Appendix B

Biographical Sketches of the Speakers

Pamela Abner, M.P.A., has more than 15 years of experience working with industry leaders to establish best practices and strategic and innovative programs for diversity, inclusion, and equity across business lines. As a certified patient experience professional, a certified unconscious bias educator, and an inclusion trainer, Ms. Abner strives to establish inclusive and culturally aware environments based on instilling anti-racist behaviors. Using research methodologies, creating education curriculum, and applying best practices, she continuously seeks to help organizations identify discriminatory practices and disparities. She specifically focuses on eliminating barriers to care, employment, and education for underserved and underrepresented groups as well as fostering relationships with community partners. In addition, Ms. Abner serves as a guest presenter and panelist at national forums and heads her own consulting practice where she provides expert advice to organizations.

Ms. Abner received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University and her master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. She is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; a member of the board of trustees at Phillips School of Nursing Mount Sinai Beth Israel; a member of the Press Ganey National Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Client Advisory Council; and a member of the Brown University Advisory Council on Biology and Medicine—The Warren Alpert Medical School. In addition, she serves as mentor to those seeking career and professional advice with an emphasis on guiding and supporting individuals from underrepresented backgrounds.

Joseph R. Betancourt, M.D., M.P.H., is the president of the Commonwealth Fund. One of the nation’s preeminent leaders in health care policy, equity, quality, and community health, Dr. Betancourt formerly served as the senior vice president for equity and community health at Massachusetts General Hospital and as founding director of the Disparities Solutions Center. He has devoted his career to improving the quality and value of health care for diverse populations.

Dr. Betancourt has served on committees that have provided advice to all agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration, among others. He has also provided guidance to private industry and at the state and local levels, including a term on the Boston Board of Health. His roles in governance have included serving on the Board of Trinity Health, Neighborhood Health Plan, and the Massachusetts Health and Hospitals Association.

Dr. Betancourt is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a board-certified internist, providing primary care to a large Spanish-speaking and minority patient panel. He earned his M.D. from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and completed an internal medicine residency at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center. Following his residency, he was a member of one of the first classes in the Commonwealth Fund–Harvard University Fellowship in Minority Health Policy, where he earned an M.P.H. in health policy and management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

An author of nearly 80 peer-reviewed articles, Dr. Betancourt has served on several Institute of Medicine committees, including the committee that produced the seminal report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.

Camille Burnett, Ph.D., M.P.A., APHN-BC, BScN, RN, DSW, FAAN, CGNC, is the vice president for health equity at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). She has extensive professional health care experience within the United States and Canada in the areas of public health, health equity, research and administration, and academia and as an independent consultant. Her experience includes clinical practice and provincial public health administrator leadership positions in Canada as well as academic administrator leadership positions in the United States.

At IHI, she provides oversight for a portion of the U.S. equity portfolio where she is the co-lead and senior sponsor of the Rise to Health Coalition, Pursing Equity Action Community and Learning Networks, and the newly created Leadership for Health Equity Open School Course and is an affiliate with the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Institute for Women’s Health, School of Medicine.

Prior to joining IHI, she served as the associate vice president of education and health equity at VCU; a tenured professor at VCU School of Nursing; and the associate executive director of the Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry, and Innovation. Dr. Burnett has served on numerous boards with appointments locally, nationally, and internationally. Her program of research examines structural inequities that influence disparate outcomes to identify solutions that drive structural justice to redress inequity. She is a registered nurse, a board-certified advanced practice nurse in public health, a certified global nurse consultant, and a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing; and she holds several memberships and affiliations, including the American College of Healthcare Executives, the American Nursing Association, and the American Public Health Association.

Olveen Carrasquillo, M.D., M.P.H., is the associate dean for clinical and translational research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He is a national expert in minority health, health disparities, community-based participatory research, access to care, and community health worker interventions. He has more than 20 years of experience leading large National Institutes of Health center grants and randomized trials, totaling more than $100 million in funding. His work includes research in cancer, diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, HIV, COVID-19, and precision medicine.

Keziah Imbeah, M.Sc., is a senior research associate on the innovation team at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), which serves as the organization’s internal engine for research and development of new care models. Her work on the innovation team includes rethinking how the science of improvement and research methods can further equity and antiracism in health care, developing programs for health equity officers, and surfacing practices related to workforce safety in health care. Ms. Imbeah also co-leads IHI’s internal equity and culture team.

