Biographical Sketches of Speakers and Planning Committee
David Atkins, M.D., M.P.H., is the director of the Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Atkins brings outstanding expertise in the field of implementation science to the QUERI program, having spent more than a decade at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), where part of his duties included supervising 13 evidence-based practice centers (EPCs) as their chief medical officer. This has given him hands-on experience in negotiating the intersection between research, quality improvement, evidence-based practice, and public policy. Before serving as chief medical officer for the EPCs, Dr. Atkins was the coordinator for clinical preventive services at AHRQ’s Center for Practice Technology Assessment. In that role, he directed an array of programs and research activities relating to clinical preventive services and health promotion, such as directing the work of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Board certified in internal medicine, Dr. Atkins also has a master’s of public health in epidemiology. Prior to joining AHRQ, he split his time between research and practice by conducting epidemiologic research on cardiovascular disease prevention and providing primary care in the ambulatory setting. In addition to several faculty appointments, Dr. Atkins has served on national committees that include the Armed Forces Epidemiology Board, the American College of Preventive Medicine’s Practice Guidelines Committee, and the American Cancer Society’s Detection and Treatment Advisory Group. Dr. Atkins is a member of the editorial board for the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and he has authored nearly 40 articles and book chapters and given more than 50 presentations on topics such as improving cancer screening in the primary
care setting, assessing outcomes of health promotion and disease prevention, and the science of practice guidelines. Dr. Atkins will lead QUERI as it continues to implement evidence-based innovations that help to improve the health and health care of veterans.
Mary Barton, M.D., M.P.P., is vice president for performance measurement at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). In this role, she oversees the team supporting new quality measure development and the upkeep of existing measures in the HEDIS measure set. Prior to coming to NCQA, Dr. Barton was for more than 5 years scientific director of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). In that role, Dr. Barton’s responsibilities included overseeing the evidence reviews prepared for the USPSTF by AHRQ-supported evidence-based practice centers as well as support and oversight of the methodological and recommendation-making work of USPSTF. Dr. Barton trained in primary care internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and completed a general medicine research fellowship at Harvard. Prior to joining AHRQ, she was an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, where she performed clinical epidemiology and health services research related to cancer screening and prevention in terms of access, test performance, and outcomes. She is a member of the American College of Physicians and the Society of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Barton received her M.D. from Harvard University and a master’s in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Maureen Bisognano is president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), an independent not-for-profit organization helping lead the improvement of health care throughout the world. Previously, Maureen served as IHI’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, leading IHI along with former president and chief executive officer Donald Berwick for 15 years. She is a prominent authority on improving health care systems whose expertise has been recognized by her elected membership to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and by her appointment to the Commonwealth Fund’s Commission on a High Performance Health System, among other distinctions. Ms. Bisognano advises health care leaders around the world, is a frequent speaker at major health care conferences on quality improvement, and is a tireless advocate for change. She is also an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a research associate in the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a board member of the Commonwealth Fund, the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, and the Mayo Clinic Health System-Eau Claire. Prior
to joining IHI, Ms. Bisognano was senior vice president of the Juran Institute, where she consulted with senior management on the implementation of total quality management in health care settings. Before that, she served as chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Respiratory Hospital in Braintree, Massachusetts, where she implemented a hospital-wide strategic plan that improved the quality of care while simultaneously reducing costs. Ms. Bisognano began her career in health care in 1973 as a nurse at Quincy Hospital in Quincy, Mass. She held positions of increasing responsibility there, eventually serving as chief operating officer from 1984 to 1987. She holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of the State of New York and a master of science degree from Boston University.
Helen Burstin, M.D., M.P.H., is the senior vice president for performance measures of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a private, not-for-profit membership organization established in 1999 to develop and implement a national strategy for health care quality measurement and reporting. Dr. Burstin joined NQF in January 2007 and is responsible for the NQF consensus development process and the endorsement of performance measures, preferred practices, and frameworks. Prior to joining NQF, Dr. Burstin was the director of the Center for Primary Care, Prevention, and Clinical Partnerships at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). In her role, she oversaw the development of the health information technology (health IT) portfolio, which invested more than $166 million on research at the intersection of health IT and quality of care. Her center also supported the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and an extensive body of research on primary care and prevention. Prior to joining AHRQ in 2000, Dr. Burstin was an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the director of quality measurement at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In her role, she developed a hospital-wide electronic quality measurement reporting system. She also served as the chair of the Medical Staff Executive Committee on Quality Assurance and Risk Management. Dr. Burstin is a graduate of the State University of New York at Upstate College of Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health. She spent a year in Washington, DC, as national president of the American Medical Student Association. Dr. Burstin completed a residency in primary care internal medicine at Boston City Hospital. After residency, she completed fellowship training in general internal medicine and health services research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Burstin is the author of more than 75 articles and book chapters on patient safety, quality, and disparities. She previously served as a deputy editor of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Burstin is a member of the board of directors of the American Medical Informatics Association. She is a senior professorial lecturer in the Department of Health Policy at George
Washington University School of Public Health and a clinical associate professor of medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine. A board certified general internist, Dr. Burstin precepts internal medicine residents at George Washington Medical Faculty Associates.
