About Us
The AHA Quality Center is home for Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence, AHA’s strategic platform that provides field-tested practices, tools, education and other networking resources to accelerate performance improvement in the nation’s hospitals.
All AHA Quality Center services can be accessed through:
Phone: (877) 243-0027 (toll-free)
E-Mail: hpoe@aha.org
Staff
Haydn Bush is a quality resources specialist with the AHA Quality Center. He is responsible for developing and producing content for the Quality Center’s knowledge resources, including the Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence initiative, and for Quality Center content in other AHA publications.
Prior to joining the Quality Center, Haydn was a writer for Hospitals & Health Networks magazine and Materials Management in Health Care, publications of the American Hospital Association. He was specifically responsible for covering news and trends in the areas of hospital quality and finance. Haydn has a BA in English literature from the University of Wisconsin.
Haydn may be reached at (312) 422-2934, hbush@aha.org.
Shawn Foster is manager, fellowship operations. She has 14 years of experience in managing research and education programs. Since 2004, she has been responsible for developing curricula, resources, recruitment and marketing plans for AHA’s leadership programs in community health, patient safety and cultural competence. In her former role at the Health Research and Educational Trust, she served as a senior advisor on hospital data collection practices for the national Robert Wood Johnson program, Expecting Success, focused on improving cardiovascular health outcomes for African American and Latino populations. She also provided targeted site analysis and tools to 25 community health partnerships from the national Community Care Network demonstration program. Prior to joining AHA in 1995, she served as an assistant to the administrator of LakeCrest Nursing Center in Merrillville, Ind., where she focused efforts on improving patient and community relations. Shawn has a BS in public health from Indiana University.
Shawn may be reached at (312) 422-2933 or sfoster@aha.org.
Cynthia Hedges Greising is a communications specialist for the AHA Quality Center, writing and editing content for the Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence strategic platform. Prior to joining the AHA Quality Center, she was staff writer and communications specialist for the Health Research & Educational Trust, an AHA affiliate. Cynthia previously has worked as an editor for the Great Books Foundation and The World Book Encyclopedia. She has a BA in English literature from DePauw University and has done graduate work in English and education at the University of Chicago.
Cynthia may be reached at (312) 422-2930 or cgreising@aha.org.
Sarah Guerin is an education coordinator for the AHA Quality Center and provides meeting and communications support for Quality Center fellowships and other programs. Sarah joined the Quality Center in 2008. Previously, she worked for the Health Research & Educational Trust, an affiliate of the AHA, where she was responsible for a diverse group of projects including overall HRET communications and its annual TRUST Award. Sarah is a 2004 graduate of Benedictine University, Lisle, Ill., having earned a BA in communications and a minor in literature.
Sarah may be reached at (312) 422-2931 or sguerin@aha.org.
Stephen R. Mayfield, DHA., MBA, MBB, serves as senior vice president for quality and performance improvement for the American Hospital Association. Steve is an active researcher and speaker, and is published in the areas of leadership, performance optimization and patient safety. His work and research interests include: engaging leadership in hospitals to employ systems thinking to cultivate process excellence in which consideration is given to human factor aspects of performance in complex settings; the role of balanced measurement systems and quality indices in support of aligning organizational efforts to improve performance and increase transparency; and utilization of health information technology in combination with methods of Lean/Six Sigma to reduce costs of poor quality while improving work flow and patient flow.
He is a senior member and active in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the American Society for Quality and the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He is a contributing editor to the Industrial Engineering Terminology ANSI Standards for Health Systems, and serves as a member of the IIE Certification Board for Lean Practitioners. He completed his doctorate in health administration and leadership from the Medical University of South Carolina, earned an MBA from Emory University and a BS from Georgia State University. Prior to his career in health care, he worked in the Human Factors Division of the System Engineering Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Steve may be reached at (312) 422-2926 or smayfield@aha.org.
David Strickland is executive director of the AHA Quality Center. He has nearly 20 years of health care industry experience in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. He served as project director for the AHA team that developed the AHA Quality Center while serving in his full-time role as director of operations for the American Organization of Nurse Executives, an AHA subsidiary. Prior to joining AONE in 2000, he was executive director of the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (an AHA personal membership group) and held positions with the Healthcare Financial Management Association and MMI Companies, Inc.
David is a member of the American Society of Association Executives, and earned the Certified Association Executive designation from ASAE in 2005.
David may be reached at (312) 422-2929 or dstrickland@aha.org.
Jennifer Towne is the content and knowledge management director for the Quality Center. She is responsible for development and management of the AHA Quality Center’s knowledge and content resources. She brings 10 years of reporting and editing experience, including newspaper reporting, magazine editing, newsletter development and white paper writing.
Prior to joining the AHA Quality Center, Jennifer was senior writer for Hospitals & Health Networks magazine, the journal of the American Hospital Association. She was responsible for information technology coverage. In addition, she was project manager for the Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study. In this role, she developed survey questions around information technology issues in hospitals.
Preceding her tenure with the AHA, Jennifer worked as publications manager for the Alliance for Healthcare Strategy and Marketing, where she developed three newsletters and several white papers.
Jennifer may be reached at (312) 422-2928 or jtowne@aha.org.