Amy Whitcomb Slemmer is the executive director of Health Care For All. The Boston nonprofit, with a budget of about $3.5 million, advocates for accessible, affordable health care. Slemmer grew up in Cincinnati, came to Massachusetts to attend Wheaton College, and spent more than 20 years working in Washington, where she held several jobs and earned a law degree at Georgetown University, before returning to Massachusetts in 2008 to run Health Care For All. Slemmer, 52, recently spoke with reporter Priyanka Dayal McCluskey about her career and personal experiences with the health care system.

1Slemmer’s resume includes working for late US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, law firms working on health care issues, and the American Red Cross. But her first job out of college was something very different. For about a year, Slemmer was a corrosion prevention and control specialist for a defense contractor, traveling to Army bases across the country and giving advice on how to keep tanks and helicopters rust-free.

“It turns out, we lose billions of dollars of Army material to rust,’’ she said. “My job was to help people take good care of their equipment.’’

2Slemmer was an advocate of health care reform in the 1990s, working as director of public education for the Health Care Reform Project, a group pushing reform nationally. The big changes proposed by President Clinton’s ­administration never ­materialized, but reform advocates saw results in 2010, when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. Why did it finally happen? Slemmer believes Massachusetts deserves the credit: The state set the example by passing its own universal health care law in 2006.

“Once there was an example that everybody could base reform on, I think it was easier for people in D.C. to see this does work. You do have to give up something, but it’s worth it.’’

3Health Care For All has a mission to promote a ­patient-centered health care system. That ­includes making sure people can afford medical care. Massachusetts has among the highest health care costs in the nation, and as new insurance plans shift more out-of-pocket costs onto ­consumers, Slemmer said her staff — through their help hotline — is hearing from more and more ­people who cannot afford to use their health ­insurance.

“Increasing health care costs are continuing to hit people’s pockets. I would say we have a lot of work to do.’’

4Slemmer’s work in health care is deeply personal. In the 1980s, she volunteered to help families in the thick of the AIDS ­epidemic. She was paired with a teenage girl and her baby, who were both sick from AIDS. She ­became so close to them that she even spent nights in the hospital with the baby boy, Charles. ­Neither Charles nor his mother survived the disease, but the experience taught Slemmer how ­difficult it was for poor, young, African-American families to access good medical care. She stayed connected with the family and later adopted Charles’s cousin, Cynthia, who is now 26.

“The AIDS crisis was decimating communities. It was a horrible, horrible disease, and at the time they could do so little.’’

5Slemmer’s ­volunteering began with the Episcopal Church, which has always been a big part of her life. For the past 10 years, she has studied to become a priest. She plans to ­continue working at Health Care For All after she is ordained. (She doesn’t yet know when that will be.) But the two roles are connected, she said: Both are about ­helping people in need.

“I’ve always been a ­believer. I’ve always been lucky enough to be ­surrounded by religious leaders for whom social justice is part of their core. [This] has been a lifelong pursuit of ­thinking about both ­social justice but also serving God.’’

Priyanka Dayal McCluskey can be reached at priyanka.mccluskey@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @priyanka_dayal.