Prior to working at IHI, Ms. Imbeah’s work focused on chronic disease management and mental health policy in sub-Saharan Africa. During her time at the Chatham House’s Centre on Global Health Security (now the Centre for Universal Health), she contributed to a project looking at universal health coverage in Ghana. Ms. Imbeah completed her masters in global health and development from University College London and her bachelors in molecular and cell biology from Harvard University.

Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan, Dr.P.H., is the director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research and Policy and a professor in the Department of Rural Health within the Center for Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Jernigan has been the principal investigator for more than a dozen research studies focusing on improving Indigenous food environments through policy and systems interventions. She also directs the Cen-

ter for Indigenous Innovation and Health Equity, a community–academic partnership with American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander people to restore traditional foods and food practices to promote healthy diets and reduce chronic disease. In 2011 she became the inaugural chair of the National Cancer Institute’s Intervention Research to Improve Native Health initiative, a collaboration of National Institutes of Health–funded investigators conducting intervention science research.

Dr. Jernigan is a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research College of Reviewers, the American Public Health Association, the Society for Public Health Educators, and the Society for Prevention Research. She is an editorial board member for the scientific journals Health Promotion Practice and Progress in Community Health Partnerships. She is a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fries Prize Award Jury, a member of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Advisory Committee, and a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Unequal Treatment in Healthcare Consensus Study Committee. Dr. Jernigan received her Dr.P.H. from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular disease risk reduction at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford School of Medicine. She is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Joneigh Khaldun, M.D., M.P.H., FACEP, is the vice president and chief health equity officer of CVS Health as well as an appointee to the Biden–Harris Administration COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, an emergency medicine physician at Henry Ford Health System, and an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She attended the University of Michigan for her undergraduate education, received her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and obtained her M.P.H. in health policy from George Washington University. She completed her emergency medicine residency at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center/Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York.

Dr. Khaldun is the former chief medical executive for the State of Michigan and chief deputy director for health in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, where she oversaw public health, Medicaid, and behavioral health administrations. She was the key strategist leading Michigan’s first two years of the COVID-19 response, focusing on a variety of challenges including inadequate data infrastructure and interoperability, equitable and sufficient supply of personal protective equipment, testing, vaccines and therapeutics, and historical inequities that placed historically marginalized groups at greater risk of exposure and death. Dr. Khaldun’s team is credited for Michigan’s early release of COVID-19 race and ethnicity data. Michigan also declared racism a public health issue and

focused on areas such as expanding Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and mandated implicit bias training for clinicians. Prior to that role, Dr Khaldun served as director of the Detroit Health Department, where she spearheaded efforts to address infant mortality, teen pregnancy, and the opioid epidemic. Her collaborative and data-informed efforts contributed to Detroit having in 2019 the lowest infant mortality rate in recorded history as well as decreased racial disparities.

Dr. Khaldun joined CVS Health in October 2021. As the inaugural vice president and chief health equity officer of CVS Health, she advances the Fortune 6 company’s data-driven strategy to advance programs and policy to achieve equitable health outcomes for the members, patients, and customers that CVS Health serves.

Joy A. Lewis, M.S.W., M.P.H., is the senior vice president of health equity strategies and the executive director of the Institute for Diversity and Health Equity at the American Hospital Association (AHA). In this role she has broad oversight for several key association priorities and functions related to diversity, health equity, and inclusion to support and build healthy communities. She also serves as a member of the executive management team of the AHA. Ms. Lewis began working at the AHA in late 2018 as the vice president of strategic policy planning where she led the association’s efforts to identify long-term public policy issues, presenting solutions to further the AHA’s vision and mission. She provided leadership in organizing member work groups to ensure members’ involvement, gaining the value of their insights and perspectives to elevate the visibility of the AHA as a thought leader and agent of change around critical issues in health care in America.

Before joining the AHA, Ms. Lewis held several positions over almost two decades at Kaiser Permanente; her last role was senior health policy leader at the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy, based in Oakland, California. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Wesleyan University and master’s degrees in social work from Howard University and public health from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ms. Lewis sits on the board of directors for the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review and Creating Healthier Communities. She also serves on The Chartis Group’s health equity advisory group and on several committees including a work group advising the Office of Minority Health at the Department of Health and Human Services on the development of a business case for the National Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services Standards.

Alexander (Alex) Li, M.D., currently serves as the chief health equity officer of L.A. Care Health Plan, the nation’s largest public health plan.

Previously, in 2011, he served as L.A. Care’s deputy chief medical officer and the chief executive officer of the newly formed Ambulatory Care Network of Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS), charged with reorganizing DHS’s outpatient primary care and specialty services. Thereafter, he became the deputy director of the newly formed Health Agency, which in 2015 sought to combine the departments of health services, mental health, and public health in one umbrella agency.

