Matt Barry joined Edelman in 2007 and serves as a vice president on the Healthcare team in Washington, DC. Matt has broad and deep knowledge of tobacco control policy, programs and scientific issues, providing substantive support to his client roster, including Pfizer, GSK, Merck and Viropharma. 

Matt leads the DC office efforts for several cross-office accounts. For Chantix, he supports the team on all national tobacco control policy-related work. He also helps implement a prostate cancer public awareness campaign for GSK and builds programs to influence key stakeholders for several other clients. 

Matt comes to Edelman from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the nation’s leading policy and advocacy organization focused exclusively on tobacco control issues.  At the Campaign, he served as Director of Policy Research and was the organization’s leading expert in multiple areas, including tobacco cessation, harm reduction, smokeless tobacco, secondhand smoke, and regulation of tobacco products and advertising.    While at the Campaign, Matt served (and continues to serve) as co-chair of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco’s Policy Committee. He is also an advisory board member of the National Partnership for Smoke-Free Families and the Tobacco Cessation Leadership Network. 

Prior to joining the Campaign in 2001, Matt served as a senior policy analyst for the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an advisory committee to Congress on the Medicare program, where he worked on issues of access to care in rural America. 

As a Brookings Institute Fellow, Matt served on the personal staff of U.S. Sen. Bob Graham as an advisor on Medicare reform, tobacco prevention and managed care issues.  He advised the senator on ways to shift the Medicare program from one that only treats the seriously ill to one that has a major focus on wellness, prevention and health promotion. 

Matt has extensive experience at the Health Care Financing Administration (the predecessor to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and the Health Resources and Services Administration where he developed a deep understanding of both the fiscal/reimbursement and policy matters confronting the U.S. health care system and the people it is designed to serve.  He has a breadth of knowledge spanning issues such as Medicaid, managed care, health care for the uninsured, health care delivery in rural and underserved areas, health care for persons with special health care needs, and children’s health care.   

Matt received a master’s degree from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Graduate School of Public Affairs and Policy and a bachelor’s degree in both political science and philosophy from the State University of New York at Albany.