Pete Croughan is Policy Director at the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH). LDH is the state’s largest agency with a budget of $14 billion, encompassing the Offices of Public Health, Behavioral Health, Aging and Adult Services, Developmental Disabilities, and the Medicaid Program. He works with the Secretary and Senior Staff to spearhead quality improvement and policy initiatives that span multiple agencies within the department. He also researches and produces policy analyses for internal quality improvement, the governor’s office, and external stakeholders. Current initiatives include addressing Hepatitis C drug pricing, reducing opioid overdoses, exploring individual market stabilization policies, simplifying preferred drug lists and pharmaceutical requirements, designing a Medicaid expansion study, and analyzing the impact of federal health reform on Louisiana.
Originally from Crowley in Southwest Louisiana, Pete graduated from Yale University with a major in History of Science and Medicine. He then served as a Health Policy Research Associate at PolicyLab at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for two years where he helped academic clinicians increase the real-world impact of their research. He then completed three years at University of California San Francisco, School of Medicine. In those three years he served on the Admissions Interview Committee, worked with Mental Illness Among Us to raise awareness, and was elected to represent all 3000 UCSF students as President of the Graduate and Professional Student Association. He is currently on leave from medical school to serve his home state in this role.