Dr. Li continues to see patients in South Los Angeles and in East Los Angeles. He is board certified in internal medicine and pediatrics. His primary clinical and health system’s interest centers on access to health and social services resources, care transitions, and health equity. Dr. Li is widely credited with leading L.A. Care’s designation to be the federally designated Regional Extension Center (HITEC-LA) to support the implementation of electronic health records among providers for L.A. County in 2011. He has also been instrumental in driving changes with the primary care model at DHS and introducing eConsult as a new model to improve specialty access at DHS and in private practice settings (virtual care-eConsult and telehealth).

Rishi Manchanda, M.D., M.P.H., is the chief executive officer at Health-Begins, a national mission-driven organization that helps Medicaid-serving managed care plans, health systems, and social sector clients to exceed performance requirements for health care equity and social needs and to achieve long-term impact for people and communities harmed by societal practices. Dr. Manchanda served as the founding director of social medicine for community health centers in south central Los Angeles, as the first lead physician for homeless veterans at the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Administration, and as the chief medical officer for a self-insured employer with a large rural agricultural workforce. In his 2013 book The Upstream Doctors and in a TED talk, he introduced “Upstreamists,” a new model of health care professionals and leaders who improve outcomes by addressing the social and structural drivers of health equity—patients’ social needs, community-level social determinants of health, and structural determinants of health equity including structural racism.

Jane Mantey, Ph.D., is the director of narrative and culture strategies at Race Forward. She is a first-generation, queer Ghanaian-American born in New York City to working-class immigrant parents. A biomedical scientist by training, Dr. Mantey has spent more than a decade organizing and advocating for racial justice, voting rights and participatory democracy, environmental and climate justice, police and prison abolition, and tenants’ rights and housing justice—seeing them all as interconnected if we want to achieve health equity and vastly improve life outcomes for all peoples.

Dr. Mantey came to Race Forward after working for nonprofits such as Ceres and the Sierra Club as well as in state government in California for both the legislative and executive branches. Additionally, she is a freelance writer and movement journalist with articles published in Civil Eats, The Root, Essence, and The Forum, a publication of the African American Policy Forum. She is an educator, having taught college-level courses and presented guest lectures on human biology, medical humanities, scientific racism, environmental and climate justice, youth/student-led organizing, and social movement.

A product of historically black colleges and universities, Dr. Mantey earned her Ph.D. from Meharry Medical College and B.S. from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. She is also a proud member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority.

Anna Roth, M.S., M.P.H., RN, has dedicated herself for over three decades to addressing the spectrum of issues that shape the health of Contra Costa County’s 1 million residents, with special attention to its most vulnerable populations. As the county health director, Ms. Roth oversees more than 4,400 employees, from doctors, therapists, and nurses to hazardous material experts, public health professionals, and data analysts. As the lead executive of one of the largest integrated health care systems within county government, she is responsible for strategy, planning, and operations oversight of the county’s state-of-the-art medical center and 11 clinics along with the health system’s eight operating divisions. Her areas of responsibility include behavioral and health care inpatient and ambulatory delivery system, managed care organizations, local public health departments, county homeless services, the county emergency medical services system, hazardous materials, and environmental health.

As health director, Ms. Roth was responsible for developing and directing the county’s wide-ranging response to the COVID-19 pandemic, achieving the second lowest COVID-19 mortality rate in the nation of counties with populations over 1 million. At the same time, she initiated the design, funding, and launch of a county-wide non-police behavioral health community crisis response in partnership with 19 cities and many community advocates. Called Anyone Anywhere Anytime, A3 is an innovative model that will create an emergency response system staffed by trained clinicians and people with lived experience, who provide appropriate crisis care when needed.

Her unique capacity to build partnerships, both inside and outside government, allows her to maximize the impact of the health system, while expanding reach, impact, and success. At the same time, her dedication to social justice ensures that all populations, regardless of race,

language, income, geography, age, or disability, have equal access to the care, information, and supports critical to their well-being.

Prior to assuming her current role in 2018, Ms. Roth served as the chief executive officer of Contra Costa Regional Medical Center and Health Centers for nine years. She holds a master’s degree from the University of California, San Francisco, and a master’s in public health from Harvard University. She is a registered nurse with more than 30 years of health care experience and is an Institute for Healthcare Improvement quality improvement fellow. A nationally renowned leader in system redesign and innovation using LEAN methods and improvement science, Ms. Roth is a strong advocate for the inclusion of patients, families, and the community as full partners in the delivery of health services.

