Nick Macchione, MS, MPH, FACHE
Director and Deputy Chief Administrative Officer
San Diego’s Health and Human Services Agency
www.chhs.ca.gov/
With over 26 years’ experience in the delivery, management and policy of health and human services, Nick Macchione, MS, MPH, FACHE serves as San Diego County’s Director of the Health and Human Services Agency. He directs a professional workforce of 6,000 employees with a $2 Billion annual operating budget, including 1,000 contracted service providers. Under Macchione’s leadership, the Agency has secured over $750 Million in competitive grant funds over the past 7 years and has earned local, state and national recognition for its innovative, cost effective solutions in improving the health, safety and well-being for its over one million clients. The Agency is of the largest health and human services networks in the nation, supporting all of its 3.2 million residents residing in San Diego County. With a focus on innovation and service integration, he directs the delivery of health and social service safety net programs, including public health services; behavioral health services; managed care and other safety net health insurance programs; nutrition assistance for the indigent; child and adult protective services; and early childhood development programs. Mr. Macchione implements policy direction of an elected Board of Supervisors and also oversees the operations of the County’s Psychiatric Hospital; Edgemoor Skilled Nursing Facility (2014 winner of the Silver Achievement in Quality Award by the American Health Care Association); Children’s Emergency Shelter; and a residential high school academy for foster youth.
Under Mr. Macchione’s leadership, in 2010 the Health and Human Services Agency and the rest of County government embarked on a bold and ambitious county-wide health and wellness movement known as Live Well San Diego. This groundbreaking data-driven strategy is a high level, collective impact for population health improvement. Live Well San Diego is being implemented countywide through public-private partnerships in building better health, safer living, and economic vitality for all San Diegans.
Macchione is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, having previously served a 3- year term as the elected Regent for San Diego. He is a Public Health Leadership Scholar with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a Creating Healthier Communities Fellow of the American Hospital Association’s Health Forum. He is a Commissioner of the First Five Commission of San Diego and serves on numerous regional and national boards, including serving as vice chair of the Reforming States Group, vice chair of the National Association of Counties’ Healthy Counties Initiative Advisory Board and executive steering committee for Harvard University’s Human Services Summit.
Mr. Macchione holds dual masters’ degrees from Columbia University and New York University where he specialized in health services management and health policy. For the past 18 years, he has been an instructor and faculty member at San Diego State University’s Graduate School of Public Health. In 2007, he was appointed as the John Hanlon Executive Scholar for the division of health management & policy.