Marshall Chin
Marshall H. Chin, MD, MPH, Richard Parrillo Family Professor of Healthcare Ethics in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago, is a general internist and health services researcher with extensive experience improving the care of vulnerable patients with chronic disease. He co-directs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Advancing Health Equity: Leading Care, Payment, and Systems Transformation Program Office and the Merck Foundation Bridging the Gap: Reducing Disparities in Diabetes Care National Program Office. Dr. Chin serves on the National Advisory Council to the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, CDC Community Preventive Services Task Force, and the Families USA Health Equity and Value Task Force Advisory Council. He co-chairs the National Quality Forum Disparities Standing Committee and is a former President of the Society of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Chin was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017.
Heather Howard
Heather Howard is a lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where she teaches courses on implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the social determinants of health, state and local health policy, and policies to reduce gun violence. She is director of the State Health and Value Strategies program, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded program that provides technical assistance to states to support efforts to transform health and health care. She served as New Jersey’s Commissioner of Health and Senior Services from 2008-2010, and last year year co-chaired Governor-elect Phil Murphy’s health care transition committee. She also has significant federal experience, having worked as Senator Jon Corzine’s Chief of Staff, as Associate Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and Senior Policy Advisor for First Lady Hillary Clinton, as an Honors Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division Health Care Task Force, and as a legislative assistant for Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey. She received her B.A. from Duke University and her J.D. from NYU School of Law. @heatherhhoward
James S. Jackson
James S. Jackson is the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, and Research Professor, Institute for Social Research (ISR), all at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on racial and ethnic influences on life course development, attitude change, reciprocity, social support, and coping and health among blacks in the Diaspora. He is past Director of ISR and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, and past national president of the Association of Black Psychologists, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the Consortium of Social Science Associations. In 2018 he was awarded the University of Michigan’s inaugural Jackson Distinguished Diversity Scholar Career Award. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Career Contributions to Research Award, Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, American Psychological Association (APA), and the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Distinguished Career Contributions in Applied Psychology from the Association for Psychological Sciences. He was awarded the 2019 APA Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology (APA), and the 2019 Warren J. Mitofsky Innovators Award, American Association for Public Opinion Research. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the W.E.B. DuBois fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, National Academies of Sciences and a presidentially appointed member of the National Science Board, National Science Foundation. He is a former Senior Health Policy Investigator, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and he currently directs extensive national and international studies of social, political behavior, and mental and physical health of the Black American and Black Caribbean populations.
Sachin H. Jain
Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA is President of CareMore Health. He is also consulting professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a contributor at Forbes. Dr. Jain was previously CareMore’s Chief Medical Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining CareMore, Dr. Jain was Chief Medical Information & Innovation Officer at Merck & Co. He also 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 the Obama Administration, where he was senior advisor to Donald Berwick when he led the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Dr. Jain was the first deputy director for policy and programs at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. He also served as special assistant to David Blumenthal when he was the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
Dr. Jain graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a BA in government and continued on to earn his MD from Harvard Medical School and MBA from Harvard Business School. He trained in medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Medicine, earned his board certification from the ABIM, and continues to practice medicine at CareMore. He is co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Elsevier journal Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science & Innovation. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and in journals such as the New England Journal, JAMA, Health Affairs, and the Harvard Business Review blogs and was an editor of the book, The Soul of a Doctor (Algonquin Press). Dr. Jain was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance in 2010.
Paula Lantz
Paula Lantz is the associate dean for academic affairs and the James B. Hudak Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. She also holds an appointment as professor of health management and policy in the School of Public Health. Lantz, a social demographer, studies the role of public policy in improving population health. She currently directs the University of Michigan Policies for Action Research Hub, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is engaged in a number of research projects investigating public policy approaches to reducing social inequities in health. Lantz is leading a project regarding the potential for and challenges associated with using social impact bonds to fund public/ private partnerships aimed at improving population health. An elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and the National Academy of Medicine, Lantz received an MA in sociology from Washington University, St. Louis, and an MS in epidemiology and PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin.
David Nerenz
David Nerenz received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1979. He served as Director of the VA’s Great Lakes Regional HSR&D Field Program in Ann Arbor from 1984-1986 and was Director of Henry Ford Health System’s Center for Health System Studies from 1987-1999. From 1999 to 2003, he was at Michigan State University, as Professor in the College of Human Medicine and as Director of the Institute for Health Care Studies from 2001 to 2003. He returned to HFHS in 2003 and became Director of the Center for Health Policy and Health Services Research. He currently serves as the Director Emeritus of the Center and as Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Neurosurgery. From 2012 to 2018, he was a Commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) and is currently Co-Chair of the National Quality Forum’s Scientific Methods Panel, a group that focuses on statistical properties of quality measures seeking NQF endorsement.
Much of Dr. Nerenz’s work over the past 25 years has been focused on the issue of racial and ethnic disparities in quality of care, and on the ways in which health care organizations can reduce or eliminate disparities. He has led several multi-site demonstration projects on health plans’ ability to obtain data on race/ethnicity of members and use this information to identify and then reduce or eliminate disparities in quality of care.
Michael Stein
Michael Stein, M.D., Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management at the Boston University School of Public Health, is an internist and has been a leader in research at the intersection of primary care and behavioral health since the early 1990’s. Dr. Stein has been Principal Investigator of more than twenty NIH-funded clinical trials involving substance-using populations. His work has focused on combined biomedical, psychosocial and technological treatment development for substance users including persons with opioid use disorders, drug injectors, alcohol, cocaine, tobacco and marijuana users. His current health policy work relates to opioid use disorder and involves evaluations of the policy of civil commitment as well as models of police addiction initiatives. Dr. Stein received a NIDA Mid-Career Mentorship Award (K24); many of his more than 350 publications have been with current or past trainees. He is Executive Editor of Public Health Post, a popular website that produces original journalism, viewpoints, and research reviews on matters of population health. With Dr. Sandro Galea, he writes the weekly newsletter The Public’s Health. He is the author of the award-winning books, The Addict: One Patient, One Doctor, One Year and The Lonely Patient.
Gail Wilensky
Gail Wilensky is an economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE, an international health foundation. She received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a PhD in economics at the University of Michigan and has received several honorary degrees. She directed the Medicare and Medicaid programs from 1990 to 1992 and served in the White House as a senior health and welfare adviser to President GHW Bush. Dr. Wilensky currently serves as a trustee of the Combined Benefits Fund of the United Mine Workers of America and the National Opinion Research Center, is on the Board of Regents of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) and the Geisinger Health System Foundation. She also served as president of the Defense Health Board, a Federal advisory to the Secretary of Defense, was a commissioner on the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health and co-chaired the Dept. of Defense Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care.