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Learning Health System Strategy Group Members

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Leadership

Executive Director
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)
Nakela Cook 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 some of the nation’s largest health research funders. Cook leads PCORI’s research, engagement, dissemination and implementation, and research infrastructure development work. She also provides oversight to a growing number of programs and initiatives designed to create a more efficient, effective, and patient-centered system of health. Under her leadership, and with extensive engagement of stakeholders, PCORI established a bold strategic vision to address the challenges that patients and communities face in our nation’s complex, fast-changing health system. Prior to her current role, Cook served as senior scientific officer and chief of staff at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute where she spearheaded initiatives in strategic planning, cardiovascular outcomes, precision medicine, data science, sickle cell disease, and women’s health. Cook has received numerous awards for her excellence in clinical teaching, mentorship, and leadership of complex scientific initiatives and was named as one of Modern Healthcare’s 100 Most Influential People for 2023 and 2024. Cook earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a Master of Public Health in health care policy and management from Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and is an alumna of the Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellowship in Minority Health Policy.
Chief Value Officer; Associate Dean for Practice Transformation; Professor, Gynecologic Oncology
Mayo Clinic

Sean Dowdy is the Chief Value Officer at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Dowdy earned his bachelor’s degree in English at Cornell University and attended Georgetown University School of Medicine where he earned his medical degree. He completed residency in obstetrics and gynecology in addition to a fellowship in gynecologic oncology at Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education. He completed postgraduate clinical training in Lille, France, and Berlin, Germany, in laparoscopic surgical oncology. In his role as Chief Value Officer of Mayo Clinic and the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Associate Dean for Practice Transformation, Dr. Dowdy leads the strategy and execution for Mayo Clinic Quality and Affordability and for Mayo Clinic’s learning health system. In these roles he fortifies Mayo Clinic’s brand and reputation as a category of one within health care as aligned with Mayo Clinic’s Bold. Forward. 2030 Strategy. His current research focuses on improving healthcare quality, safety, and value, and he has worked to disseminate his surgical quality improvements beyond Mayo Clinic to national and international audiences. Dr. Dowdy is credited with approximately 300 peer-reviewed publications. He serves as an associate editor of the journal, Gynecologic Oncology, and has held multiple leadership positions in international societies including serving as a member of the Board of Directors for the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, ERAS USA, and Society of Gynecologic Surgeons.

Cincinnati Children’s Professor of Pediatrics at the James M. Anderson Center for Health System Excellence
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

Peter Margolis is the Cincinnati Children’s Professor of Pediatrics 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 systems improvement methods across a broad range of areas, including primary and sub‐specialty care, communities, and public health settings to improve the health outcomes of children, families, and communities. He served as Co‐Director of the Center from 2016‐2024 and currently leads the Center’s efforts focused on advancing the science of networked Learning Health Systems. Over the last 20 years, he and his research team have developed innovative approaches that engage patients, their families, clinicians, scientists, and communities in developing network‐based learning health systems that simultaneously improve care, spawn innovation, and accelerate research. This work has repeatedly demonstrated significant impact on the process and outcomes of care. Dr. Margolis was co‐ PI of an NIH Transformative Research Grant focused on developing learning health systems for children with chronic illness by harnessing the inherent motivation and expertise of all stakeholders involved. Dr. Margolis has extensive experience in large‐scale comparative effectiveness research, the creation of large‐scale interoperable data systems, managing large project teams, and engaging individuals from diverse backgrounds to co‐produce improved care and research. He served as Chair of the PCORnet Council, guiding the Patient‐Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s investment in transforming research infrastructure in the US. The ImproveCareNow Network, which he leads, was awarded the Drucker Prize, the largest on‐profit management and innovation award in the US. Dr. Margolis is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Strategy Group Members

Shantanu Agrawal, MD, MPhil
Elevance Health

Shantanu Agrawal is the Chief Health Officer of Anthem, Inc. Dr. Agrawal oversees Anthem’s enterprise health strategy, to include medical policy and clinical quality, as well as the company’s industry-leading work to address the social drivers of health. He will also lead Anthem’s community health strategy and the Anthem Foundation.

