Carla Masciocchi Messikomer, PhD, MA, has spent her career in a variety of non-profit settings: as a university faculty member, as the manager of the academic area of a leading not-for-profit professional membership association, and as the head of a non-profit research and education center.   A sociologist by training and temperament, she did her graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a certificate in mediation from Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work.  She led an international team of scholars and practitioners to design a project management curriculum and resources program for use in undergraduate teaching that could be universally applied. She is a recipient of Boston University’s Leadership Award in Project Management.  With more than 30 years of experience managing and conducting research, Carla has published primarily in the area of the social aspects of health care including organizational ethics, long-term care, and informal caregiving.

Carla believes her personal experience as an informal caregiver to and advocate for family members and friends in health care crisis is her most relevant qualification as the public member of the CCHIIM: with her mother during the years leading up to her death, with her sister who suffers from Cushing’s Disease, and with a close family friend who was challenged with Parkinson’s Disease for many years.  Added to these experiences, and a personal fact that largely influenced her career choice and emphasis on the sociology of medicine, was her father’s chronic mental illness.  Among the many diagnoses that plagued him, he coped, mostly unsuccessfully, with what, in today’s parlance, we know as post-traumatic stress syndrome. Witnessing the trauma that he, as patient, and she, as a family member experienced has left an indelible impression that informs her views of the health care system.