immediate Past President of American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP), America’s oldest and largest independent kidney patient health education and advocacy organization. Conway has managed kidney disease for thirty-seven years, including more than two years on dialysis and, for the past twenty years, as a kidney transplant recipient. He is actively involved in multiple patient-centered national health care transformation initiatives aimed at increasing the inclusion of patient preference information (PPI) and patient reported outcome (PRO) data across Federally-administered and funded programs and evaluation processes. He was recently named by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the Chair of the new FDA Patient Engagement and Advocacy Committee (PEAC) for medical devices and by was selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to serve as a Member of the External Evaluation Panel for the NIH Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP). He serves as a Patient Voice Editor for the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN) and is the recipient of a 2017 President’s Medal from the American Society of Nephrology (ASN).

Conway’s policy and communications career is based in the private, non-profit and government sectors. His expertise in Federal and state agency management and personnel operations was honed through service under four U.S. presidents, three governors and in support of five presidential transitions. He served on the Presidential Transition Team for President-elect Donald Trump as the Team Lead for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). In 2017, he served as a member of the Presidential Rank Review Board, the body charged with evaluating and recommending U.S. Federal career Senior Executive Service managers for distinguished and meritorious performance recognition awards by the President and the White House. His previous Federal posts have included Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Labor for Secretary Elaine L. Chao, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for Director Kay Coles James, an agency Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff and as a Special Assistant in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. At DHS, he was awarded the DHS Secretary’s Silver Medal for exceptional leadership distinguished by achievements of marked significance to the strategic mission of DHS. For the Commonwealth of Virginia, he has served as the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Resources, as a member of the Board of Health Professions, as a member of the Commonwealth Protection Panel for homeland security planning and as an external reviewer of Virginia health and disability agencies and mental health modernization proposals.

As a policy professional and patient advocacy leader, Conway has used his knowledge of Executive Branch and Congressional process to elevate an independent patient voice on issues ranging from innovations in medical treatment and devices, improved access to treatment modalities, provider payment models, quality of care and quality measurement. He deals extensively with Congressional leaders and their staffs as well as Federal appointed and career civil service officials across the government including the White House, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Assistance (CMS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the CMS Center for Medicaid and Medicare Innovation (CMMI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

He serves on multiple national boards and committees including: the Kidney Health Initiative (KHI - a U.S. Food and Drug Administration/American Society of Nephrology public private collaborative); the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) Kidney Committee; the Center for Dialysis Innovation (CDI) at the University of Washington; and as a member of the Federal legal and regulatory issue team for the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) at Duke University. He represents AAKP on the National Quality Forum (NQF) Measure Application’s Partnership Hospital Workgroup and the Board of Directors of the National Council of Patient Information and Education (NCPIE). He has co-chaired several Technical Evaluation Panels for CMS and served on other technical panels related to kidney disease quality of life, including efforts by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).