Dr. Agrawal most recently served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a non-profit organization dedicated to working with members of the healthcare community to drive measurable health improvements. He is also the former Deputy Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where he led an effort to improve the physician experience with Medicare and was also was one of the main architects of CMS’s strategy to address the national opioid epidemic. Dr. Agrawal also served as Director of the Center for Program Integrity (CPI), where he was instrumental in launching new initiatives in data transparency and analytics, utilization management and payment models.

Dr. Agrawal serves on the board of the Grameen Foundation and the Presidential Advisory Council of Brown University’s School of Public Health. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and Associate Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine.

Dr. Agrawal completed his undergraduate education at Brown University, medical education at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and clinical training in Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his master’s degree in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University.

Tanya Alteras, MPP
Director of Research and Innovation
America's Essential Hospitals
Joseph Betancourt, MD
President
The Commonwealth Fund

Joseph Betancourt is the president of the Commonwealth Fund. One of the nation’s preeminent leaders in health care, equity, quality, and community health, Betancourt formerly served as the senior vice president for Equity and Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), overseeing the organization’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and community health portfolio, including its Center for Diversity and Inclusion, Disparities Solutions Center, Center for Community Health Improvement, and centers focused on gun violence prevention, community health innovation, immigrant health, and global health. Previously, Betancourt led the Mass General Brigham (MGB) system’s COVID Equity and Community Health response and served as Vice President and Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer at MGH, where he helped develop and launch the organization’s Structural Equity Ten-Point Plan and MGB’s United Against Racism Initiative. As director of MGH’s Disparities Solutions Center, which he founded, Betancourt worked to develop the capacity of health care organizations to improve quality, address disparities, and achieve equity. The center’s Disparities Leadership Program worked with more than 350 operating health care systems across the country, providing guidance on how they can improve quality and value in the care of diverse, minority, and vulnerable populations.

Kelly Jean Craig, PhD
Executive Director, Clinical Evidence Development, Medical Affairs
Aetna/CVS
Ashwini Davison, MD, FACP, FAMIA
CMIO-Oncology
Amazon Web Services
Sanjay Desai, MD
Chief Academic Officer
AMA
Robert Edwards, MD
Chief Medical Officer
UPMC Community and Ambulatory Services Division
Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH
Founding Director; Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics
Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
Dana Gelb Safran, ScD
President and CEO
National Quality Forum

Dana Gelb Safran is President & CEO of the National Quality Forum (NQF), and Chief Scientific Officer of the Joint Commission (TJC). In addition to overseeing NQF’s longstanding function as steward for our nation’s portfolio of healthcare quality measures, Dr. Safran is leading the expansion of NQF’s portfolio of products and services to advance healthcare quality, outcomes, equity and affordability, including new products and services being offered in partnership with the Joint Commission. Dr. Safran is an internationally recognized health care executive with a unique blend of accomplishment in business and academia. A central feature of her work has been combining the science of quality measurement with the art of its use to drive significant change in the quality, outcomes, and affordability of care. Dr. Safran’s prior roles include serving for more than a decade as a senior executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA), where she was a lead architect of the BCBSMA Alternative Quality Contract (AQC), which is widely credited with having catalyzed the value-based payment movement among public and private payers nationally. She was also a founding member of the executive team at Haven, a joint venture of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase to achieve better health outcomes, care experiences, and costs of care through innovation in care delivery, benefit design and purchasing. Dr. Safran is on the faculty of Tufts University School of Medicine and has held a broad range of advisory roles in the public sector and internationally supporting efforts to improve health and health care through effective uses of performance measurement. From 2017-2023, she served as a Commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). She holds a BA in Biology and Government from Wesleyan University and completed her post-graduate studies at the Harvard School of Public Health to earn an ScM and ScD in Health Policy and Management.

 

Jackie Gerhart, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Epic
Brittany Giles-Cantrell, MPH
Program Director
de Beaumont Foundation
Kevin High, MD
Vice Chief Academic Officer – Academic Learning Health System
Advocate Health/Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
American Hospital Association

Michelle Hood is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the American Hospital Association. Previously she served as president and CEO of Northern Light Health, a Brewer, Maine-based, $1.8 B integrated health system providing services across the state of Maine. During 14 years in this role, she oversaw significant organic growth of the system as well as addition of three hospitals, four skilled-nursing facilities, a home-care agency, residential hospice services and numerous ground/air ambulance units. She also focused on healthcare policy and design models at the state and national levels, keenly aware of Northern Light’s need to succeed in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.

