Biography

Celeste Marie Torio is currently a Staff Service Fellow in the Center for Delivery, Organization & Markets (CDOM) at the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ). She leads the public reporting initiative to improve healthcare quality, lower overall cost of care, and improve decision-making for consumers. Dr. Torio also serves as a lecturer in the School of Business & Economics at The Catholic University of America (CUA), where she focuses on the economic and management aspects of global health and nutrition. Prior to joining AHRQ, she served as a Research and Evaluation Officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Her portfolio (which totaled $54.0 million) focused on identifying promising methodological advances based on emerging evidence, on state-level evaluations of policy research, and on reporting and dissemination of findings. Her work has appeared in ABC News, the Huffington Post, and Scientific American. She also served as a Congressional Policy Fellow for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP). Dr. Torio received a BA in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPH in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from the Yale School of Public Health, and a PhD in Health, Behavior and Society from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.