South Carolina AHEC Welcomes Katie Gaul as New Office for Healthcare Workforce Director and Recognizes Linda Lacey's 10 Years of Service to the State

Katie Gaul

The South Carolina AHEC Program welcomes Katie Gaul as the new director of the South Carolina Office for Healthcare Workforce and bids a fond farewell to Linda Lacey, who will be retiring at the end of the year. 

Linda joined South Carolina AHEC in 2009 as the founding director of the South Carolina Office for Healthcare Workforce (SCOHW), which received startup funding from The Duke Endowment. SCOHW works closely with other state agencies and health-related organizations to ensure they have the information they need about the healthcare workforce in South Carolina and the issues affecting the future of that workforce. During her tenure, Linda established the South Carolina Health Professions Data Book – a widely used resource that describes the available healthcare workforce, population, health status and social/economic conditions in each county in the state. Updated every two years, the data book was recognized as a ‘best state document’ in 2013 by the South Carolina State Library. Under Linda’s vision and leadership, SCOHW has published more than 50 reports and fact sheets and fulfilled hundreds of data requests. Linda’s extensive experience as a healthcare workforce researcher and policy expert has been instrumental in creating a valuable resource for state policy makers, educational programs, health systems, and others in need of timely and accurate information about the healthcare workforce in South Carolina. 

Linda Lacey

Katie brings with her a deep commitment to service, a well-grounded understanding of state health workforce data systems and experience in providing data to inform policy. She worked for many years as a research associate in the Program on Health Workforce Research and Policy and the Rural Health Research Program at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; as the deputy director of the HRSA-funded Health Workforce Technical Assistance Center; and, most recently, as a senior policy analyst with the Health Division in the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices. Her expertise is built from assisting in the development of state health workforce data systems in multiple states; supporting state and national projects related to health workforce education, practice, and policy; and connecting researchers, policy makers, and others to timely and objective health workforce data and information.

Please join us in thanking Linda for her service and welcoming Katie to our state, our communities and our South Carolina AHEC System.