Prior to Maine, Hood served as the president and CEO of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health Systems, Montana Region, as well as president and CEO of the Region’s flagship hospital, St. Vincent Healthcare. Before coming to the AHA, she served on the Association’s Board of Trustees and Executive Committee and on the University of Maine System Board of Trustees.

Michael Howell, MD, MPH
Chief Clinical Officer
Google
Erich S. Huang, MD, PhD
Verily

Dr. Huang is currently Chief Science & Innovation Officer for Onduo by Verily, and Head of Clinical Informatics at Verily (Google’s life sciences subsidiary), and is now adjunct faculty at Duke. Dr. Huang’s research interests span applied machine learning, research provenance and data infrastructure. Projects include building data provenance tools funded by the NIH’s Big Data to Knowledge program, regulatory science funded by the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation. Applied machine learning applications include “Deep Care Management” a highly interdisciplinary project with Duke Connected Care, Duke’s Accountable Care Organization, that integrates claims and EHR data for predicting unplanned admissions and risk stratifying patients for case management; CALYPSO, a collaboration with the Department of Surgery for utilizing machine learning to predict surgical complications. My team is also building the data platform for the Department of Surgery’s “1000 Patients Project” an intensive biospecimen and biomarker study based around patients undergoing the controlled injury of surgery.

As Director of Duke Forge, Dr. Huang is working to build a data science culture and infrastructure across Duke University that focuses on actionable health data science. The Forge emphasizes scientific rigor, awareness that technology does not supersede clinicians’ responsibilities and human relationship with their patients, and the role of data science in society.

Jonathan B. Jaffery, MD, MS, MMM, FACP
Chief Health Care Officer, Association of American Medical Colleges
Nancy Kass, ScD
Professor
Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics
Teresa Keenan, PhD
Director of Health Security Research
AARP Research
Kimberly Lomis, MD
Vice President for Medical Education Innovations
AMA
Peter Long, PhD
Board Member
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

Peter Long is executive vice president, strategy and health solutions, at Blue Shield of California, a 4-million-member nonprofit health plan that serves the state’s commercial, individual, and government markets. Long leads collaborations with health care providers, community leaders, and other stakeholders to design innovative clinical and community programs, and health care delivery and payment systems that provide all Californians access to value-based, high quality, and affordable care.

Previously, Long was President and CEO of Blue Shield of California Foundation for nearly nine years, focusing on building lasting and equitable solutions to make California the healthiest state and end domestic violence. He helped launch the California Accountable Communities for Health Initiative in 15 communities across the state in partnership with California Department of Public Health and other philanthropies. Under his leadership in partnership with the center for Care Innovations, the Foundation supported successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act among the safety-net providers for Californians who has been excluded from health care.

Long served in leadership roles at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and The California Endowment. He has extensive experience working on health policy issues at the state and national levels. He has written numerous papers and chapters on a variety of health policy topics. His research and 20+ publications have been groundbreaking in health care reform and community development.

Long also served as the director of development and programs and then executive director of the Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley in San Jose. Previously, he served as a legislative analyst for the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network in Cape Town, South Africa, during the country’s transition to democracy.

Long earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a doctorate from UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Long serves as an adjunct professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He also serves as a co-chair of the Foresight Project, which is envisioning, testing, and creating a transformed future U.S> health system. He has been a board member at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Grantmakers in Health, and the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, and serves on a number of other health advisory councils.

