Nakela Cook, M.D., M.P.H., is the Executive Director at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). She is a cardiologist and health services researcher with a distinguished career leading key scientific initiatives engaging patients, clinicians, and other health care stakeholders at one of the nation’s largest public health research funders. Dr. Cook leads PCORI’s research, dissemination and implementation, and engagement work as the organization enters its second decade of service to the nation. She also provides strategic and day-to-day oversight of ongoing programs as well as new initiatives designed to create a health care system that is more efficient, effective, and patient centered. Throughout her career, Dr. Cook has worked to enhance diversity and equity in research and care delivery and been a leader in efforts to reduce disparities in health access and outcomes. She has received numerous awards for her excellence in clinical teaching and mentorship as well as her leadership of complex scientific initiatives and programs.

Gwen Darien is the Executive Vice President for Patient Advocacy and Engagement at the National Patient Advocate Foundation (NPAF). As the Executive Vice President for patient advocacy and engagement, Ms. Darien leads programs that link patient advocate foundations’ patient service programs to NPAF initiatives, with the goal of improving access to affordable, equitable quality health care. As a three-time cancer survivor herself, Ms. Darien came into cancer advocacy expressly to change the experiences and outcomes for the patients who came after her and to change the public dialogue about cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. With these goals in mind, in 2005 she started the first stand-alone advocacy entity in a professional cancer research organization at the American Association for Cancer Research. In every role she has served in, Ms. Darien championed placing patients at the center of health system change, whether it is for research, public policy, or direct services.

Joshua Denny, M.D., M.S., is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) All of Us Research Program. As a physician scientist, Dr. Denny is deeply committed to improving patient care through the advancement of precision medicine. Before joining NIH, Dr. Denny was a Professor of biomedical informatics and medicine, the Director of the Center for Precision Medicine, and the Vice President for Personalized Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). In his roles at VUMC, he was both a practicing internist and a researcher. His research interests include use of electronic health records and genomics to better understand disease and drug response. He also led efforts implementing precision medicine to improve patient outcomes. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the American College of Medical Informatics.

Karen DeSalvo, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc., is the Chief Health Officer at Google Health. She is also an Adjunct Professor of medicine and population health at The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School and co-convenes the National Alliance to Impact the Social Determinants of Health. She is a physician executive working at the intersection of medicine, public health, and information technology to improve the health of all people with a focus on catalyzing pragmatic solutions to address all the social determinants of health. She serves on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and is on the Board of Directors for Welltower and previously served on the Board of Humana. She is the President of the Society of General Internal Medicine and the Honorary Vice President, United States, for the American Public Health Association.

Peter J. Embí, M.D., M.S., FACP, FACMI, FAMIA, FIAHSI, is an internationally recognized researcher, educator, and leader in the field of clinical and translational research informatics, with numerous peer-reviewed publications and presentations describing his innovations in the field. Dr. Embí serves as the President and the Chief Executive Officer of the Regenstrief Institute, and he holds related leadership roles at Indiana University (IU) and the IU Health System. He previously served in various leadership positions at The Ohio State University (OSU), including the Interim Chair of Biomedical Informatics, the Informatics Director of the OSU Center for Clinical and Translational Science, and the Chief Research Information Officer at the OSU Wexner Medical Center.

Caroline Fichtenberg, Ph.D., is the Managing Director of the Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network and a Research Scientist in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In these roles, she leads efforts to conduct, catalyze, and disseminate high quality research on health sector strategies to reduce health inequities by addressing social determinants of health. She brings to these positions more than a decade of experience working to improve health and economic outcomes for America’s most vulnerable families, including 7 years working on national efforts in Washington, DC.

Austin Frakt, Ph.D., is a Health Economist and the Director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center at the Boston VA Healthcare System. He is also a Professor of health law, policy, and management with the Boston University School of Public Health and a Senior Research Scientist with the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Frakt is the Editor-in-Chief of Health Services Research and serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Managed Care. He is also an Editor-in-Chief and a primary author of the evidence-based health policy blog The Incidental Economist, a regular contributor on health policy topics to The New York Times’ The Upshot, and has been a contributor to the JAMA Health Forum. Dr. Frakt has conducted research studies funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Commonwealth Fund, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Rachel Hardeman, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a reproductive health equity researcher whose program of research applies the tools of population health science and health services research to elucidate a critical and complex determinant of health inequity—racism. Dr. Hardeman leverages the frameworks of critical race theory and reproductive justice to inform her equity-centered work which aims to build the empirical evidence of racism’s impact on health particularly for Black birthing people and their babies. Her work also examines the potential mental health impacts for Black birthing people when living in a community that has experienced the killing of an unarmed Black person by police. Dr. Hardeman is the principal investigator of MORhELab, which explores and defines ways to measure structural racism for the purposes of empirical, quantitative investigation. Published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health, Dr. Hardeman’s research has elicited important conversations on the topics of culturally-centered care, police brutality and structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities. Her overarching goal is to contribute to a body of knowledge that links structural racism to health in a tangible way, identifies opportunities for intervention, and dismantles the systems, structures, and institutions that allow inequities to persist.

Rainu Kaushal, M.D., is a distinguished health services researcher, information scientist, and health care leader who serves as the Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. She heads the Office of the Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research, managing the growth and expansion of clinical research across the institution. Dr. Kaushal has led Weill Cornell Medicine’s clinical research enterprise, driving the experimental application and comparative investigations of new medicines, technologies, interventions and health care delivery models to patients. Dr. Kaushal has also led an enterprise that harnesses the research faculty’s expertise in specialized fields such as clinical trials, health informatics, health services research, epidemiology, and precision medicine to propel the development and implementation of novel therapeutics.

