Who We Are

Margaret M. Rhoades, Ph.D.Executive Director, National Coalition on Health Care

Margaret M. (Peggy) Rhoades is the Executive Director of the National Coalition on Health Care. The National Coalition on Health Care is the nation’s largest and most broadly representative alliance working to improve America’s health care. Rigorously nonpartisan, the Coalition is comprised of almost 100 groups, employing or representing approximately 100 million Americans and united in the belief that we need — and can achieve — better, more affordable, and more equitable health care for all Americans.

Prior to the formation of the Coalition in 1990, Ms. Rhoades was executive director of a predecessor organization, the National Leadership Commission, a group of individual experts on health care who came together in 1986 to understand better and to propose a solution to the problems in the health care system.

From 1981 to 1986, Ms. Rhoades was Public Affairs Director of the Brookings Institution. Prior to that, she was Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs at the U.S. Office of Education and Associate Commissioner for Public Affairs at the Social Security Administration.

Ms. Rhoades was an associate producer of documentaries for NBC News from 1971 to 1977, working on such shows as “The CIA’s Secret War in Laos,” “Social Security: How Secure?” and “Africa’s Defiant White Tribe,” on the Afrikaners in South Africa. While working on 18 documentaries for NBC, she travelled extensively in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and across the U.S. She was a research analyst for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1962 to 1967.

A graduate of Wellesley College, Ms. Rhoades has an M.A. and Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University.