The Health Datapalooza 2016 Steering Committee serves to guide the strategy and direction of the conference, providing expertise from for-profit, government, and academic settings. Members of the 2016 committee included:
Kavita Patel, MD, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Former Director of Policy, The White House; Former Senior Advisor, Senator Edward Kennedy; Committee Chair
Dr. Kavita Patel is a Fellow and Managing Director in the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution where she leads research on delivery system reforms, healthcare cost, physician payment and healthcare workforce productivity. Dr. Patel is, in addition, a practicing primary care physician at Johns Hopkins Medicine and a clinical instructor at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Patel was previously a Director of Policy for The White House under President Obama and a senior advisor to the late Senator Edward Kennedy. Her prior research in healthcare quality and community approaches to mental illness have earned national recognition and she has published numerous papers and book chapters on healthcare reform and health policy. She has testified before Congress several times and she is a frequent guest expert on CBS, NBC and MSNBC as well as serving on the editorial board of the journal Health Affairs.
Niall Brennan, Chief Data Officer and Director, Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; US Department of Health and Human Services; Committee Vice Chair
Niall Brennan is CMS’ Chief Data Officer and the Director of the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics (OEDA). In this capacity, he oversees improvements in data collection and dissemination at CMS and efforts to help CMS better harness its vast data resources to drive higher quality, patient-centered care at a lower cost. Niall directs leading-edge research and analysis published by CMS, as well as efforts to make its considerable data sets available to external researchers seeking to promote better understanding of health care in the United States. He also manages CMS’ extensive data and information product portfolio. Prior to joining CMS, Niall worked at the Brookings Institution, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the Congressional Budget Office, The Urban Institute, and Price WaterhouseCoopers. He is a graduate of University College Dublin, and earned a master’s degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University.
Mandi Bishop, Health Plan Analytics Innovation Practice Lead, Dell
Mandi leads Dell’s Health Plan Innovation and Consulting Analytics Solutions team, whose charter is to develop next-generation data-driven solutions for health insurers, ACOs, and emerging risk-sharing arrangements. Prior to Dell, she was an entrepreneur, founding a healthcare data management consulting firm as well as a health IT consulting firm, consulting to organizations throughout the health system from providers to clearinghouses to payers. In conjunction, she is an active participant in the ONC Standards & Interoperability Framework and Data Access Framework initiatives defining future implementation and integration standards. A recognized health IT and health data expert, she is an evangelist and social thought leader who preaches open data sharing and interoperability as primary opportunities to truly transform healthcare.
Jonathan Blum, Executive Vice Presidentfor Medical Affairs at CareFirst Blue Cross
Jonathan (Jon) Blum is the Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, which provides health care coverage in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. Jon has responsibility for overseeing CareFirst’s nationally recognized Patient-Centered Medical Home program. He also oversees CareFirst’s medical and care coordination policies, pharmacy policies, and provider networks.
From 2009-2014, Jon served in senior leadership positions at the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), serving most recently as the agency’s Principal Deputy Administrator. Prior to CMS, Jon worked as a program analyst at the Office of Management and Budget, focusing on the Medicare program. He served on the professional staff of the Senate Finance Committee, advising its prior chairman, Senator Max Baucus, on prescription drug and Medicare Advantage policies during the development of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. He was also a Vice President at the health care advisory services firm, Avalere Health, overseeing its Medicaid and Long-Term Care Practice.
Jon holds a Master’s degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland with his wife and daughter.
Susan Dentzer, Senior Policy Adviser, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)
Susan Dentzer is a senior policy adviser to the RWJF, an on-air health policy analyst for the PBS “NewsHour” and former editor-in-chief of the journal Health Affairs. She is also a frequent guest on a number of NPR programs, including “This American Life” and “The Diane Rehm Show.” Dentzer is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the Council on Foreign Relations; a director of the Public Health Institute and of Research!America; and a public member of the board of directors of the American Board of Medical Specialties. Dentzer is a graduate of Dartmouth and received an honorary master of arts from the institution. She is also a Dartmouth trustee emerita, and the only woman to-date to serve as chairman of the Dartmouth board of trustees, from 2001 to 2004. Dentzer has served on the board of overseers of Dartmouth Medical School since 1993.
