Donor Eases Burden for Policy Students

When Naya Kehayes, M.P.H. ’93, learned she had been accepted by the Yale School of Public Health, she was recovering from reconstructive surgery for a connective tissue problem.

Knowing the burden that medical bills would have on her and on her parents, Naya says that she matriculated only because her father made her borrow the money and invest in herself. “I would not have attended Yale unless my father had insisted I go,” she says.

Along with her husband, Philip Head, she recently created the Kehayes Memorial Scholarship Fund in memory of her father, the Rev. William S. Kehayes. First fulfilling a promise to finish paying off her own student loans before creating this fund, Kehayes wants to ease the financial burden on other students, particularly those pursuing careers in policy and management.

“My hope is to help somebody with significant financial needs and who will be able to focus on an area that is close to my heart,” she says.

Kehayes is the Founder, Managing Member & CEO of Millennium Health Consulting, LLC which operates under the name EVEIA Health and Consulting Management. “I wouldn’t be who I am today without the experience I had at Yale, my personal health issues with a chronic medical condition and the financial burden it had on my parents.”

It was an opportunity to work with Professor John D. Thompson (who passed away in 1992) on Medicaid reimbursement in Connecticut that set her career in motion. Today, her work is devoted to reimbursement methodologies and managed care. Kehayes hopes that her efforts help other families meet medical costs without the sacrifices her own family made.

A nationally known expert in ambulatory surgery reimbursement, Kehayes values the foundation in payment systems that she developed from her time with Thompson. “There’s no place else in the country where there’s even coursework in this,” she says.