Helen Darling

Helen Darling is President of the National Business Group on Health (formerly Washington Business Group on Health), a national non-profit, membership organization devoted exclusively to providing practical solutions to its employer-members' most important healthcare problems and representing large employers' perspective on national health policy issues.  Its 300 members, including 65 of the Fortune 100 in 2006, purchase health and disability benefits for over 50 million employees, retirees and dependents.

Darling heads the Business Group's Institute on Health Care Costs and Solutions which is devoted to finding practical solutions from a business perspective to the nation's growing crisis of rapidly rising costs and affordability of care, on top of continuing problems of patient safety and quality.

Darling serves on: the Committee on Performance Measurement of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (Co-chair for 10 years); the Medical Advisory Panel, Technology Evaluation Center (Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association); the Institute of Medicine's Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine; the Board of the National Quality Forum; Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee; the Governance Committee of Care Focused Purchasing, the Board of the VHA Health Foundation and the Board of the Congressionally-created Reagan-Udall Foundation.

Previously, she directed the purchasing of health benefits and disability at Xerox Corporation for 55 thousand U.S. employees.  Darling was a Principal at William W. Mercer and Practice Leader at Watson Wyatt.  Earlier in her career, Darling was an advisor to Senator David Durenberger, on the Health Subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee.  She directed three studies at the Institute of Medicine for the National Academy of Sciences.  Darling received a master's degree in demography/sociology and a bachelor's of science degree in history/English, cum laude, from the University of Memphis.