Margo Edmunds, PhD, Vice President for Evidence Generation and Translation, AcademyHealth
Margo Edmunds, AcademyHealth’s Vice President for Evidence Generation and Translation, leads the organization’s portfolios in information infrastructure, delivery system reform, research translation and dissemination, and population health. Her previous positions include Senior Program Officer at the Institute of Medicine, Adjunct Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Vice President at The Lewin Group. A health policy expert with a clinical background in care management, Dr. Edmunds has directed a variety of initiatives and projects on health information exchange, consumer and public health informatics, and healthcare coverage and access under Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP. She is the Immediate Past Chair of the Public Policy Committee for the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), for which she received an AMIA leadership award in 2013, and is an Associate Editor for Applied Clinical Informatics as well as a reviewer for Health Affairs, JAMIA, the International Journal of Medical Informatics, and eGEMs. Dr. Edmunds began her health care career as a member of the affiliate staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital and completed fellowships at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and School of Public Health.
Bill Evans, Chief Marketing Officer, IBM WATSON HEALTH
Bill Evans is the Chief Marketing Officer for IBM Watson Health. As CMO, he has global responsibility for marketing strategy, communications, social media, public relations, demand generation, and events. He is working to help commercialize the healthcare industry offerings based on IBM Watson’s cognitive technology.
Prior to joining IBM, Mr. Evans was the Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer for Team Chemistry @ WPP, leading the consolidated digital marketing business for Johnson & Johnson. Mr. Evans was responsible for driving strategic innovations, ensuring creative excellence and leading the R&D of emerging technologies in order to protect and grow market share for a multi-billion dollar product portfolio.
Previous to this, Mr. Evans lead the digital practice for FleishmanHillard New York, working with brands to develop and manage digital and social business initiatives to increase both revenue and reputational indices. In addition to his daily responsibilities, Mr. Evans served as Global Co-Chair for the agency’s healthcare practice, working with colleagues and clients around the world. He was one of the primary strategists behind the agency’s approach to social media, helping clients navigate the evolving world of communication, conversation, and community.
Mr. Evans has been a frequent speaker on the future of digital and the innovative role social media and mobile can play in healthcare and has been a featured guest on Fox News and CNBC.
Elizabeth Fowler, Vice President of Global Health Policy, Johnson & Johnson
Elizabeth Fowler is vice president of global health policy at Johnson & Johnson where she is focused on shaping health care systems and promoting innovation. Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, Liz was special assistant to President Obama on healthcare and economic policy at the National Economic Council. During the health reform debate in 2009-2010, Liz served as chief health counsel to U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chair, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and played a critical role in developing the Senate version of the Affordable Care Act. She also played a key role in the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA). Liz has more than 20 years of experience in health policy and health services research. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a doctorate from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where her research focused on risk adjustment, and a law degree from the University of Minnesota. She is admitted to the bar in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Liz is a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Health Innovators Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Francie Grace, Social Media Strategist, CatchAndHoldConsulting.com
As a social media strategist, journalist, writer, producer and artist, Francie Grace has a passion for moving the ball forward and building vibrant digital footprints, especially but not exclusively for brands and projects in healthcare reform, things vegan and green, and projects having an impact for good.
Francie is a member of Health Datapalooza’s Consumers Circle and the Society of Participatory Medicine and is active in healthcare social media, advocating for patient rights; the seamless interoperable flow of complete medical records to patients and their chosen healthcare providers; privacy safeguards to guard against data breaches and discrimination; testing to empower precision medicine; financial accessibility; and better use of data to provide patients, clinicians, researchers and the public at large with current and clear information on the latest clinical choices and outcomes of various therapies.
Francie is a graduate of Smith College and before founding Catch & Hold Consulting, had a long career as a journalist at CBS News, where she received numerous honors including the Edward R. Murrow award, then moved to Public Agenda, a non-partisan public policy organization. As Vice President, Managing Editor and Director of Social Media, she took on issues including healthcare, the federal budget, education reform K-12, access to higher education, energy and the environment, helping to launch the interactive series “Planet Forward” on PBS, the web and social media.
Francie is committed to the principle that personalized medicine, telemedicine and all the other amazing changes rolling in won’t help us much unless our data is in good shape and accessible when and where we need it. Experience as a patient and helping other patients has redoubled her resolve to completely reshape the way we do things to better serve patients, doctors, other healthcare workers, caregivers, researchers, hospitals, clinics, medical schools and society as a whole.
Peter N. Grant, President and CEO, Health Care Conference Administrators, LLC
Peter N. Grant, JD, PhD, is President and CEO of Health Care Conference Administrators, LLC (bda Global Health Care, LLC), a partner and co-chair of the Health Law Section of Davis Wright Tremaine, and a member and chair of Health IT Certification, LLC, Train for Compliance, LLC and Health Policy Publishing, LLC.
Health Care Conference Administrators, LLC, www.eHCCA.com, is a company which sponsors media and educational events, including national and global conferences, internet-based events and publications on matters of health care practice and policy.
