June 21--PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Governor Chafee has chosen Christine C. Ferguson -- a professor, former state health official and former aide to his late father -- to serve as director of Rhode Island's Health Benefits Exchange.

She will start next week in the $183,000-a-year post, funded with federal money.

The Health Benefits Exchange, a central aspect of the federal health care overhaul, will be an online marketplace to shop for health insurance, starting in 2014.

As deputy chief of staff to U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee in the 1990s, and public-health commissioner under Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Ferguson has been directly involved in Republican health-care proposals that later became models for President Obama's health-care overhaul.

She was Rhode Island's human-services director from 1995 to 2001.

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