Amanda Phillips Martinez

Amanda Phillips Martinez is an assistant project director at the Georgia Health Policy Center. She co-leads the center’s Community Health Systems Development team. She brings strong skills in qualitative data collection and analysis, as well as experience facilitating meaningful community involvement and the development and implementation of community health programs.

On the Community Health Systems Development team Phillips Martinez provides technical assistance to U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration grantees funded through the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy to expand access to health care and health. She has a special interest in community health worker (CHW) approaches and has worked with different organizations and interest groups to explore ways to develop the CHW workforce; ensure that CHWs are used effectively and appropriately in clinic-based settings; and help local communities participate in state-level efforts to expand the use of the approach in hospital, clinic, and community settings.

She is also interested in migrant farmworker and immigrant health and has worked with health providers and systems to develop culturally and linguistically competent initiatives aimed at expanded access to health care. Phillips Martinez serves on the National Advisory Council on Migrant Health, which makes recommendations to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Health Resources and Services Administration administrator, and MHP Salud, which promotes the CHW model to improve health in underserved Latino communities.

Phillips Martinez is called on to use her qualitative data collection and analysis skills on the center’s community health needs assessment projects and other research initiatives where interviewing and focus groups are used to collect data from community members and stakeholders.