Kathleen (Kate) Claessens is a Health Policy Director at Applied Policy, with extensive U.S. health policy experience within the public and private sectors. Kate holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and practiced as a psychiatric nurse. After completing graduate school, she primarily worked within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she served in a variety of roles including the Office of the Secretary, the Health Care Financing Administration, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

After leaving the federal government, Kate worked for the BlueCrossBlueShield Association as a Senior Legislative Consultant where she applied her expertise to members’ statutory and regulatory healthcare issues.

More recently, Kate served as Senior Director of Health Policy & Reimbursement for Roche Diagnostics Corporation North America, where she ensured active and pipeline diagnostics portfolio was/would be properly reimbursed. At Roche, she was also responsible for companion diagnostic reimbursement and led the U.S. global market access team.

At Applied Policy since 2017, Kate has worked on a broad portfolio of issues, including E.U. reimbursement topics. Kate holds her BSN from the University of Pennsylvania and her master’s degree from Georgetown University.