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.

Sachin H. Jain, M.D., M.B.A., is the President and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SCAN Group and Health Plan, where he is charged with leading the organization’s growth, diversification, and emerging efforts to reduce healthcare disparities. SCAN’s revenues top $3.4 billion and the organization serves 220,000 patients. Previously, Dr. Jain was the President and the CEO of CareMore and Aspire Health. He pioneered the first clinical program in the world focused on social isolation. Dr. Jain is also an Adjunct Professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a contributor at Forbes. Prior to joining CareMore, Dr. Jain was the global Chief Medical Information and Innovation Officer at Merck & Co. He contemporaneously served as an attending physician at the Boston VA Boston Medical Center and a member of faculties at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School. From 2009–2011, Dr. Jain worked in leadership roles at the Department of Health and Human Services, where he was the Senior Advisor to the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

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.

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.

Consuelo H. Wilkins, M.D., M.S.C.I., Professor of Medicine, is the Senior Vice President and the Senior Associate Dean for Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Wilkins is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a nationally recognized thought leader in health equity and in addressing the elimination of systemic inequities that impact the health and well-being of racial/ethnic minorities. As a community engagement research scientist, Dr. Wilkins has pioneered new approaches to engaging vulnerable, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and minority populations. She is the Principal Investigator of three National Institutes of Health–funded centers the Vanderbilt-Miami-Meharry Center of Excellence in Precision Medicine and Population Health; the Center for Improving Clinical Trial Education Recruitment and Enrollment at CTSA Hubs; and the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Dr. Wilkins earned a B.S. in microbiology and an M.D. from Howard University. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the Duke University Medical Center and a Geriatric Medicine fellowship at the Washington University School of Medicine/Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Following her medical training, she earned an M.S.C.I. from the Washington University School of Medicine.