Our Team

Carl Barton

Principal & Founder - EXECUTIVE Healthcare Consultant

In 2019 Carl formed Derigo Health, a Hawaii-based company. With a career in healthcare spanning over 20 years, Carl has significant experience leading initiatives that transform healthcare and improve the health of Hawaii’s communities. His extensive leadership achievements encompass work with health plans, health systems and hospitals, physician organizations, non-profits and community-based organizations, plus the State of Hawaii Department of Health (DOH) and numerous departments at the University of Hawaii (UH).

Carl has valuable expertise with Medicare and other payer value-based care programs coupled with a proven history of leveraging his experience and competencies to successfully lead innovative and impactful healthcare initiatives. With a leadership style that is collaborative and relationship-driven, he has a well-established track record of convening and leading groups of diverse stakeholders and multidisciplinary experts. Additionally, Carl has been effective working in partnership to align public health initiatives, funding and resources to support the development of Hawaii’s medical practices.

Carl currently serves as a member of the Advisory Group for the State of Hawaii Department of Health Healthy Hawaii Strategic Plan for statewide chronic disease prevention and health promotion for the time period of 2020 to 2030. In this capacity he provides consultative guidance to support plan development and convenes key Hawaii healthcare stakeholders to contribute to and provide feedback for the plan.  

Leslie Rose

Communications & Healthcare Policy Consultant

Leslie Rose is a senior level strategic communications and health policy expert with forty years of experience, including two decades in Washington, DC. Her work for trade associations, international public affairs firms and a diverse group of healthcare clients includes translating complex issues to educate and motivate provider and consumer audiences, meet business and marketing objectives, and advance policy goals with a variety of stakeholders. Clients depend on her well-informed, insightful counsel and effective and engaging content.

Leslie’s work experience includes projects and campaigns on provider and consumer engagement, developing awareness/educational material and media outreach, and collaboration across stakeholder groups. Her in-depth knowledge on topics including Medicare, Medicaid, Pay-for-Performance/other value-based programs, and special populations (seniors, dual eligibles, low income, ethnically diverse and underserved and those with chronic illness and advanced illness) is combined with understanding the perspectives of key stakeholders such as providers, consumers and policymakers, for effective calls-to action.

Leslie’s communications experience ranges from message development to crafting all types of material: blogs, e-letters, web content, FAQs, toolkits, presentations, issue briefs, fact sheets, talking points, legislative testimony, byline articles and op-eds. Her media relations experience includes work with the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, C-Span, trade publications and academic journals. She has also created media strategies and content for every type of healthcare organization.

Andrew Arakaki

Chronic Disease Epidemiology Data Analyst & Evaluation Consultant

Andrew brings an academic and practical focus to his work on epidemiology and public health. He completed his Master of Public Health in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from Yale in May of 2020 and has matriculated to the PhD program. He is also a Yale Teaching Fellow, teaching graduate students the Principles of Epidemiology II.

Andrew is currently working on quality improvement and quality assurance assessing the burden and management of hypertension in a student-run free clinic in New Haven, CT. He also serves as a researcher at the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) since 2018. The strength of Andrew’s academic and research background is complemented by his experience working with independent physician associations and private practices in the state of Hawaii where his work has included population health analyses, evaluations and provider education.