Speaker Bio

Susan Dentzer is Senior Policy Adviser of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In this role, she works closely with foundation leaders to carry out the organizational mission of improving the health and health care of all Americans. One of the nation’s most respected health and health policy thought leaders and journalists, she is also an on-air analyst on health issues on the PBS NewsHour. Dentzer is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of both the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Hastings Center.

Speaker Bio

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey is president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a position she has held since 2003. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the nation’s largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health and health care.

With more than 30 years of personal experience as a medical practitioner, policy-maker, professor and nonprofit executive, Lavizzo-Mourey has built on the Foundation’s 40-year history of addressing key health issues by adopting bold, forward-looking priorities.

A geriatrics specialist, Lavizzo-Mourey previously worked at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as director of the Penn Institute on Aging and chief of geriatric medicine. In government, she worked on the White House Health Care Reform Task Force, and the President’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry.

Lavizzo-Mourey earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and holds an MBA from the Wharton School. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

Speaker Bio

Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH, is the senior vice president and chief operating officer for clinical operations for Kaiser Permanente’s Southern California region. He oversees health plan and hospital quality, service, accreditation, regulatory compliance, and licensure, as well as nursing, the continuum of care, and the effective use of technology, data, and analytics to produce better patient health outcomes. He also serves as a key liaison with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group for medical education, graduate medical education, and research.

Dr. Shah has been an RWJ Clinical Scholar at UCLA, attending physician at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, associate investigator at Geisinger Health in central Pennsylvania, and on the faculty of NYU Medical Center in the section of value and comparative effectiveness. Most recently, he served as commissioner of the New York State Department of Health.

Speaker Bio

Sister Carol Keehan, DC, is the ninth president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA). She assumed her duties as of October 2005. She is responsible for all association operations and leads CHA’s staff at offices in Washington, DC, where she is based, and in St. Louis. Sister Carol has worked in administrative and governance positions at hospitals sponsored by the Daughters of Charity for more than 35 years. Most recently, she was the board chair of Ascension Health’s Sacred Heart Health System, Pensacola, FL. Previously, she served for 15 years as president and chief executive officer of Providence Hospital, which includes Carroll Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, in Washington, DC.

Speaker Bio

Susan Dentzer is Senior Policy Adviser of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In this role, she works closely with foundation leaders to carry out the organizational mission of improving the health and health care of all Americans. One of the nation’s most respected health and health policy thought leaders and journalists, she is also an on-air analyst on health issues on the PBS NewsHour. Dentzer is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of both the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Hastings Center.

John Auerbach is the Senior Policy Adviser to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prior to his appointment at CDC, he was a Distinguished Professor of Practice in Health Sciences and the Director of the Institute on Urban Health Research and Practice at Northeastern University from 2012 to 2014.

He was the Commissioner of Public Health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2012. Under his leadership the Department developed new and innovative programs to address racial and ethnic disparities, to promote wellness (including the Mass in Motion campaign), to combat chronic disease and to support the successful implementation of the state’s health care reform initiative.

Patrick Conway, MD, MSc, is the Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality, and the CMS Chief Medical Officer. He leads the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality (CCSQ) and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) at CMS. CCSQ is responsible for all quality measures for CMS, value-based purchasing programs, quality improvement programs in all 50 states, clinical standards and survey and certification of Medicare and Medicaid health care providers across the nation, and all Medicare coverage decisions for treatments and services. The center’s budget exceeds $2 billion annually and is a major force for quality and transformation across Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and the U.S. health care system. The CMS Innovation Center is responsible for testing numerous new payment and service delivery models across the nation. Models include accountable care organizations, bundled payments, primary care medical homes, state innovation models, and many more. Successful models can be scaled nationally.

Jim Macrae was appointed associate administrator for primary health care in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in the summer of 2006. As head of the Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC), Macrae manages a $3.6 billion budget that supports the health care safety net for millions of underserved people across the country. Most of these funds support more than 9,200 health center sites. Located in communities nationwide, these sites provide comprehensive, culturally competent, quality primary health care to more than 21 million people — about one out of every 15 people nationally.

Dr. Anand K. Parekh is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health (Science & Medicine) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, a position he has held since 2008. He has developed and implemented national initiatives focused on prevention and wellness and on care management for individuals with multiple chronic conditions. Briefly in 2007, he was delegated the authorities of the Assistant Secretary for Health overseeing ten public health program offices, including the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. He is an internist, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.