Michael E. Chernew, Ph.D., is a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Chernew’s research examines several areas related to controlling health care spending growth while maintaining or improving the quality of care. His work on consumer incentives focuses on value-based insurance design, which aligns patient cost sharing with clinical value. Several large companies have adopted these approaches, and Dr. Chernew’s ongoing work includes evaluations and design of such programs. His work on payment reform involves evaluation of bundled payment initiatives, including global payment models that include pay-for-performance components. Related research examines the effects of changes in Medicare Advantage payment rates. Additional research explores the causes and consequences of rising health care spending and geographic variation in spending, spending growth, and quality. Dr. Chernew received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, where his training focused on areas of applied microeconomics and econometrics. He is the co-editor of the American Journal of Managed Care and senior associate editor of Health Services Research. Dr. Chernew has served on the editorial boards of Health Affairs and Medical Care Research and Review. Dr. Chernew is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Chernew is a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), which is an independent agency established to advise the U.S. Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program. He is also a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisors, the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Determination of Essential Health Benefits, and the Commonwealth Foundation’s Commission on a High Performance Health System. In 2000, 2004, and 2010, he served on technical advisory panels for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services that reviewed the assumptions used by the Medicare actuaries to assess the financial status of the Medicare trust funds. On the panels, Dr. Chernew focused on the methodology used to project trends in long-term health care cost growth. In 1998, he was awarded the John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators by the Association of University Programs in Public Health. In 1999, he received the Alice S. Hersh Young Investigator Award from the Association of Health Services Research. Both of these awards recognize overall contribution to the field of health services research. His 2008 article in Health Affairs, “Impact of Decreasing Copay-ments on Medication Adherence within Disease Management Program,” was awarded the Research Award from the National Institute for Health
Care Management. In 2010, Dr. Chernew was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences.
Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., was appointed director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on February 5, 2003, and re-appointed on October 9, 2009. Prior to her appointment, Dr. Clancy was director of AHRQ’s Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research. Dr. Clancy, a general internist and health services researcher, is a graduate of Boston College and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Following clinical training in internal medicine, Dr. Clancy was a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining AHRQ in 1990, she was also an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia. Dr. Clancy holds an academic appointment at the George Washington University School of Medicine (clinical associate professor, Department of Medicine) and serves as senior associate editor for the journal Health Services Research. She serves on the editorial boards of multiple publications, including Annals of Internal Medicine, Annals of Family Medicine, American Journal of Medical Quality, and Medical Care Research and Review. Dr. Clancy is a member of the Institute of Medicine and was elected a Master of the American College of Physicians in 2004. In 2009, she was awarded the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research. Dr. Clancy’s major research interests include improving health care quality and patient safety and reducing disparities in care associated with patients’ race, ethnicity, gender, income, and education. As director of AHRQ, she launched the first annual report to Congress on health care disparities and health care quality.
Secretary Diana S. Dooley, J.D., was appointed to lead the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS) by Governor Jerry Brown. As CHHS secretary, Dooley will serve as a voting, ex officio member of the newly created California Health Benefit Exchange Board. She will also serve as a member or ex officio member of numerous other boards and commissions: the First 5 (California children and families) commission, Cal eConnect (health information exchange) board, Olmstead Advisory Committee, Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Advisory Committee, Child Welfare Council, Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, State Council on Developmental Disabilities, Technical Services Board, County Medical Services Program Governing Board, State Mental Health Planning Council, California Workforce Investment Board, San Joaquin Valley Partnership, and Strategic Growth Council. Prior to leading CHHS, Ms. Dooley was president and chief executive officer of the California Children’s Hospital Association, which advocates for children’s health on behalf of the eight nonprofit regional children’s hospitals in California.
These hospitals provide nearly 40 percent of all inpatient care for children in the state. Dooley began her professional career as an analyst at the State Personnel Board. In 1975, she was appointed to the staff of Governor Jerry Brown for whom she served as legislative director and special assistant until the end of his term in 1983. Before becoming an attorney in 1995, she owned a successful public relations and advertising agency. Dooley left her private law practice in December 2000 to accept the appointment as general counsel and vice president at Children’s Hospital Central California near Fresno, where she established an in-house legal services program and directed the hospital’s advocacy, communications, and governmental relations programs. Dooley is active in civic and community affairs, having served on the boards of directors of the University of California Merced Foundation, Blood Source of Northern California, and the Maddy Institute at California State University, Fresno. She is also a past president of Planned Parenthood, the Visalia Chamber of Commerce, and the Central California Futures Institute. Dooley is a native of Hanford, California, and graduated from Hanford High School in 1969. She received her bachelor’s degree in social science from California State University, Fresno in 1972 and her law degree from San Joaquin College of Law in 1995.
T. Bruce Ferguson, Jr., M.D., was inaugural chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences at East Carolina Heart Institute at East Carolina University from 2007 to 2012. He is a board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon who specializes in adult cardiothoracic surgery with a particular emphasis in off-pump surgical revascularization. He came to North Carolina from Louisiana, where he was chief of cardiac surgery at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina. While in Louisiana, he received funding from the Transforming Healthcare Quality through Information Technology program of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to begin development of a longitudinal cardiovascular information system for the statewide charity hospital system population. He served for six years as the inaugural chair of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Council on Quality, Research and Patient Safety, which oversees all aspects of the society’s national database efforts, in collaboration with the Duke Clinical Research Institute. He was principal investigator on the society’s two clinical trials in quality improvement from 1999 through 2007 funded by AHRQ. This effort also led to the creation of the National Consortium of Clinical Databases. He is currently co–principal investigator on the combined Duke-ECU Clinical Site for the Cardiac Surgical Network of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. He is a fellow of the American Heart Association and a member of the Quality Strategic Directions Committee, the Surgeon Council, and the Informatics Committee for the American College of Cardiology. He is
also a member of the Committee on the Learning Health Care System in America of the Institute of Medicine. He received a degree in chemistry from Williams College and received his M.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. He completed his training in general and cardiothoracic surgery at Duke University Medical Center. He has been a consultant for Novadaq Technologies, Inc. since 2005 and for LifeCell, Inc. since 2011.