Thomas Maddox, MD, MSc
Professor of Medicine
Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
Veronica Mallett, MD, MMM
Healthcare Executive
Morehouse School of Medicine & CommonSpirit Health
Thomas Mason, MD
Chief Medical Officer
ASTP/ONC
Chief Medical Officer
Medtronic

Laura Mauri, MD, MSc, is the Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer at Medtronic. Laura received her A.B. from Harvard College and her M.D. from Harvard Medical School, both magna cum laude, and her M.Sc. (Clinical Epidemiology) from Harvard School of Public Health. She completed residency in internal medicine and fellowships in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Laura serves on the Board of directors of (MDIC) and is a member of the NIH Advisory Committee. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Association of University Cardiologists, a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, a Fellow of the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, and member of the Society of Cardiac Angiography and Intervention. She has authored approximately 200 original articles, served as a Senior Editor for the journal Circulation, and was awarded the Joseph A. Vita Award for Clinical Research by the American Heart Association in 2017.

Suzanne Miyamoto, PHD, RN, FAAN
CEO
American Academy of Nursing

Suzanne Miyamoto is the CEO of the American Academy of Nursing (Academy). With two decades of policy, advocacy, and non-profit experience, Dr. Miyamoto provides visionary and strategic leadership to help the organization achieve its vision of healthy lives for all people.

Dr. Miyamoto is highly regarded for her expertise in public policy and developing strong partnerships to advance sound policy solutions that are evidence-based, patient-centered, and community-oriented. Throughout her career, she has worked with a wide network of stakeholders across the health care industry from insurers to consumer organizations. She is a successful leader in the development of advocacy-based coalitions reaching Congress and the Administration. Prior to her position at the Academy, Dr. Miyamoto served as the American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s (AACN) Chief Policy Officer. In her 12 years of service at AACN, Dr. Miyamoto supported the membership as a policy analyst, advocate, and strategist at the federal level. She simultaneously led the Nursing Community Coalition— the largest national nursing coalition focused on elevating the voice of the profession in health policy discussions.

Dr. Miyamoto is a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Consortium, the National Quality Forum’s Board of Directors, the Sibley Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees, the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Research and Action Institute External Advisory Committee, and the National Minority Quality Forum’s Advisory Board. Currently, Dr. Miyamoto holds a faculty appointment at Georgetown University, School of Nursing.

Elizabeth Mort, MD, MPH
Vice President and Chief Medical Officer
Joint Commission
Matt Nielson, MD, MS, FACS
John Sloan Rhodes and John Flint Rhodes Distinguished Professor and Chair
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine
Cecilia Oregón, MPP, MPH
Executive Director
Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy
Distinguished Professor of Population Medicine
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute

Richard Platt, MD, MSc is Professor and Chair of the Harvard Medical School Department of Population Medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. He is principal investigator of the FDA’s Sentinel System that studies of the safety and effectiveness of marketed medical products. Dr. Platt is also co-principal investigator of the coordinating center of PCORI’s Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, leads the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory’s Distributed Research Network, and is co-principal of a CDC Prevention Epicenter. He is a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Advisory Panel on Research. He is a former chair of the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, and co-chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Center for Infectious Diseases.

Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD
CEO
Risant Health

Jaewon Ryu, MD, JD, is the CEO of Risant Health, after having served as the President and CEO of Geisinger, its inaugural member organization. Risant Health is a nonprofit organization created by Kaiser Permanente to expand and accelerate the adoption and success of value-based care in diverse, multi-payer, multi-provider, health system environments across the country. By doing so, it seeks to improve the health of the communities it serves, achieve better health outcomes, and improve health care affordability.

Dr. Ryu came to Geisinger in 2016 from Humana, where he was responsible for the company’s care delivery assets and capabilities, and previously, he held various leadership roles at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, Kaiser Permanente, and in government at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and as a White House Fellow placed at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He started his career as a practicing corporate healthcare attorney.

Dr. Ryu recently completed a full, two-term stint (2018-2024) on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), a body legislatively tasked with advising Congress on policies governing health plans and providers serving Medicare beneficiaries. Currently, he serves on the boards of various organizations including the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and the Commonwealth Fund.

Dr. Ryu earned his B.A. from Yale University and his M.D. and J.D. from the University of Chicago. He completed his residency training in emergency medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

Twee Sim, MD
Director, Medical Quality Assurance / Clinical Quality Management, Ethics, Graduate Medical Education Policy; Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs
Department of Defense
April Taylor, MHA, MS
Vice President of Operations and Chief Operating Officer
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Jim Weinstein, MS, DO
Senior Vice President - Innovation and Health Equity
Microsoft Health