Eric B. Larson, M.D., M.P.H., is a Senior Investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. A general internist, Dr. Larson is a national leader in geriatrics, health services, and clinical research and has been an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2007. He pursues an array of research, ranging from clinical interests such as Alzheimer’s disease and genomics to health services research involving technology assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, learning health systems, and quality improvement. His research on aging includes a longstanding collaboration between Kaiser Permanente Washington and the University of Washington (UW) called the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study. With colleagues from Duke University and Harvard University, Dr. Larson established and now helps lead the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) Common Fund’s Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory. The Collaboratory sponsors pragmatic clinical trials and aims to improve the way clinical trials are conducted so that patients and care providers have access to the best available clinical evidence for decision making.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., is President Emerita and the former Chief Executive Officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), a position she held for nearly 15 years. During her tenure at RWJF, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey spearheaded bold health initiatives such as creating healthier, more equitable communities; strengthening the integration of health systems and services; and ensuring every child in the United States has the opportunity to grow up at a healthy weight. This work culminated in the Foundation’s vision of building a Culture of Health enabling everyone in America to live longer, healthier lives. A specialist in geriatrics, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey came to the Foundation from the University of Pennsylvania where she served as the Sylvan Eisman Professor of Medicine and Health Care Systems. She also directed Penn’s Institute on Aging and was the Chief of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and a former member of the President’s Council for Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. She currently serves on the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents and several other boards of directors.

Sharon Levine, M.D., is the Associate Executive Director for The Permanente Medical Group of Northern California; a large multi-specialty group practice in Oakland, California, within Kaiser Permanente’s integrated delivery system. A board-certified pediatrician, she has held multiple leadership roles with this group practice including the Chief of Pediatrics. She is an Adjunct Associate for the Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research at Stanford University and is also a board member of the Reagan-Udall Foundation, Integrated Healthcare Association, the Public Health Institute of California, and the California Medical Board. Dr. Levine has been a member of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Board since 2010 and has been serving as its Vice Chairperson since September 2019.

Michael McGinnis, M.D., M.A., M.P.P., is a physician and epidemiologist, serves at the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) as the Senior Scholar, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Executive Officer, the Executive Director of the Leadership Consortium for a Value & Science- Driven Health System, and the NAM Learning Health System Initiative. Previously, Dr. McGinnis was the Senior Vice President and Head of the Health Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (1999–2005). Before that, he served as the Assistant Surgeon General and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, with continuous leadership responsibility from 1977 to 1995 for federal activities in disease prevention and health promotion, a tenure unusual for political and policy posts. Key programs developed and launched at his initiative include the Healthy People national goals and objectives, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, each still ongoing. Internationally, he served in India as the state director for the World Health Organization Smallpox Eradication Program (1974–1975), and in Bosnia as the Chair of the World Bank/European Commission Task Force for Reconstruction in Health and Human Services (1995–1996). Dr. McGinnis’s scientific interests focus on population health and the determinants of health, his publications include approximately 200 articles and more than 20 edited books, and his various national recognitions include the Public Health Distinguished Service Award (1994), the Health Leader of the Year Award (1997), the Public Health Hero Award (2013), the Fries Prize for Health Improvement (2018), and election as a member of the National Academy of Medicine (1999), and a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

David Muhlestein, Ph.D., J.D., is the Chief Strategy and the Chief Research Officer for Leavitt Partners. He is responsible for the firm’s strategic planning and leads Leavitt Partners–directed research. Dr. Muhlestein’s research and expertise centers on health care payment and delivery transformation, understanding health care markets, and evaluating how the broader health care system is changing. He is a self-identified data nerd and regularly speaks and writes about health care system evolution. Additionally, Dr. Muhlestein is a Visiting Policy Fellow at the Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University College of Public Health and a Visiting Fellow at the Accountable Care Learning Collaborative.

Neil Powe, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., serves as the leader of the University of California, San Francisco, Medicine Service at the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, a leading medicine department in a public hospital with strong basic, clinical, and health services research programs focused on major diseases affecting diverse patients locally, nationally and globally. His interests are in improving discovery, education, and clinical practice in medicine; making academic organizations function better; enhancing scholarship and multidisciplinary collaboration; and developing future talent and leadership in the health professions. His primary intellectual pursuits involve kidney disease patient-oriented research, epidemiology, and outcomes and effectiveness research. His research unites medicine and public health with the goals of saving and improving quality of human lives. It involves the knowledge of fundamental discoveries in biology and clinical medicine to advance the health of patients and populations affected by kidney disease.

Bruce Siegel, M.D., M.P.H., is the President and the Chief Executive Officer of America’s Essential Hospitals (AEH). With an extensive background in health care management, policy, and public health, Dr. Siegel has the blend of experience necessary to lead AEH and its members through the changing health care landscape and into a sustainable future. Since joining AEH in 2010, Dr. Siegel has guided the association toward realizing its strategic vision of advancing the work of hospitals committed to ensuring access to care and optimal health for America’s most vulnerable people. He has helped shape the association’s work in advocacy, member support, and quality. Under his leadership, AEH established a federally funded, national network of hospitals that improved patient safety and reduced care disparities by averting more than 4,000 harm events and $40 million in costs. In 2013, Dr. Siegel led the association in a strategic rebranding to better reflect the common purpose of its more than 320 members: to serve all people and communities by providing essential services and the best care possible. The association’s new name preserves the sense of accountability central to its legacy and speaks to the essential services its members provide to communities across the country.