Tamar Magarik Haro has spent 22 years working in health care and nutrition policy and advocacy where she has shaped and influenced many of the most consequential laws affecting the lives of millions of Americans, especially children and families.

Prior to joining Haro Solutions, Tamar was a senior leader at a non-profit medical association having served as Senior Director of Federal and State Advocacy at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). There she led federal, state and global legislative advocacy and regulatory initiatives on a variety of issues including Medicaid and CHIP, mental health, child poverty and family economic supports, nutrition, immigration, FDA drug and device regulation, and disaster preparedness.

Tamar’s effective use of grassroots mobilization, advocacy training and coalition engagement helped guide AAP’s efforts to defeat the 2017 American Health Care Act and protect the Medicaid program and to secure an additional $1 billion in federal funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children in 2024.

Tamar wrote, secured passage of and obtained appropriations for the Health Resources and Services Administration Pediatric Mental Health Care Access Program and its 2022 reauthorization totaling $224 million in federal appropriations. Tamar co-founded and chaired the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Coalition.

Tamar devised and executed AAP’s public campaign to oppose family separation at the border and other immigration issues, working with media, Congress, funders and advocacy partners. She served as project director for the 2023 AAP-Migration Policy Institute joint report A Path to Meeting the Medical and Mental Health Needs of Unaccompanied Children in U.S. Communities.

Tamar is an author and frequent public speaker. She has prepared more than a dozen pediatricians to testify on Capitol Hill.

Prior to joining the Academy in September 2010, Tamar served as staff director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee to former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), during which she played a key role in the development and passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, and the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act.

Before that, she was a Legislative Assistant for health care and nutrition for the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and served in the executive branch as a political appointee in the Clinton Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She graduated with honors from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in Political Science and Russian Studies.

Tamar is the recipient of numerous awards for her work on advocacy and policy for children and families including the AAP’s Pursuit of Excellence Award for her service on its COVID-19 Core Response Team. She has been a member of Health on Wednesday since 2012.