Dr. Felicia Collins describes herself as a pediatrician by training and a public health practitioner at heart with a passion for serving vulnerable and underserved communities across the nation. In December 2024, she retired from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after serving for 25 years in the HHS Office of the Secretary (OS), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). At the time of her retirement, she held the title of Rear Admiral and Assistant Surgeon General in the U.S Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (USPHS).
From 2018 to 2024, Dr. Collins served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health and the Director of the OS Office of Minority Health (OMH). Within OMH, she led the office in improving the health of racial and ethnic minority and American Indian and Alaska Native populations through the development of health policies and programs that help eliminate health disparities. In early 2021, Dr. Collins served as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Health. As the Acting ASH, she oversaw eight public health offices, 10 regional health offices, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the USPHS Commissioned Corps.
Prior to OMH, Dr. Collins served as a Senior Advisor in the HRSA Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) and co-led programmatic monitoring and oversight of more than 700 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) receiving $2 billion in grants to provide health care services to more than 14 million vulnerable and underserved patients. She also served at FDA supporting safe and effective drugs for children. Her first HHS assignment was serving as the Clinical Coordinator within the BPHC Office of Data, Evaluation, Analysis, and Research. Throughout her HHS career, RDML Collins received numerous awards from the USPHS and HHS, and from the Secretary of the Navy for providing medical care at the former National Naval Medical Center.
Dr. Collins’ professional experience also includes prior service as a legislative aide for the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues in the U.S. House of Representatives and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.
Dr. Collins received her undergraduate degree from Yale University and her medical degree from Harvard Medical School. She completed a residency in primary care pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and received her Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow in Minority Health Policy.
In the midst of her decorated career, Dr. Collins cherishes most her roles as wife to Ronald Chung-A-Fung, JD, MBA, and mother to their son Danny.
The CFHUF provided me with not only academic public health/health policy training but with resources for living everyday life. It introduced me to fellowship alumni and an administrator who cared enough to leave their families early one June morning to pack the truck that would carry me to new adventures away from Boston. It led me to my first health policy job because a senior governmental official believed in the CFHUF and the fellows it trained. It provided me with personal medical consultants when I needed to advocate for my own health care needs during a life threatening situation or when I questioned the potential of future medical sequlae afterwards. It has provided me with life-long friends and mentors who continually remind me to “always be looking for a new job,” “pray about it and follow your heart,” never be too busy to “talk story,” and never forget the community of “people we serve”—it is for them that we seek to bring about “a revolution” in health care. My unending thanks to Joan, Karen Davis and Karen Scott Collins, and the many, many others who are now a permanent part of my life resources.