Annamarie Saarinen

A health economist, Humphrey Policy Fellow, and mother of a baby diagnosed at 3 days old with critical heart defects, Annamarie has spent the better part of the last decade elevating early detection, telemedicine and connected care for the most remote, underserved and medically fragile babies and children. A natural gap-finder and bridge-builder, she has been recognized for spearheading the U.S. effort to become the first nation to implement universal newborn screening for heart defects - the most common and deadly birth defect. To date, 40 million newborns have been screened as part of implementation in all 50 states and public health pilots and programs have been implemented in 60 international countries. Annamarie was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Obama Administration to the federal Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children (ACHDNC) and has drafted more than 40 pieces of health legislation, authored more than 200 policy briefings and co-authored numerous published manuscripts on the importance of technology in advancing early detection and access to care for neonatal and pediatric health conditions. She has served as co-PI on research cohorts covering more than 250,000 newborns across 210 medical sites in 13 low and middle-income countries, helping uncover the astounding gap in access to medical ultrasound for babies and children. Annamarie serves on the Every Breath Counts Coalition, the WHO Medical Device Technical Series workgroup, the WHO MNCAH Research Network on COVID-19 in Children, the board of the Pediatric Device Innovation Consortium and is co-chair of the Newborn Foundation Research Collaborative. She was also among the first formal commitment-makers to the UN Secretary-General’s Every Woman, Every Child initiative. Under her leadership, the BORN Project was selected as one of only 24 global innovation projects from around the world addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals addressing human rights, health equity and innovation.