Judith Woodruff, JD

Program Director, Health Workforce
503-220-1958
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Judith Woodruff currently directs the Foundation’s health workforce development program.  Although she has had several roles at the Foundation over the last ten years, Judith has been primarily responsible for facilitating effective partnerships with health profession leaders, community-based organizations, health systems, advocacy groups, government agencies and educational institutions to address the systemic issues related to the shortage of health care professionals in the region.  Her current workforce activities include supporting the development of the Community Health Worker (CHW) model, increasing the competencies of health workers to appropriately care for older adults, and increasing access to oral health services through new providers.  Judith is a member of the national Funders Oral Health Policy Group and a founding member of the Oregon Oral Health Funders Collaborative.  Judith also serves on the Workforce Committee of the Oregon Health Authority.

Judith is also the Program Director for Partners Investing in Nursing’s Future, a multi-year, $35 million dollar national investment in America’s nursing workforce to prepare them with the skills needed to serve an older and more diverse population. The program supports 61 projects in 37 states and the western Pacific territories to increase the capacity, involvement and leadership of local foundations to advance the nursing profession in their own communities. Beginning in 2005, this collaborative initiative with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) works to address nursing issues at the local level through partnerships with community and regional foundations across the country.  The program’s goal is to enable local foundations to act as catalysts in developing strategies necessary to establish a stable and highly skilled professional nursing workforce for the 21st Century.

Judith was a 2009 Women’s Leadership Fellow at the Harvard Business School Executive Program, and a 2005 Fellow in Collaborative Leadership at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.  She was also a Rotary International Scholar in the United Kingdom and received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Oregon, School of Law.

Judith is mother to a bright and healthy elementary-aged son, Jackson, who appears in this picture with her.