Barbara DiPietro earned a Bachelors degree in English from James Madison University. Shortly thereafter, she served with the U.S. Peace Corps as a volunteer in Malawi, a country in  southeast Africa where she worked in maternal-child health in a village near the Zambian border.  Projects in Malawi included improving sanitation conditions, building beds in the women’s ward of the local clinic, and partnering with midwives to distribute accurate health information.

After returning to the U.S., Dr. DiPietro earned a Master’s degree in Policy Sciences with an emphasis in Organizational Management from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and then a Doctorate in Public Health Policy (also from UMBC). Her doctoral dissertation examined the impact of homelessness in Baltimore City’s emergency departments. While earning her Master’s degree, she worked at the Office of the Maryland Governor on policy issues related to health, aging and human services. From there, she moved to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene where her major focus was inter-agency child and family policy, developing the State’s 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness, and developing and coordinating policy and legislation related to public health services.

At this time, she is Senior Director of Policy for both the National Health Care for the Homeless Council as well as for Health Care for the Homeless of Maryland. In this role, she is able to focus on federal, state and local policies that affect individuals experiencing homelessness, and takes a particular interest in how public systems can better serve vulnerable populations.