Who Is Dr. Beverly Lorraine Ho, the New PhilHealth CEO?

(SPOT.ph) PhilHealth is supposed to help make healthcare more affordable and accessible for Filipinos—a pretty tall order for whoever runs it. On August 10, Malacañang handed that responsibility to Dr. Beverly Lorraine Ho, whose background makes her a promising fit for the job.

Ho is a doctor, but she has spent much of her career outside the clinic: She has worked on health financing, helped with some of the country's biggest health reforms, spent years at the Department of Health (DOH), and, perhaps most relevant of all, has actually worked at PhilHealth before.

She takes over from Dr. Edwin Mercado, who left the post after President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. tapped him to become Health Secretary.

Also read: GUIDE: How to Apply for PhilHealth YAKAP to Get Free Check-Ups, Lab Tests + P20K in Meds

Not much is publicly known about Ho’s personal background—not even her age or birthday. What is well documented, though, is a pretty expansive career that has taken her from PhilHealth to the DOH, international work, and eventually the private sector.

Ho graduated cum laude with a biology degree from the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman before earning her medical degree from the UP College of Medicine in 2009.

Ho was supposed to take a more traditional route into clinical practice, with pressure to follow in her mother's footsteps as an OB-GYN. It was during her training at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) that Ho developed an interest in public health. She recalled seeing patients line up at four in the morning, only to wait hours to be seen. That made her think: instead of treating the patient at the end of the line, why not fix the system that created a line in the first place?

A month before residency applications, she got a call about a job at PhilHealth.

Ho did not take the decision lightly. She prayed about it, offered a mass, even went to a Chinese fortune teller. Heck, she even prepared a five-page letter to her parents outlining her future plans.

“I got my divine bases covered so now [I had to talk to] my parents,” Ho told the Equity Initiative.

By 2011, she was already at PhilHealth, working as an executive assistant in the Office of the President and CEO.

Even after leaving the agency in 2013, Ho continued working on PhilHealth issues from the outside. As part of a consulting team, she helped create a primary-care benefit package, including what services would be covered and how providers would be paid. The expanded package was rolled out as Tamang Serbisyo sa Kalusugan ng Pamilya (TSeKaP) in 2015.

After leaving PhilHealth in 2013, Ho went to Harvard, where she earned a Master of Public Health degree in 2015 as a Fulbright scholar.

She joined the DOH in 2016, starting out in health policy research. That work eventually brought her into the push for the Universal Health Care Act, where she represented the department during a congressional hearing on the bill. It was signed into law in 2019, automatically enrolling all Filipinos in the PhilHealth's national health insurance program.

From there, Ho moved into bigger roles at the DOH, eventually heading both the Health Promotion Bureau and the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau. Then came COVID-19, when she became one of the DOH's deputy spokespersons, regularly appearing in interviews and briefings—which may be why she looks familiar to you.

Outside government, Ho also co-founded the Alliance for Improving Health Outcomes (AIHO), a nonprofit that does public health research and consulting, and the Philippine Society of Public Health Physicians (PSPHP), which brings together doctors to advise government and other health organizations.

The work earned her recognition both here and abroad. In 2019, Yale University selected Ho as a Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellow. Harvard followed in 2024, giving her its Leadership in Public Health Practice Award.

That same year, Ho made another career move—this time to the private sector—as Chief Health Officer of AC Health, the Ayala group’s healthcare arm. It would be her last post before taking over PhilHealth. There, she pushed the group toward more preventive care, including expanding HIV screening across workplaces and clinics.

If there’s one thing Ho has repeatedly said about making health reform work, it’s that good ideas can only get you so far—you also need the right people to carry them out.

“When I spot talent and good heart, alam ko. Ipaglalaban ko yung taong yon hanggang dulo. I will look for opportunities for that person kasi sobrang clear sa akin na I’m only able to sell the vision and parang put the scaffold to whatever we want for public health but kailangan siya i-implement ng critical mass. So, parang mission ko sa buhay, feeling ko, is hanapin yung mga tao para magsama-sama sila,” Ho said in a profile about her work.

Now at the helm of PhilHealth, she has the chance to put that thinking into practice.

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