Barbara J. Gage, Ph.D., M.P.A., is a nationally recognized expert in Medicare post-acute and long-term care payment and quality monitoring policies. She leads the performance measurement work at the Brookings Engelberg Center for Health Reform, including efforts for the Quality Alliance Steering Committee, for the Long Term Quality Alliance, and for performance measurement in the work on accountable care organizations at Brookings. Dr. Gage has directed numerous national studies for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Congress, including the development of the Continuity Assessment and Record Evaluation (CARE), a standardized set of items for use in assessing the Medicare program, and numerous CMS efforts to develop quality measures for skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, and long-term care hospitals. Dr. Gage also directed the Post Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration, which used the standardized CARE tool to examine patient outcomes and payment incentives associated with the range of acute and PAC services across an episode of care. Additionally, Dr. Gage has led numerous studies to develop quality-of-care measures and to examine payments and costs for these populations. Dr. Gage has also lead national studies of Medicare’s hospice and durable medical equipment benefits, Administration for Community Living’s (formerly the Administration on Aging) community-based long-term care systems, and numerous studies of episodes of care, including the identification of related services, quality of care and outcomes, and payment impacts. Her work includes both qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews, surveys, primary data collection and secondary analysis of claims data, primary data from studies, and survey and certification data.
Julie Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H., joined Merck in January 2010 as the president of Merck Vaccines. She is responsible for the commercialization of the current portfolio of vaccines, planning for the introduction of vaccines from the company’s robust vaccine pipeline, and accelerating Merck’s ongoing efforts to broaden access to its vaccines in the developing world. Before joining Merck, Dr. Gerberding led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as director from 2002 to 2009. In this position, she was responsible for coordinating more than 40 emergency response initiatives for public health crises, including anthrax bioterrorism, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), avian influenza, and natural disasters.
She also advised governments around the world on urgent public health issues such as AIDS, chronic diseases, and obesity. Dr. Gerberding joined the CDC in 1998 as director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the CDC. There she developed CDC’s patient safety initiatives and other programs to prevent infections, antimicrobial resistance, and medical errors in health care settings. Dr. Gerberding received her undergraduate degree and her M.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She completed her internship and residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in clinical pharmacology and infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). As a tenured academician, she worked in a range of clinical, research, and teaching roles prior to joining the CDC in 1998. Dr. Gerberding also received her master’s degree in public health at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1990. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American College of Physicians and is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. She is an adjunct associate professor of medicine in infectious diseases at UCSF. Dr. Gerberding has received more than 50 awards and honors, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Distinguished Service Award for her leadership in responses to anthrax bioterrorism and the September 11, 2001 attacks. She was named by Forbes as one of its 100 most powerful women in the world in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 and was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004.
Stefan Gildemeister, M.A., has 15 years of experience in conducting health services research and studying health care markets to generate applied policy analysis on health care cost, quality, and access to care. During this time, Mr. Gildemeister has directed research at the Minnesota Department of Health in health system finance, organization, and coverage using primary and secondary data to inform health policy making on a broad portfolio of health policy problems. Mr. Gildemeister has contributed to the state’s work to design Minnesota’s nation-leading 2008 health reform legislation. He currently directs the department’s critical work to improve market transparency of cost and quality, which relies in important ways on Minnesota’s all-payer claims database. As the state health economist and director of the Health Economics Program, Mr. Gildemeister provides policy advice and analytic guidance to Minnesota’s implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act. Mr. Gildemeister holds degrees in economics and economics/business administration from the New School for Social Research, New York, and the University of Bremen, Germany. Over the years, Mr. Gildemeister has consulted on a variety of health policy issues for organizations and academic institutions in Germany and the United States.
Marge Ginsburg, R.N., M.P.H., is executive director of the Center for Healthcare Decisions (CHCD), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that seeks the public’s perspective on complex health policy issues. Established in 1994 (originally as Sacramento Healthcare Decisions), the center’s primary purpose is advancing health care that is fair and affordable and that reflects the values of an informed public. Recent work has focused on priorities in health care coverage and value-based benefits design. CHCD also assists other states in implementing community engagement activities related to health care. Ms. Ginsburg recently served on the Institute of Medicine’s Committee for Determining Essential Health Care Benefits and is currently on the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s Committee on Performance Measurement; on the boards of the Integrated Healthcare Association and the California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Task Force; on the California Technology Assessment Forum; and on the executive committees of the California Cooperative Healthcare Reporting Initiative and California’s Physician Pay-for-Performance program. She received a nursing degree from the University of Maryland and a master’s of public health from University of California, Berkeley. Prior to moving to Sacramento in 1990, she spent 15 years administering community-based geriatric services at the Institute on Aging in San Francisco.
Kate Goodrich, M.D., joined the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in September 2011, where she serves as a senior technical advisor to the director of the Office of Clinical Standards and Quality and as chief medical officer of CMS. In this role, she provides leadership on quality measurement programs and oversees an effort at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to align measures across programs and with the private sector. Prior to coming to CMS, Dr. Goodrich served as a medical officer in the office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE). She managed the portfolio of ASPE comparative effectiveness research (CER) projects, including the creation of a multi-payer claims database for CER. She was also the project manager for the HHS contract with the National Quality Forum. Dr. Goodrich received her M.D. from Louisiana State University Medical Center in Shreveport, in 1995. She then moved to Washington, DC, and completed her residency in internal medicine at George Washington University Medical Center (GWUMC), whereupon she joined the faculty of GWUMC as a hospitalist in the Department of Medicine. A new Division of Hospital Medicine was created in 2005, and Dr. Goodrich was appointed division director. From 2005 to 2008 she expanded this division to nine full-time hospitalists and started a physician’s assistant hospitalist program. She also served as chair of the institutional review board at GWUMC for 5 years. Dr. Goodrich is a graduate of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale University, where
she received training in health services research and health policy. She continues to practice clinical medicine as a hospitalist and assistant professor of medicine at George Washington University Hospital.