Davis Wright Tremaine has fourteen offices with 525 attorneys, including approximately 50 health care attorneys. He is a health law specialist with special focus on structuring physician organizations and integrated health systems. He is the former special counsel to the American Medical Group Association, and former general counsel to the Integrated Healthcare Association, the IPA Association of America and the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California. Dr. Grant maintains offices in San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC.
Dr. Grant is listed in the 1999-2015 Editions of The Best Lawyers in America. He is Past President, California Society for Healthcare Attorneys and the Healthcare Financial Management Association, Northern California Chapter. Dr. Grant is a member of the advisory board of the Harvard Health Policy Review and a former member of the editorial board of Health Affairs.
Mr. Grant received a B.A. in Plan II with special honors in history, University of Texas at Austin in 1971. He attended the Free University, West Berlin, 1972-1973, and the Sorbonne/University of Paris IV, 1973-1974. He was granted a M.A., in History from Harvard University in 1975 and a J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979. In 1988, he was granted a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University. His dissertation was titled “The Struggle for Control of California’s Health Care Marketplace.”
David Knott, Director, McKinsey & Company
David is a Director in McKinsey’s Global Health Practice and leads the Firm’s Center for US Health System Reform. Over the past two decades, he has worked in America and abroad with many of the leading national health insurers, Blue Cross Blue Shield organizations, HMOs, Medicaid MCOs, physician groups, hospital systems, pharmacy benefit managers, large employers, and health agencies. His engagements have included the development of corporate, business unit, and functional strategies, as well as future operating visions, organization re-designs, capability building programs, and M&A efforts to operationalize these strategies. Prior to joining the firm, David earned a Ph.D. and Master’s in Political Philosophy from Oxford University as well as a B.A. Honours degree in Canada from Queen’s University, where he was a Gold Medalist.
Bob Kocher, Partner, Venrock
Bob Kocher, MD is a Partner at Venrock and focuses on healthcare IT and services investments. He currently serves on the Board of Jiff, Aledade, and Lyra Health and is a Board Observer at Grand Rounds, Stride, and Doctor on Demand. He is a former Director at Castlight Health (CSLT) and currently serves as an Advisor to Castlight.
Additionally, he is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at USC, and Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution Engleberg Center for Health Reform. He serves on the Advisory Boards of Harvard Medical School Health Care Policy Department, National Institute of Healthcare Management (NIHCM), and ChildObesity180. He is also a member of the Health Affairs Editorial Board.
Prior to Venrock, Bob served in the Obama Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy on the National Economic Council. In the Obama Administration, Bob was one of the shapers of the Affordable Care Act focusing on cost, quality, and delivery system reform and health IT policy. He was one of the leaders of the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” childhood obesity initiative, led the formation of the Partnership for a Healthier America, and served on the Federal Advisory Panel charged with developing a national obesity strategy. He also co-founded the Health Data Initiative with Todd Park, a joint effort of HHS and the Institute of Medicine, to release healthcare data to spur private sector innovation to improve healthcare cost and quality. For the past five years, he has served as Co-Chair of the Health Datapalooza.
Before the White House, Bob was a Partner at McKinsey & Company where he led McKinsey Global Institute’s healthcare economics work and Center for United States Health System Reform. He has worked widely across the US and international healthcare systems to improve regulatory policy, economic performance, labor productivity, clinical outcomes, and patient experience.
Bob received undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington and a medical degree from George Washington University. He completed a research fellowship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health, and went on to complete his internal medicine residency training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Harvard Medical School.
Charles Ornstein, Senior Reporter, ProPublica
Charles Ornstein is a senior reporter at ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization in New York. Prior to joining ProPublica in 2008, he was a member of the metro investigative projects team at the Los Angeles Times. In 2004, Ornstein was a lead author on a series of articles on a troubled hospital in South Los Angeles. The articles won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service. He has also written about major scandals involving organ transplant programs, breaches of patient medical records and lax oversight of registered nurses throughout the country. The later article was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. His most recent project, The Prescribers, won the Philip Meyer Award and the FOIA Award from IRE. ProPublica also was awarded the 2014 Health Data Liberators award from the Health Data Consortium. Ornstein previously worked at the Dallas Morning News, where he covered health care on the business desk and worked in the Washington bureau. He is a past president of the board of the Association of Health Care Journalists and an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. A native of Detroit, Ornstein is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
Alison Rein, MS, Senior Director for Evidence Generation and Translation, AcademyHealth
Alison Rein is a Senior Director for Evidence Generation and Translation at AcademyHealth, where she directs several projects that investigate how new sources of data and expanded stakeholder engagement are helping to transform health, care and research. Ms. Rein leads the Community Health Peer (CHP) Learning Program, a partnership with ONC to establish a national peer learning collaborative for 15 competitively awarded communities to address specified population health management challenges through increased sharing and use of electronic health data. She also leads the AcademyHealth Consumer Patient Research (CPR) Roundtable, and other projects that focus on building the data and human infrastructure needed to support patient-centered learning health system. Ms. Rein has previously held leadership roles at the National Consumers League, Kantar Health, and Covance Health Solutions. Ms. Rein holds a master’s degree in public policy analysis from the University of Rochester.
