By: Matt Emma
Since its establishment in 1998 in Tallahassee, Florida, public affairs firm Ballard Partners has expanded across the country and around the world, opening offices in major markets while forging strategic alliances with international partners. As the firm has grown, it has worked to enhance its services for its 700-plus clients, a group that includes some of the world’s most recognizable brands.
Through its specialty divisions, Ballard Partners leverages its policy expertise and relationships in state and federal government to support advocacy in sectors ranging from financial services to veterans’ affairs. Ballard Partners’ specialty divisions also include the Health Policy Advisory Group. Led by Alison Anway, the group works with leading healthcare organizations to help support their interests in a complex and ever-changing industry. Let’s learn more about the Health Policy Advisory Group and how it is helping clients achieve their goals.
The complexity of healthcare is evident in the vast number of organizations, agencies, and regulatory bodies that constitute the industry. Medical practices, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies; Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act; mental health, telehealth—it is a highly intricate landscape.
Ballard Partners helps ensure clients are well-positioned to succeed in this challenging environment. As chair of the Health Policy Advisory Group, Alison Anway leads a team that brings to each client a wealth of experience in wide-ranging areas of health policy.
Anway arrived at Ballard Partners having started her career in the office of US Senator Pat Roberts. Serving as legislative assistant for healthcare, she played a key role in advising the Republican senator as Congress debated—and eventually passed—the Affordable Care Act. She later supported Anthem’s federal health plan line of business as head of the public policy team. Outside of health insurance, Anway established the public policy department at UCB Pharma, the Brussels-based biopharmaceutical firm.
Anway’s diverse health policy experience has equipped her to establish her own consulting business. As the principal of Anway Policy Group, she spent several years advocating for health plans, pharmaceutical firms, trade associations, and other healthcare clients.
Anway, who joined Ballard Partners in 2023 to establish the Health Policy Advisory Group, is aided in her leadership of the specialty division by Dan McFaul and Abby Vail. The managing partner of Ballard Partners’ Washington, DC, office, McFaul has been active in politics for two decades, over which time he has worked on more than 30 campaigns and served as a member of the presidential transition team, contributing to federal leadership planning efforts. Vail, who leads Ballard Partners’ Tallahassee office as managing partner, is a seasoned health policy professional and advocate who previously handled government affairs for an international healthcare company.
Ballard Partners’ clients across the healthcare industry include Bayer, LabCorp, Walgreens, and Broward Health. In July 2025, it was announced that another healthcare organization had chosen the firm’s services. CAN Community Health, a nonprofit focused on providing comprehensive healthcare to underserved populations, has partnered with Ballard Partners for the nonprofit’s first-ever federal advocacy effort.
The news comes as Congress appears poised to decide whether to make changes to healthcare funding, including for HIV/AIDs programs. As an organization that serves a great number of people with HIV/AIDS and other chronic conditions, CAN is seeking to influence policy discussions so that it can continue to effectively care for this population.
CAN is specifically relying on Anway to represent its interests. Also joining the effort is Brian Ballard. The founder and president of Ballard Partners, he is one of the country’s leading government affairs professionals.
Ballard began his career in Florida, where he developed a reputation as a top political insider. He brought his firm to the national stage in 2017 when he opened Ballard Partners’ Washington, DC, office. Currently the head of the firm’s bipartisan federal government relations team, he was recently named one of the 500 most influential people in the nation’s capital by Washingtonian magazine.
In advocating for CAN, Ballard will draw upon his many close relationships in the nation’s capital, leveraging his connections with lawmakers and members of the administration in Washington. Meanwhile, Anway will utilize her background in health policy, as well as her relationships in the Senate, to advocate for the nonprofit’s interests.