George J. Isham, M.D., M.S., is senior advisor at HealthPartners and senior fellow at HealthPartners Research Foundation. As senior advisor, Dr. Isham is responsible for working with the board of directors and the senior management team of HealthPartners on health and quality-of-care improvement for patients, members, and the community. As senior fellow at the HealthPartners Research Foundation, he is responsible for facilitating progress at the intersection of population health research and public policy. Dr. Isham was a founding board member of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement, a collaborative of Twin Cities medical groups and health plans that is improving three-part aim outcomes and implementing clinical practice guidelines in Minnesota. Dr. Isham provides leadership to other care delivery systems through service on the board of directors for Presbyterian Health Services in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the external advisory board of the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, Wisconsin. Dr. Isham is also a board member for Presbyterian Health Plan, also in Albuquerque. Dr. Isham is active nationally and currently co-chairs the National Quality Forum–convened Measurement Application Partnership, chairs the clinical program committee of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and is a member of NCQA’s committee on performance measurement. He is also chair of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Technical Expert Panel on the National Impact Assessment of CMS Quality Measures and a member of the Agency for Healthcare Quality’s National Steering Committee for the Development of Measures of Appropriate Clinical Preventive Services for Older Adults. He is a former member of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Task Force on Community Preventive Services and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. He currently serves on the advisory committee to the director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2011, Dr. Isham served on a five-member panel that provided a review of the public health portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and he currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson–funded Aligning Forces for Quality Grant. Dr. Isham is a former member of the board of directors of the American’s Health Insurance Plans and a member of the boards of the Alliance of Community Health Plans and the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review at Harvard University.
Craig A. Jones, M.D., is the director of the Vermont Blueprint for Health, a program established by the State of Vermont under the leadership of its governor, legislature, and the bi-partisan Health Care Reform Commis-
sion. The Blueprint is intended to guide statewide transformation of the way that health care and health services are delivered in Vermont. The program is dedicated to a high-value, high-quality health care system for all Vermonters, with a focus on prevention. Currently, Dr. Jones serves on several committees and workgroups including the Institute of Medicine’s Consensus Committee on the Learning Health Care System in America and its Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven Health Care. Prior to this he was an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and director of the Division of Allergy/Immunology and director of the Allergy/Immunology Residency Training Program in the Department of Pediatrics at the Los Angeles County + University of Southern California (LAC+USC) Medical Center. He was director, in charge of the design, implementation, and management, of the Breathmobile Program, a program in which mobile clinics deliver ongoing care to inner-city children at their schools and at county clinics. This program evolved from community outreach to a more fully integrated pediatric disease management program for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and has spread to several other communities across the country. Dr. Jones has published papers and abstracts in Pediatric Research, Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, Pediatrics in Review, Journal of Clinical Immunology, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, CHEST, and Disease Management. Dr. Jones was a member of the board and the executive committee of the California Chapter of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America as well the chapter president. He is a past president of the Los Angeles Society of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and a past president and a member of the board of directors for the California Society of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Dr. Jones received his undergraduate degree at the University of California, San Diego, and his M.D. at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas. He completed his internship and residency in pediatrics at LAC+USC Medical Center, where he also completed his fellowship in allergy and clinical immunology.
Kevin L. Larsen, M.D., is the medical director of meaningful use at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health International Technology. In that role he is responsible for coordinating the clinical quality measures for meaningful use certification and oversees the development of the Population Health Tool (http://projectpophealth.org). Prior to working for the federal government he was chief medical informatics officer and associate medical director at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is also an associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Larsen graduated from the University of Minnesota Medical School and was a resident and chief medical resident at Hennepin County Medi-
cal Center. He is a general internist and teacher in the medical school and residency programs. His research includes health care financing for people living in poverty, computer systems to support clinical decision making, and health literacy. In Minneapolis he was also the medical director for the Center for Urban Health, a hospital–community collaboration to eliminate health disparities. He served on a number of state and national committees in informatics, data standards, and health information technology.
Peter V. Long, Ph.D., is president and chief executive officer of Blue Shield of California Foundation, a health foundation established in 2002 to ensure access to quality, affordable health care for all Californians and to end domestic violence. Dr. Long has extensive background in health policy working on issues affecting underserved communities at the state, national, and global levels. He has authored papers on a variety of health policy topics, including Medicaid coverage expansion, access to care, and health policy and legislation. Dr. Long’s research also covers the social determinants of health, health impact assessments, and community health and development. He is an advisor for the Futures Without Violence task force on children and violence. Dr. Long served in leadership roles at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the California Endowment. He also served as executive director of the Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley and as a legislative analyst for the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network in Cape Town, South Africa, during the country’s transition to democracy. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree in health policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, and his doctorate in health services from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2011, Dr. Long was inducted into the UCLA School of Public Health Alumni Hall of Fame. He was also honored by the Insure the Uninsured Project and Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors for his leadership on expanding access to health care for Californians.
Peter Margolis, M.D., Ph.D., is professor of pediatrics and director of research at the James M. Anderson Center for Health System Excellence at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. His work encompasses the application and study of quality improvement methods in a broad range of areas including primary and subspecialty care and public health settings to improve the health outcomes of children, families, and communities. Dr. Margolis obtained his M.D. from New York University and his pediatric training at the University of Colorado, where he also served as chief resident in pediatrics. He subsequently spent 3 years in the National Health Service Corps in Rochester, New York, and Los Angeles,
California, before pursuing a fellowship in clinical epidemiology. He was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where he also earned his Ph.D. in epidemiology. In 1994 Dr. Margolis was named a Robert Wood Johnson Generalist Faculty Scholar at UNC, where he also served on the faculty between 1991 and 2005. In 2006, Dr. Margolis joined Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to create a new center focused on health care quality. Dr. Margolis has worked extensively with the certifying boards and specialty societies to assist them in designing programs that will enable physicians to meet new maintenance of certification requirements focused on systems thinking and performance in practice. He also devotes considerable time to teaching quality improvement methods. He is principal investigator of a National Institutes of Health Roadmap transformative research grant on redesigning systems for chronic illness care.
