Speakers: April 20, 2021

Keynote

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith is Associate Dean for Health Equity Research; Associate Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Management; and Founding Director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center (ERIC) in the Office for Health Equity Research at Yale School of Medicine. ERIC’s research focuses on promoting health and healthcare equity for structurally marginalized populations with an emphasis on centering community engagement, supporting healthcare workforce diversity and development, developing patient reported measurements of healthcare quality, and identifying regional strategies to reduce the global burden of non-communicable diseases.

Dr. Nunez-Smith currently serves as Senior Advisor to the White House COVID-19 Response Team and Chair of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force at the Department of Health and Human Services. Previously, she served as co-chair of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board and community committee chair for the ReOpen Connecticut Advisory Group on behalf of Connecticut Governor Lamont. She is the principal investigator on several NIH and foundation-funded grants. Dr. Nunez-Smith is also Director of the Center for Research Engagement (CRE); Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement at the Yale Cancer Center; Chief Health Equity Officer at Smilow Cancer Hospital; Deputy Director of the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation; Core Faculty in the National Clinician Scholars Program; Director of the Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership; and Co-Director of the Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship.

Dr. Nunez-Smith is board certified in internal medicine, having completed residency training at Harvard University’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and fellowship at the Yale Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, where she also received a Masters in Health Sciences. Originally from the US Virgin Islands, she attended Jefferson Medical College, where she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society; she earned a BA in Biological Anthropology and Psychology at Swarthmore College.

Executive Spotlight

Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA became president and CEO of SCAN Group and Health Plan on July 1, 2020. Most recently, Sachin was president and chief executive officer of CareMore Health and Aspire Health, innovative integrated healthcare delivery companies. He led growth, diversification, expansion and innovation of these companies and they grew to serve over 180,000 patients in 32 states with $1.6B in revenues. Under his leadership, CareMore built and scaled industry-leading programs to address loneliness, deliver hospital and primary care at home, and address the clinical needs of the highest-risk, highest-need patients. Sachin was previously 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, Sachin worked in the Obama Administration, where he was senior advisor to Donald Berwick when he led the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Sachin was the first deputy director for policy and programs at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and was an editor of the book, “The Soul of a Doctor” (Algonquin Press).

Sachin is adjunct professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and a contributor at Forbes. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors at Make-A-Wish America. Sachin 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 Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Moderator

Professor Pinar Karaca-Mandic teaches healthcare marketplace and medical technology evaluation. She is the C. Arthur Williams Jr. Professor in Healthcare Risk Management, and the Academic Director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute (MILI) in the Department of Finance. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), in Health Economics and Healthcare programs. She also serves as an Associate Editor of Forum for Health Economics and Policy, and an Editorial Board Member for the International Journal of Health Economics and Management. 

Her research focuses on health insurance benefit design, healthcare regulations, insurance markets, pharmaceutical use, and medical technology diffusion. Dr. Karaca-Mandic’s research has been published in leading economics, medical and health policy journals including the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), British Medical Journal, Health Services Research and Health Affairs. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She was the recipient of a career grant from NIH through which she has been building a research agenda focused on understanding the mechanisms underlying the diffusion of new medical technologies. She is currently the Principal Investigator on an AHRQ funded project to study uptake of clinical evidence by providers focusing on de-adoption of treatments that are shown to be ineffective or harmful. She is also the Principal Investigator on a project funded by the American Cancer Society Funded to study uptake of biosimilar drugs in the U.S. markets.

Prior to joining the Carlson School faculty, Karaca-Mandic was Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from University of California at Berkeley, and BA in economics and mathematics, and a concentration in public policy from Swarthmore College.

Panelist

Jenn Frost is national director of Thrive Local, Kaiser Permanente’s enterprise initiative to address social factors impacting the health of its 12.4 million members and the 68 million people who live in the communities it serves.  Thrive Local will connect people to needed social services through a comprehensive network of social services and health care providers working together on a shared platform.

As national director of this groundbreaking social health program, Jenn is responsible for leading and directing the national, enterprise program management office (PMO) for Thrive Local, partnering with internal Kaiser Permanente operational and community health leaders and other internal and external stakeholders on the ongoing design, implementation, and evaluation of the program.  She provides operational and direct vendor oversight and management for the program, while serving as a national subject matter expert on social health as she works with other key leaders to execute Kaiser Permanente’s broader social health strategy. 

Jenn brings two decades of diverse health care experience to her role and has a passion for addressing upstream factors that influence health. Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente in March 2020, Jenn held several leadership roles at UnitedHealth Group, including on the leadership team for UnitedHealthcare’s Medicaid Clinical Redesign unit, where she used healthcare hotspotting to build innovative models for care management and developed enterprise-wide training on a trauma-informed care for staff working with populations with complex health and social needs.

Jenn has a master’s in health policy and management from NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and is a certified project management professional.

Panelist

Dr. Michael Petersen is a transformative physician executive in Accenture's Health practice dedicated on helping clients solve complex challenges around health and social care (social determinants of health) through data, analytics, technology and person-centric experiences. He serves as a clinical health innovation lead and works to develop solutions to help health and government organizations measure, manage and mitigate health inequities. Dr. Petersen leverages an array of advanced capabilities to help improve quality, cost of care and patient outcomes. He specializes in healthcare innovation, strategy, consulting, patient experience, clinician resilience, clinical and business operations, process optimization, health management, wellness and prevention, care value, and healthcare technologies, analytics, electronic health records, and health information systems.

As a seasoned physician executive, he has more than 18 years of clinical and health industry experience as an emergency medicine pediatrician at several large health systems including 5 years as Chief of Pediatrics. He developed his proven leadership skills while serving in the United States Army. 

Panelist

Kathy builds and manages high-performing teams focused on healthcare innovation to deliver better care at lower cost for complex populations. Her work blends a deep understanding of care delivery, social determinants of health, data-driven patient segmentation, and a care philosophy that is trauma-informed and oriented toward supporting patients on their journey to wellbeing.

She ran a large outpatient multi-specialty medical practice and launched an addiction medicine service in Camden, NJ, while improving financial performance and clinical outcomes.  At UnitedHealthcare, she led the team which implemented and scaled a unique, nationally recognized housing model for homeless complex patients and delivered primary care to home-bound patients.  Kathy, not afraid of a challenge, has done this work in both start-ups and turnarounds within corporate and non-profit environments including pharma, hospital administration, and health insurance systems.

Kathy is currently launching an innovative primary care startup. She was the President and Chief Operating Officer of Clinical Redesign in UnitedHealthcare’s Medicaid line of business and led the Adult Health and Urban Health Institutes at Cooper Hospital in Camden, NJ. Earlier in her career, Kathy led strategic consulting teams for Bristol-Myers Squibb and Reuters. While in Camden, she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers. She currently serves as a member of Princeton, New Jersey’s Board of Health and serves on the Camden Coalition’s National Advisory board. Kathy earned her B.A. from Bowdoin College and M.B.A from Columbia Business School.

Moderator

Nilay Shah is Chair of the Division of Health Care Delivery Research at Mayo Clinic and Professor of Health Services Research in the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.  He is also the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern endowed Director for Research in the Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery at Mayo Clinic.  He currently co-leads the FDA funded Yale-Mayo Clinic Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI).  He also leads the Mayo Clinic collaboration with National Evaluation System for health Technology Coordinating Center (NESTcc).