Joshua Rosenthal, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, RowdMap
An Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, Josh is serial entrepreneur with multiple successful exits around health care data and analytics. Josh is a Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of RowdMap, a web-based business management platform purpose-built for the Affordable Care Act and health reform world to help health plans and providers maximize growth, improve overall performance and create value through pricing, contracting and interventions.
He has helped create award winning analytics systems that have covered over 200MM members and his work on payer data and analytics, particularly using government data sources, has won praise from Business Week and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Josh received a Fulbright to the Sorbonne’s Institute for Advanced Studies (EPHE), an interdisciplinary think tank and he’s organized, moderated, spoken and guest lectured at the Health Data Initiative, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality, SXSW, WHIT, WHITE, Harvard, Hopkins and MIT, appearing on NPR with Todd Park, the Chief Technology Officer for the United States and Bryan Sivak, the CTO of the Department of Health and Human Services and speaking on how to help health care organizations use open health data to improve clinical outcomes and experiences for members and patients.
Josh is a Member of the National Committee on Vital & Health Statistics Data Group and serves as a Public Advisor and Industry Expert to the ONC, HHS on Technology and Innovation and the HCTTF.
Vicki L. Shepard, ACSW, MPA, Industry and Government Relations
Vicki joined Healthways in 2004, bringing extensive experience in both government and the private sector. In her position with the company, Vicki provides leadership, business development and ongoing relationship management with government officials, strategic company partners, stake-holders, and industry and trade associations. She serves on a number of industry and association Boards and manages the company’s political and policy agenda.
Vicki served as the Vice President of the Healthcare Industry Group and Government Solutions for North America for EDS prior to joining Healthways. She was responsible for business planning, client satisfaction, alliance relations, market analysis and strategic business growth, and industry and association relationships.
Before joining EDS, Vicki was a presidential appointee for five years serving as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Aging at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She participated in Secretarial and White House sessions on a variety of subjects, including aging, health care reform, and welfare reform.
Before coming to Washington, she served as Chief Deputy Director for the California Department of Aging and Long Term Care. In this position, she supervised legislative affairs, public relations and program operations on behalf of the Governor’s office and California’s over 4 million elderly. She served on a number of national committees focusing on health care and human service reform.
In Monterey County California, Vicki held a variety of public sector leadership positions. She served as the director for health and human services and community action programs. She represented the county on several local, state and national committees, chairing legislative efforts and policy development work. Vicki was also a professor of graduate social work students at San Jose State University.
Vicki is a member of the Academy of Certified Social Workers and has a Master’s Degree in Social Work and
a Master’s Degree in Public Administration. She has received numerous awards, including the Koshland Award for “Outstanding Administrator of the Year” for the State of California and recently received the Monty Award from San Diego State University as the Alumni of the Year. On a personal level, she spent ten years as primary caregiver; her mother having Alzheimer’s disease and her father receiving in-home hospice care.
Paul Wallace, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Clinical Translation, Optum Labs
Paul Wallace, MD, is Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Clinical Translation at Optum Labs, which was launched in early 2013 with the Mayo Clinic and now includes 22 partners from across health care. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Optum Labs is designed to develop and sustain a community of research and learning partners spanning multiple health sectors who will have access to unprecedented data resources to work collaboratively on some of the most critical problems in health care today.
From 2011-13 he was a Senior Vice President and Director of the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research at the Washington DC based Lewin Group, and was formerly a Medical Director and clinician with Kaiser Permanente from 1989 to 2011. He was the Executive Director of Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute (CMI) from 2000 – 2005 and led and contributed to several KP national initiatives in evidence based medicine, population health and use of Health IT.
Dr. Wallace is currently Chair of the board of directors for AcademyHealth, the professional association for health services and policy research. He has served on national committees and boards for the Institute of Medicine, NCQA, AHRQ, CMS, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Technology Evaluation Center, the Center for Information Therapy, the eHealth Initiative and the Care Continuum Alliance.