J. Michael McGinnis, M.D., M.P.P., is a physician, epidemiologist, and long-time contributor to national and international health programs and policy. An elected member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies, he has since 2005 also served as IOM Senior Scholar and executive director of the IOM Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven Health Care. He also served as founding leader for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) Health Group, the World Bank/European Commission’s Task Force for Health Reconstruction in Bosnia, and, in the U.S. government, the Office of Research Integrity, the Nutrition Policy Board, and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. In the latter appointment, he carried policy responsibilities for prevention through four administrations (presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton), during which he conceived and launched a number of initiatives of ongoing policy importance, such as the Healthy People national goals and objectives, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and development of the Ten Essential Services of Public Health. Earlier he served in India as epidemiologist and state director of the World Health Organization’s smallpox eradication program. Widely published, he has made seminal contributions on the fundamental determinants of health (e.g., “Actual Causes of Death,” JAMA 270:18 [1993] and “The Case for More Active Policy Attention to Health Promotion,” Health Affairs 21:2 [2002]). He has held visiting or adjunct professorships at George Washington, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Princeton, and Duke. Dr. McGinnis is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, the UCLA School of Medicine, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and he was the graduation commencement speaker at each.
Leo S. Morales, M.D., Ph.D., is associate professor in the Department of Health Services and the Department of Medicine/Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is also a faculty member of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and a senior natural scientist at RAND in Santa Monica, California. Dr. Morales received his M.D. and M.P.H. in health services from the University of Washington and his Ph.D. in policy studies from the RAND Graduate School. Dr. Morales’ research interests include Latino and immigrant health, disparities in health care, and cross-cultural survey research methods, including the application of advanced psychomet-rics. He is a past recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Harold Amos Award and a current recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Investigator Award and a Russell Sage Foundation Award to study the effects of social assimilation on the health of Mexican immigrants. He is co-director of the UCLA Resource Center for Minority Aging Research and directs the research methods cores for two federally funded centers on minority health and health disparities. Dr. Morales is on the editorial board of Health Services Research. In addition to his research and academic activities, Dr. Morales is a practicing general internist at the UCLA Medical Center.
Judy Murphy, R.N., FACMI, FHIMSS, FAAN, is deputy national coordinator for programs and policy at the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health International Technology, Department of Health and Human Services, in Washington, DC. She is a nurse who came to the ONC in December 2011 with more than 25 years of health informatics experience at Aurora Health Care in Wisconsin, an integrated delivery network with 15 hospitals, 120 ambulatory centers, home health agencies, and more than 30,000 employees. She led their electronic health records (EHRs) program since 1995, when Aurora was one of the early adopters of health information technology (health IT). Most recently she was vice president–EHR applications and managed the organization’s successful achievement of Stage 1 EHR meaningful use, with incentive payments beginning in September 2011. Her informatics interests lie in system implementation methodologies, health IT project management, automated clinical documentation, and the use of technology to support evidence-based practice; she has published and lectured nationally and internationally on these topics. She has a long-standing reputation of patient advocacy and maintaining a “patient-centric” point of view. Judy has been on the Health IT Standards Committee since its inception in May 2009. On that committee, she co-chaired the Implementation Workgroup and was a member of the Meaningful Use Workgroup. She has also served on the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) board of directors and the Health
Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) board of directors. She is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing, the American College of Medical Informatics, and HIMSS. She received the 2006 HIMSS Nursing Informatics Leadership Award, was named one of the “20 People Who Make Healthcare Better” in 2007 by HealthLeaders magazine, and was selected as one of 33 nursing informatics pioneers to participate in the Nursing Informatics History Project sponsored by AMIA, the National Library of Medicine, the American Academy of Nursing, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Eugene C. Nelson, D.Sc., M.P.H., is a professor of community and family medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. He serves as the director of population health and measurement at the Dartmouth Institute and at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health. Dr. Nelson is a national leader in health care improvement and the development and application of measures of quality, system performance, health outcomes, value, and patient and customer perceptions. In the early 1990s, Dr. Nelson and his colleagues at Dartmouth began developing clinical microsystem thinking. His work developing the “clinical value compass” and “whole system measures” to assess health care system performance has made him a well-recognized quality and value measurement expert. He is the recipient of the Joint Commission’s Ernest A. Codman award for his work on outcomes measurement in health care. Dr. Nelson has been a pioneer in bringing modern quality improvement thinking into the mainstream of health care; he helped launch the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and served as a founding board member. He has authored over 150 publications and is an author of three recent books: Quality by Design: A Clinical Microsystems Approach, Practice-Based Learning and Improvement: A Clinical Improvement Action Guide: Second Edition, and Value by Design: Developing Clinical Microsystems to Achieve Organizational Excellence. He received an A.B. from Dartmouth College, an M.P.H. from Yale University, and a D.Sc. from Harvard University.
Samuel R. Nussbaum, M.D., is executive vice president, clinical health policy, and chief medical officer for WellPoint, Inc. He is the key spokesperson and policy advocate for WellPoint. He oversees corporate medical and pharmacy policy to ensure the provision of clinically proven effective care. Dr. Nussbaum collaborates with industry leaders, physicians, hospitals, and national policy and health care organizations to shape an agenda for quality, safety, and clinical outcomes and to improve patient care for WellPoint’s 34 million medical members nationwide. In addition, Dr. Nussbaum works closely with WellPoint business units to advance international and innovative health care services strategy and development.
