Foundation for a Healthy Ky. to have new direction and focus, new CEO Ben Chandler says in announcing new board members

The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky will take a new direction under Ben Chandler, its new president and CEO, Chandler said in announcing new leaders and members for the foundation's board.

Ben Chandler

"As we look ahead to 2017 and beyond, the foundation will be developing a new strategic direction and focus and we welcome the guidance of our newest board members and officers." Chandler, who became president and CEO Sept. 1, said in a news release. Chandler, a former U.S. congressman, helped start the foundation as state attorney general.

On Monday, the foundation board named Delta Dental of Kentucky President and CEO Clifford T. Maesaka Jr. and Berea College professor Janie Brudette Blythe as members, and elected its 2017 officers: Charles Ross, retired director of the Purchase District Health Department in Paducah, as its new chair; Mark Carter, CEO of Passport Health Plan, new vice chair; Allen Montgomery, a Norton Healthcare executive, secretary; and Dr. Brent Wright, a Glasgow family physician, treasurer.

The 15-member board establishes and oversees the financial, program and policy affairs activities of the foundation, which works to improve Kentuckians' health and address unmet health care needs in the the state.

Janice B. Blythe

Blythe, who returns to the board following an interim appointment that expired in November 2015, has been a nutrition and dietetics health professional for more than four decades. She is the Julia Parmly Billings Chair in Child and Family Studies and an academic division chair at Berea.

Clifford Maesaka Jr.

Maesaka has led Delta Dental and its subsidiaries since 1995. He holds a dental degree from Indiana University and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. Click here for more information on the foundation's newest board members.

Outgoing board members are Christopher Roszman, chief financial officer of Centerstone Kentucky (formerly Seven Counties Services) in Louisville, and Rosalie Albright, a registered nurse from Bullitt County who works in the Danville-based Ephraim McDowell Health Community Services Department.

"We will miss the endless hours of dedicated leadership both Chris and Rosie have contributed and are deeply grateful for their years of service to the Foundation and to Kentuckians," Chandler said.