[Nfbv-announce] Celebrating John Halverson

[Tracy Soforenko]

Hi,

 

Our Potomac Chapter president and Newsline coordinator is retiring and any
comments should be sent to 

 

johnh50 at verizon.net <mailto:johnh50 at verizon.net> 

this message was sent to many at the US Department of Health and Human
services, Office of Civil Rights from one of the management team members at
HHS.

+++

 

Hello All,

 

It is with mixed emotions that I share the news of John Halverson's
retirement after thirty-eight (!) years in the federal government.  We are
so very happy for John and excited for his next chapter!  At the same time,
we will miss John tremendously here at OCR; he is a bastion of institutional
knowledge and a cornerstone of the HIP team.

 

John has had a terrifically-interesting education and career.  John
graduated from Sequoia High School in Redwood City, California in 1967.  He
attended the University of California Irvine and graduated with a bachelor's
degree in economics in 1971.  He was a member of the Student Senate in the
tumultuous times of the Vietnam War during his junior and senior years.  He
was honored as co-winner of the outstanding graduating senior award.  He was
admitted to the University of Michigan Ph.D. program in economics and
completed his Ph.D. in 1978 with an emphasis in public finance.  His
dissertation involved a comparison of the differences in net life-cycle
earnings across medical specialties and other sciences.  For several years
while a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he taught the
introduction to economics class to undergraduates.  

 

In 1977, John began teaching at the State University of New York Geneseo
where he successfully taught a series of undergraduate economics courses.
He created and taught health economics when it was a relatively new
discipline.  Soon after, John began working at the Department of Health
Education and Welfare, in January 1979.  He was hired as a Social Science
Analyst because of his knowledge of civil rights, health economics and
statistics.  When the department of Health and Human Services was formed in
the spring of 1980, he was assigned to the new department.  

 

In 1986, staff in headquarters were given the opportunity to become managers
in some of OCR's regional offices.  John relocated to Region VII in Kansas
City as the division director.  He managed the region's case load, conducted
technical assistance and worked with governmental and advocacy officials
from throughout what he called the "MINK" Region; Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska
and Kansas.  

 

In 1991 he was appointed acting Regional Manager and made permanent in the
spring of 1992.  He continued to manage the case load, conduct outreach
activities and planned a comprehensive civil rights enforcement program.  As
part of the Kansas City Federal Executive Board, he led the formation of an
organization representing federal employees with disabilities in the Kansas
City area.  For several years he headed the Kansas City area Civil Rights
Coordinating Committee.  This organization consisted of leaders of federal
regional civil rights offices.  It experimented with conducting joint
compliance reviews, analyzed whether the same complainants filed civil
rights complaints across different departments and held regional civil
rights advocacy conferences.  One of his most interesting activities
involved the opportunity to take the two week Organizational Leadership for
Executives training at the Department of the Army Command and General School
at Fort Leavenworth.  

 

After ten years he decided it was time for a change.  In 2001 John returned
to headquarters to become involved in Health Information Privacy.  He also
immediately began to participate  in the development of Departmental Section
508 policy.  He drafted HIP correspondence for the OCR Director for the
Secretary's signature, assisted with arranging privacy speaking activities,
and provided expertise to OCR and the department on internet and other
access issues.  More recently he has worked with regions to provide
assistance to investigators in developing investigative strategies and
insuring that closure letters concisely meet OCR standards.  Specifically,
for the past three years he worked with a series of new investigators and
managers to ensure the Southeast Region was able to reduce its massive case
load.  Finally for the last five years he represented OCR on the
Department's Privacy Incident Response Team (PIRT) which has the
responsibility to evaluate Privacy breaches of personally identifiable
information and PHI in the Department.

 

He has been a member of the National Federation of the Blind for many years,
serving as president of its Michigan affiliate in the mid-70s and its
District of Columbia organization in the 1980s.  He is currently president
of the Potomac Chapter in Arlington Virginia.

 

John is married to his wife Sandy. His stepson, Brent, and family live in
Independence, Missouri.  

 

We hope you will join us to celebrate John's extensive contribution to the
federal government, to HHS, to OCR, and to the HIP team, at a potluck in his
honor on Wednesday, August 30th, at Noon at OCR.  We appreciate your
touching base with Iliana, Brenda, Andra, or Lester for any culinary or
other contributions you would like to make to the celebration.

 

Thank you!  

 

Deven