In the decade that Dr. Nussbaum has served as chief medical officer at WellPoint, he has led business units focused on care and disease management and health improvement, clinical pharmacy programs, and provider networks and contracting with accountability for more than $100 billion in health care expenditures. He has been the architect of models that improve quality, safety, and affordability, and he was instrumental in developing an innovative contracting approach linking hospital reimbursement to quality, safety, and clinical performance. Under his leadership, WellPoint’s Health-Core subsidiary has built partnerships with federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, and with academic institutions to advance drug safety, comparative effectiveness, and outcomes research. Dr. Nussbaum currently serves on the boards of the National Quality Forum, the OASIS Institute, and BioCrossroads, an Indiana-based public–private collaboration that advances and invests in the life sciences. Dr. Nussbaum is a professor of clinical medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and serves as adjunct professor at the Olin School of Business, Washington University. Dr. Nussbaum has served as president of the Disease Management Association of America, chairman of the National Committee for Quality Health Care, chair of the Chief Medical Officer Leadership Council of America’s Health Insurance Plan (AHIP), a member of the AHIP Board, and a member of the Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society. Dr. Nussbaum received the 2004 Physician Executive Award of Excellence from the American College of Physician Executives and Modern Physician magazine and has been recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of the “50 Most Influential Physician Executives in Healthcare” in 2010 and 2011. Prior to joining WellPoint, Dr. Nussbaum served as executive vice president, medical affairs and system integration, of BJC Health Care, where he led integrated clinical services across the health system and served as president of its medical group. He earned his medical degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He trained in internal medicine at Stanford University Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital and in endocrinology and metabolism at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he directed the Endocrine Clinical Group. As a professor at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Nussbaum’s has carried out research leading to new therapies to treat skeletal disorders and new technologies to measure hormones in blood.
Christopher Queram has been the president and chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ) since November 2005. WCHQ is a voluntary consortium of organizations working to improve the quality and affordability of health care and the health of the population in Wisconsin through public reporting of comparative perfor-
mance information, collaborative learning, and sharing of best practices. In addition to his responsibilities with WCHQ, Mr. Queram serves on the boards of the Wisconsin Statewide Health Information Network, Wisconsin Health Information Organization, the Joint Commission, its subsidiary Joint Commission Resources, and Delta Dental of Wisconsin. He is also a member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality National Advisory Council, the Quality Alliance steering committee, the AQA steering committee, and the editorial advisory group of the Commonwealth Fund publication Quality Matters. Mr. Queram previously served as chair of the Purchaser Council, board member with the National Quality Forum (2000–2005), treasurer of the Leapfrog Group (2002–2005), principal of the Hospital Quality Alliance (2003–2011), and board chair of the National Business Coalition on Health (1998–2000). He was a member of three Institute of Medicine committees: the Committee on Redesigning the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports; Committee on Redesigning Health Insurance Benefits, Payment and Performance Improvement Programs; and Committee on the Consequences of Un-insurance. He also served on President Clinton’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry. Prior to his current position, Mr. Queram was the chief executive officer of the Employer Health Care Alliance Cooperative in Madison, Wisconsin, and he also previously served as a hospital executive in both Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Mr. Queram holds a master’s degree in health services administration from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Patrick Remington, M.D., M.P.H., is the associate dean for public health and a professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Remington received his undergraduate degree in molecular biology and his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin. After completing an internship at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, he trained at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an epidemic intelligence service officer (assigned to the Michigan health department), as a preventive medicine resident in the Division of Nutrition at the CDC, and as part of the CDC Career Development Program, when he obtained his M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of Minnesota. He was the chief medical officer for chronic disease and injury prevention in the Wisconsin Division of Health for almost a decade, and he joined the Department of Population Health Sciences in 1997. Dr. Remington’s current research examines methods to measure the health outcomes and determinants in populations as well as health disparities by education, race, or region. In addition, he is examining ways to use this information in community health improvement, such as through the publication of county health rankings.
Carole Romm, M.P.A., R.N., is a health care consultant who helps organizations develop systems to advance care for Medicaid and other under-served populations. She is currently directing Oregon’s accountability and quality efforts as it reforms health care for its Medicaid population through transformation of the delivery system. Prior to her role with the state of Oregon, Ms. Romm was public affairs director at Central City Concern, an agency serving homeless adults in Portland, Oregon. She also co-chaired Oregon’s Medicaid advisory commission and served on a number of state committees developing the framework for Oregon’s health reform initiative. Previously, Ms. Romm was the health services director at CareOregon, Oregon’s largest Medicaid managed care plan. In 2000, Ms. Romm was awarded a 3-year Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Nurse Executive Fellowship. In the past, she has held leadership roles with the RWJF Executive Nurse Fellowship Alumni Association board of directors, the Oregon Health Services Commission, and the Oregon Primary Care Association. She earned a baccalaureate in labor relations at Cornell University, a nursing degree from Portland Community Commission College, and a master’s degree in public administration from Portland State University.
Dennis P. Scanlon, Ph.D., is a professor of health policy and administration at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Scanlon’s research focuses on health systems improvement, including the role of information, incentives, and behavior change for improving health care outcomes. Research topics include quality measurement and transparency, competition in health insurance and health provider markets, public- and private-sector health care purchasing activities, and the impact of information and incentives in health care markets. He has led a federally funded research project examining the state of quality improvement activities at managed care plans as well as projects examining the impact and cost effectiveness of diabetes and disease management programs in federally qualified health centers and was principal investigator for the evaluation of the Commonwealth Fund’s Evaluating the State Action to Avoid Rehospitalizations initiative. He is currently the principal investigator for the evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality initiative and is participating in their Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality–funded investigation, “Assessing a Statewide Multi-Stakeholder Chronic Care Model Implementation.” In addition to his research activities, he is also the professor in charge of the doctoral program in health policy and administration. Dr. Scanlon is frequently invited to speak and testify to a variety of policy and practice groups.
