Pamela J. Gentry
Deputy Director, Office of Minority Health, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
Pamela J. Gentry is the Deputy Director of the Office of Minority Health (OMH) for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at the Department of Health and Human Services. Gentry’s works to advance the agency’s commitment to and investment in health equity for underserved populations, including policy and program innovation to advance health equity.
Gentry led the agency’s team to plan and execute the first Annual CMS Health Equity Conference and is the champion of the long standing OMH Minority Research Grant Program. The grant program is designed to make strategic investments in health care research aimed at advancing CMS’s goal of mitigating barriers to health equity.
As senior advisor to OMH, she focused on outreach and education for minority communities and the development and execution of national education and outreach campaigns for Medicare, Medicaid, Healthcare Marketplace and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Gentry returned to federal service in 2010 after eight years as senior manager in broadcast and online media for BET Networks. She created BET’s first online political blog in 2005, “Pamela on Politics.” In 2009 she became the networks senior political analyst responsible for the daily coverage of the White House and legislative activity on Capitol Hill. Prior to BET she worked for C-SPAN, W*USA-TV Channel 9 in Washington, D.C., and provided political commentary for various national and international news networks and was a guest political blogger on The Huffington Post.