Ms. Roth serves on the board of directors for the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems. She is an active member of the Olé Health board of directors, which she joined in 2019. She regularly presents to both professional and community audiences on subjects including technical expertise in health and health care, leadership, finance, policy, or improvement.

Joel S. Weissman, Ph.D., is the deputy director and chief scientific officer of the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and professor of surgery in health policy at Harvard Medical School. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles on quality and patient safety, the care of underserved and seriously ill populations, payment policy, comparative effectiveness research policy, and surgical health services research. Dr. Weissman performed some of the earliest research on access problems encountered by the uninsured, and his book Falling through the Safety Net (1994) was widely cited. From 2008 to 2010 Dr. Weissman was a senior health policy advisor to the Secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, where he examined the budgetary impact of universal health coverage in Massachusetts and led the planning effort for a multi-million-dollar statewide all-payer medical home pilot. He currently serves on the technical expert panel for the 2024 Impact Assessment of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Quality and Efficiency Measures.

Kimberlydawn Wisdom, M.D., M.S., FACEP, is the senior vice president of community health and equity and chief wellness and diversity officer at Henry Ford Health. She has been a board-certified emergency medicine physician for 30 years, the chair of the Gail and Lois Warden Endowment on Multicultural Health, and Michigan’s and the nation’s first state-level Surgeon General. In 2012 she was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative

and Public Health. Since 1988 she has been on the faculty of University of Michigan (UM) Medical School’s Department of Learning Health Sciences as well as serving as an adjunct professor in the UM School of Public Health in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education. Dr. Wisdom focuses on health disparities/health care equity, infant mortality/maternal and child health, chronic disease, unintended pregnancy, mitigating unhealthy lifestyles (physical inactivity, unhealthy eating habits, and tobacco use), and, most recently, advancing trauma-informed health care organizations (including training, care, and leadership). She has worked collaboratively with school districts, faith-based organizations, and the business community.

More specifically, Dr. Wisdom provides strong leadership in diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice (DEIJ); community benefit/population health; and improving the health of those disproportionately affected by poor health outcomes. She has co-led the development and implementation of the Henry Ford Health’s five-year, board-approved DEIJ Strategic Plan and is an advisor to many other organizations regarding DEIJ efforts. She is one of the imperative leads for 10-year early childhood initiatives entitled “Hope Starts Here,” funded by the Kellogg and Kresge foundations. She founded the award-winning African American Initiative for Male Health Improvement and, most recently, the Women Inspired Neighborhood Network, which aims to improve access to health care and reduce infant mortality in neighborhoods in Detroit. Since 2008 she has chaired the Detroit Regional Infant Mortality Reduction Task Force. In 2007 she founded a youth leadership development program—Generation With Promise (GWP)—designed to equip youth to drive policy and environmental and behavioral change in their schools and communities. It has continued with grant support for 16 years. GWP youth were featured on the cover of Modern Healthcare in June 2014. She has been an advisor to the Institute on Healthcare Improvement Social Integration Grant Program and chaired the American Hospital Association’s Institute for Diversity & Health Equity for two years, 2021–2022. Dr. Wisdom is the recipient of numerous awards; has authored several peer-reviewed publications and book chapters; and has appeared several times on national television, including ABC’s Nightline, The Food Network, and CNN. She has presented at academic meetings to audiences from across the country and the globe.

Sandra Witt, M.A., M.P.H., D.P.H., is the managing director of the Power Infrastructure statewide team of The California Endowment (TCE). The team is responsible for working collaboratively with community, regional teams, and philanthropic partners to grow a statewide power-building infrastructure for transformative change that advances racial and health justice.

Dr. Witt has been with TCE for 12 years, serving first as director, Healthy Communities, North, for the 10-year Building Healthy Communities (BHC) Initiative. In that capacity, she was responsible for advancing the vision and strategic direction and for supporting colleagues in meeting the goals and outcomes of the place-based BHC efforts in Northern California. She has served as the co-lead of the original internal staff equity and inclusion workgroup.

Before coming to TCE, Dr. Witt was employed by the Alameda County Public Health Department for more than 14 years, where she served first as an epidemiologist–community researcher; then as the director of the community assessment, planning, education, and evaluation unit; and subsequently as the deputy director of planning, policy, and health equity. Dr. Witt previously worked for the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Canada, on international public health initiatives in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. She holds an undergraduate degree from McGill University in sociology, an M.A. in Latin American studies (anthropology) from the University of Florida, and an M.P.H. and doctorate in public health from the University of California, Berkeley.