Kathleen O’Connor, author, consultant, industry analyst and columnist, has over 30 years experience in various sectors of the healthcare industry. She has been a bureaucrat, an entrepreneur, the Medicare marketing and sales executive for a for-profit HMO, and a non-profit executive. Her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees are in Japanese and Comparative Governments, so she speaks three languages: English, Japanese and Healthcare. She has the rare ability to take complicated healthcare information and turn it into language consumers understand.

Kathleen has been widely published in publications ranging from the Wall St. Journal, California CEO, Washington CEO, Seattle Post Intellingencer, HMO Magazine, Nashville Business Journal, Puget Sound Business Journal, and Health Care Informatics. She has published two books: The Alzheimer’s CareGiver, Strategies for Support, University of Washington Press, and The Buck Stops Nowhere: Why America’s Health Care is All Dollars and No Sense, Hara Press and published a Glossary of Health Care Terms and Definitions, TUB Press, Berkeley, CA. She served as a Columnist for The Seattle Times from 2000 to 2004.

As she was finishing her book, Kathleen struggled with the question she posed in her final chapter - “Where do we go from here?” A friend suggested a contest. Believing passionately that the American public is vastly smarter than they are given credit for when it comes to health care, Kathleen said, “Why Not?” So she asked the American people to propose solutions to America’s health care woes by entering her contest, “Build An American Health Care System.” Kathleen provided a $10,000 prize for the winning proposal, and offered a scholarship in memory of her son, Remi Miles Kaemke, for the best entry from a college team. News of the contest spread across the country after an interview with KPLU Radio in Seattle. In the end, 109 proposals from doctors, retirees, lawyers, homemakers, health care administrators, students, and professors poured in from all over the country and from Canada.

Over the next ten months, Kathleen recruited an independent panel of contest judges, fielded questions, received and read proposals, and coordinated an awards ceremony in Portland, Oregon.  On October 24, 2003, the judges selected the winners:

• Douglas Benn, D.D.S., Ph.D., of Gainesville, Florida, won the top prize  
• Frank Yuse, B.A., M.EdAdm, received second place

Inspired by the brilliant ideas for health care reform presented in the proposals, Kathleen, some finalists, judges, contestants, and others launched CodeBlueNow! after the contest awards ceremony. CodeBlueNow! is converting these ideas into realities by harnessing the genius of the American people.