Alison P. Smith

Alison serves as an independent consultant to academic and non-profit associations in health care and public health, focusing on improving clinical knowledge and skills, care processes, and patient experience and outcomes.

With experience from bedside to board room, she led Target: BP, a national blood pressure initiative on behalf of the American Heart Association and the American Medical Association for 8 years.  The initiative helps health care organizations to improve blood pressure control by providing education, resources, and annual awards for improvement. Since the program launch, she has guided its growth from 330 to nearly 2400 participating health care organizations serving 10.6 million patients with hypertension. In 2025, more than 1300 organizations were recognized for achieving BP control rates of 70% or higher, and nearly 1700 for adoption of evidence-based practices.

Alison led the development of the clinical core curriculum as part of the National Hypertension Control Initiative (NHCI), a HRSA/OMH-funded demonstration project supporting 350 federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) to improve blood pressure control and implement self-measured blood pressure programs. From their 2020 pandemic baseline of 51.1%, the NHCI FQHCs improved their BP control to 60.9% in 2023.

She was recently honored with recognition as a Fellow in the American Heart Association.