Lifelong Kansas Citian named president of health care advocacy foundation
Lifelong Kansas City resident Qiana Thomason is the new president and CEO of Health Forward Foundation, a nonprofit health care advocacy group in Kansas City. A nationwide search brought the organization to someone close to home.
Thomason has spent her career working to improve health and wellness in the Kansas City area, focusing on communities that struggle with finding good health care. She begins her new role Jan. 21, the foundation announced in a statement on Monday.
Health Forward works to eliminate barriers to quality health care for uninsured and underserved communities in several counties around Kansas City. Until a name change in November 2018, Health Forward was known as the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Most recently, Thomason was vice president of community health and health equity at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. Before her work there she spent eight years at Swope Health, and was deputy director and health and human services liaison for former Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo.
“In addition to her compassion and commitment to the mission of Health Forward, Qiana brings a deep understanding of our community,” Marshaun Butler, chair of the foundation’s board of directors, said in a statement. “She has experienced, firsthand, the complex socioeconomic and environmental challenges of the uninsured.”
Then-Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon established the group with more than $400 million of the proceeds from the sale of the nonprofit health care provider Health Midwest to HCA in April 2003.
Health Forward awards about $20 million in grants every year. It has awarded about $315 million in grants since 2005, the group’s website says, “and our continued focus on the areas of mental health, safety net, and healthy communities have helped tackle the pressing health issues facing those most in need in our communities.”
In September, Health Forward was one of two health care organizations that donated money to the campaign to put Medicaid expansion on a Missouri-wide ballot in 2020. The foundation gave roughly $1.1 million to Healthcare for Missouri, a PAC formed to support the initiative.
Thomason, who has a master’s degree in social work from the University of Kansas, is also a board trustee for William Jewell College and a board member of ArtsKC, according to the foundation.
“I am blessed to once again serve the safety net system that once served me,” Thomason said in a statement.
She replaces Bridget McCandless, who retired in October after six years with the foundation.
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