Dr. Howard Haft currently serves as the Executive Director of the Maryland Primary Care program. During the COVID-19 pandemic he serves as the Medical Planner for the Unified Command and lead on the Vulnerable Populations Task Force.

He recently served as Deputy Secretary for Public Health Services in the Maryland Department of Health and as the interim Executive Director of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange.

Dr. Haft has been licensed to practice medicine since 1974. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island, attended medical school at Pennsylvania State University, and completed post-graduate internship and residencies at Brown University and a master’s degree from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Haft is board-certified as a specialist in both internal medicine and emergency medicine. Following his residency at Brown, he held an academic position at the University of California, Davis as an assistant professor in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry. He is recognized by the American Board of Physician Executives as a Certified Physician Executive (CPE) and as a Fellow of the ACPE. He served as an adjunct professor in the McDonough Graduate School of Business and as assistant clinical professor of medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine.

Dr. Haft was the Founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Conmed Healthcare Management, a publicly traded company. He served as the President of Maryland Healthcare, a multispecialty clinic in southern Maryland, as President of the Maryland Foundation for Quality Healthcare, and as Medical Director of Health Partners, Inc. Dr. Haft has also served as Chief Executive Officer of the Ellis Medical Group in New York. Dr. Haft provided emergency medical care for disasters including Hurricane Katrina, the Haitian earthquake, and in remote Caribbean locations.

Dr. Haft’s career has been dedicated to solving complex medical-care delivery challenges and implementing programs to serve diverse populations in Maryland and across the nation. He has 6 adult children and lives with his wife in southern Maryland.