Edward J. Sondik, Ph.D., is director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the nation’s principal health statistics agency responsible for monitoring America’s health
and health system. The center is one of the designated statistical agencies of the United States, which together conduct the major statistical programs of the federal government. In carrying out its mission, NCHS conducts a wide-ranging program of research and analysis in health and vital statistics, epidemiology, and the statistical sciences, all aimed at supporting government and private-sector policy development and research. Dr. Sondik also serves as senior advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), providing technical and policy advice on statistical and health information issues. In this capacity he also serves on the HHS Data Council, the body that reviews HHS data policy and related issues. Dr. Sondik is a member of the Interagency Committee on Statistical Policy, along with the leaders of the other designated statistical agencies. Dr. Sondik received B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Connecticut and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. From 1976 to 1996, he was on the staff of the National Institutes of Health, including a period as acting director of the National Cancer Institute. Prior to joining the federal government, he served on the faculty of Stanford University.
David M. Stevens, M.D., is director of the Quality Center and associate medical director of the National Association of Community Health Centers, and research professor in the Department of Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Before assuming his current positions, Dr. Stevens was senior medical officer for quality improvement in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and its Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. While at AHRQ he provided major leadership in AHRQ’s mission to translate research into action. Major initiatives include a AHRQ/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation–sponsored learning collaborative to reduce health disparities with 9 major national health plans, a care management improvement project with 17 state Medicaid agencies, a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop interventions for the prevention of type II Diabetes Mellitus, an improvement collaborative with end-stage renal disease providers, and contributions to the National Health Quality Reports. Before coming to AHRQ, Dr. Stevens was chief medical officer at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), where he was responsible for national clinical leadership of the Community and Migrant Health Center Program and for leadership of the HRSA/Bureau of Primary Health Care initiative on eliminating health disparities in underserved and minority populations. This landmark program, the Health Disparities Collaboratives, transformed preventive and chronic care and generated major positive clinical outcomes, as documented in peer reviewed scientific literature. With the CDC and the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, he initiated a landmark pilot demonstration on
translating research from the Diabetes Prevention Program into practice. Dr. Stevens also established national quality improvement policies for clinical programs in health centers, including the opportunity for accreditation by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. With the CDC he implemented a major immunization quality improvement initiative, increasing immunization rates by 50 percent in 10 states in more than 100 health centers, affecting 150,000 underserved infants and children each year. He was a practicing family physician and medical director for ten years at community health centers in the South Bronx and in Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Stevens was a member of a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) workgroup that completed the HHS Strategic Plan for Asthma and a member of the HHS Work Group on reducing health disparities for diabetes. As a member of the commissioned corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, he received numerous awards, including the commissioned corps meritorious service medal, the HHS Award for Distinguished Service, and the Arthur S. Fleming Award, a private-sector award for outstanding federal employees who have made extraordinary contributions to government.
Matthew C. Stiefel, M.S., M.P.A., directs the Center for Population Health in Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute. He was a 2008–2009 fellow with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and continues as a faculty member for the IHI three-part aim. Matt joined Kaiser Permanente (KP) in 1981 as a medical economist and later held management positions in KP Northwest, directing planning, marketing, and medical economics. He joined the Care Management Institute (CMI) as the director of measurement in 1998 and became the associate director of CMI in 2000. Prior to working at KP, he served as a policy analyst on the Carter Administration domestic policy staff and in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and he worked as a local health planner in the San Francisco bay area. He recently completed coursework toward an M.S. in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, holds an M.P.A. from the Wharton School, and a B.A. in psychology from Stanford.
Steven M. Teutsch, M.D., M.P.H., is the chief science officer of Los Angeles County Public Health, where he works on evidence-based public health and policy. From 1997 to 2009 he was with the Outcomes Research and Management program at Merck where he was responsible for scientific leadership in developing evidence-based clinical management programs, conducting outcomes research studies, and improving outcomes measurement to enhance quality of care. He worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 1977 to 2007. Most recently he was director of the Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods
(DPRAM) where he was responsible for assessing the effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness of disease- and injury-prevention strategies. DPRAM developed methodology for studies of the effectiveness and economic impact of prevention programs, provided training in these methods, developed CDC’s capacity for conducting studies, and provided technical assistance for conducting economic and decision analysis. The division also evaluated the impact of interventions in urban areas, developed the Guide to Community Preventive Services, and provided support for CDC’s analytic methods. He has served as a member of that task force and of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which develops the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, as well as on America’s Health Information Community Personalized Health Care Workgroup and the Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Prevention and Practice Workgroup. He chaired the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics Health and Society and served on IOM panels, Medicare’s Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, and several subcommittees of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Healthy People 2020. At CDC, he was assigned as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer to the Parasitic Diseases Division and worked extensively on toxoplasmosis. He then worked in the Kidney Donor Program and subsequently the Kidney Disease Program. He developed the framework for CDC’s diabetes control program. He joined the Epidemiology Program Office and became the director of the Division of Surveillance and Epidemiology, where he was responsible for coordinating CDC’s disease monitoring activities. He became chief of the Prevention Effectiveness Activity in 1992. Dr. Teutsch was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences at Harvard College in 1970, an M.P.H. in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina in 1973, and his M.D. from Duke University in 1974. He completed an internal medicine residency at Pennsylvania State University, Hershey. He was certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1977 and by the American Board of Preventive Medicine in 1995, and he is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the American College of Epidemiology. Dr. Teutsch is an adjunct professor at the Emory University School of Public Health and the University of North Carolina School of Public Health. Dr. Teutsch has published more than 190 articles and 8 books in a broad range of fields in epidemiology, including parasitic diseases, diabetes, technology assessment, health services research, and surveillance.
