Kate Davidson
Principal
Kate Davidson is a nationally recognized leader in federal and state health policy and healthcare transformation. She applies implementation and quality improvement science to accelerate measurable improvements in patient outcomes across public and private healthcare systems.
Most recently, Kate led the Learning and Diffusion Group at the CMS Innovation Center, overseeing a team of 50 and a $100 million annual portfolio supporting more than 50 value-based care payment models nationwide. She brought operational rigor to model design, implementation, and evaluation—strengthening evidence generation and accelerating scale across the healthcare ecosystem. Kate scaled nationally recognized initiatives such as the Healthcare Payment Learning & Action Network (HCP-LAN), aligning multi-payer stakeholders around patient-centered care, payment reform, and technology innovation. Under her leadership, CMS advanced data-driven tools including prospective market analytics, targeted participant recruitment strategies, peer-network learning collaboratives, positive deviance research and rapid, pragmatic randomized controlled trials. These capabilities increased the speed of evidence generation and scaling into practice across both public and private sectors.
Kate began her career as a clinical social worker practicing in randomized clinical trials at the intersection of behavioral health, primary care, juvenile justice, and child welfare. That frontline experience anchors her approach to practical policy change—ensuring that reform is grounded in real-world care delivery.
Today, Kate leads Strategic Partnerships for Healthcare Transformation at the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy, where she advances cross-sector collaboration to drive system-level change.
She holds degrees from Loyola University Maryland and Fordham University.