Thomas B. Valuck, M.D., J.D., is senior vice president, strategic partnerships, at the National Quality Forum (NQF). Dr. Valuck oversees NQF-convened partnerships—the Measure Applications Partnership and the National Priorities Partnership—as well as NQF’s engagement with states
and regional community alliances. These NQF initiatives aim to improve health and health care through the use of performance information for public reporting, payment incentives, accreditation and certification, and systems improvement. Dr. Valuck came to NQF from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where he advised senior agency and Department of Health and Human Services leadership regarding Medicare payment and quality of care, particularly value-based purchasing. While at CMS, Dr. Valuck was recognized for his leadership in advancing Medicare’s pay-for-performance initiatives, receiving both the 2009 Administrator’s Citation and the 2007 Administrator’s Achievement Awards. Before joining CMS, Dr. Valuck was the vice president of medical affairs at the University of Kansas Medical Center, where he managed quality improvement, utilization review, risk management, and physician relations. Before that he served on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow; the White House Council of Economic Advisers, where he researched and analyzed public and private health care financing issues; and at the law firm of Latham & Watkins as an associate, where he practiced regulatory health law. Dr. Valuck has degrees in biological science and medicine from the University of Missouri–Kansas City, a master’s degree in health services administration from the University of Kansas, and a law degree from the Georgetown University Law School.
Anne F. Weiss, M.P.P., is a senior program officer and director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Quality/Equality Health Care team. Weiss joined the foundation in 1999, after a distinguished career in health care policy at both the federal and state level. She served as senior assistant commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, where she directed the state’s oversight of the quality of care delivered by health care providers and health plans, and was also responsible for the state’s hospital indigent care programs. During her tenure, the Department of Health and Senior Services worked with physicians and hospitals throughout the state to issue New Jersey’s first report card on health care quality. She also served as executive director of New Jersey’s blue-ribbon health reform panel, the Essential Health Services Commission, for which she directed implementation of a subsidized health benefits program for the working uninsured. Previously, Weiss spent 10 years in Washington, DC, as professional staff to the Senate Committee on Finance and as a senior examiner with the Office of Management and Budget. She also has served as a program analyst in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, was a member of the steering committee of the National Academy for State Health Policy, and served on the board of the National Association of Health Data Organizations. Born in Detroit, Weiss received her M.P.P. from the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University and a B.A. in history and political science from Wellesley College. Drawn to the foundation by its high standards for intellectual honesty and its willingness to take risks to improve health care, Weiss believes that the Quality/Equality Health Care team’s strategy represents a dramatically new approach in which the foundation will seek to have a “focused impact in a few target communities in which we can bring to bear many of the different strategies the foundation has tried over the years to really demonstrate an impact on quality of care.” She describes this approach as one that seeks to address the inequalities in health care for individuals from specific racial, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds; increase sustained local collaboration to achieve high-quality health care; create greater transparency about what health care is and what it costs; and devote substantial resources to research, tracking, and evaluation.
Nancy J. Wilson, M.D., M.P.H., is senior advisor to the director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and leads the agency’s work to support and coordinate the ongoing development and implementation of the National Quality Strategy called for by the Affordable Care Act. This includes implementing the strategy across Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies and facilitating implementation among public and private sector stakeholders. Dr. Wilson also leads the agency’s efforts to establish a federal-wide Working Group on Health Care Quality charged with collaborating and consulting on the National Quality Strategy; avoiding inefficient duplication of quality-improvement efforts and resources; creating a streamlined process for quality reporting and compliance requirements, where practicable; and assessing public- and private-sector quality effort alignment. Dr. Wilson represents AHRQ on a number of national public–private alliances such as the National Quality Forum (NQF) board of directors, the Hospital Quality Alliance, the National Priorities Partnership, and, more recently, on the NQF Measures Application Partnership Coordinating Council. She also provides strategic leadership and technical assistance on improvement implementation and data sharing among state Medicaid programs through the AHRQ-sponsored Medicaid Medical Director’s Network. This network currently represents 45 states and the District of Columbia. In 2010 it successfully completed its first data-sharing project among 16 states on the use of antipsychotic medications in children and adolescents. The subsequent dissemination of the summary report and state-specific reports prompted the adoption of identified promising program and policy interventions across states throughout the network. Dr. Wilson is currently leading an AHRQ/CMS collaboration to identify, by January 2012, a core set of quality measures to monitor the health and health care of adults eligible for Medicaid. Her work to establish multi-
stakeholder community collaboratives to improve health care services and population health resulted in Dr. Wilson and her teammates receiving the HHS Hubert H. Humphrey Service to America Award. Prior to joining the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Wilson was vice president and medical director for VHA, Inc., a nationwide network of 2,200 leading community-owned health care organizations and their affiliated physicians. Dr. Wilson designed and led nationwide improvement collaboratives that translated evidence-based practices into improved patient outcomes. For her work raising awareness and orchestrating company-wide efforts in patient safety, Dr. Wilson was awarded VHA’s first President’s Council Leadership Award. Before joining VHA, Dr. Wilson was director of the Office of Performance and Quality for the Veterans Health Administration. Among her accomplishments Dr. Wilson designed and implemented a new comprehensive performance management system that aligned VA’s vision, mission, and goals with quantifiable strategic objectives; defined measures to track progress in meeting those goals and objectives; and held management accountable for results achieved. During her tenure, performance on process and outcome measures dramatically improved, including patient experience of care. For her work she received one of Vice President Gore’s Hammer Awards for Reinventing Government. Dr. Wilson is a 1976 honors graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. She received her M.D. from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1986 where she also completed her medical internship and residency in 1989. In 1994 she completed a General Medicine/Health Services Research Fellowship at Harvard Medical School while obtaining her M.P.H. in health care management at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Wilson is currently an advisor to the Partnership for Patient Safety, the National Association for Healthcare Quality, and a founding designer and judge for the AHA Quest for Quality Award. She is also a member of several professional societies, including the Society of General Internal Medicine, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Physician Executives, and the American Public Health Association.
