Health Policy Track
Track Leadership
Fitzhugh Mullan, MD
Track Director
Fitzhugh Mullan, MD is the Murdock Head Professor of Medicine and Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and a Professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He is also a member of the medical staff at the Upper Cardozo Community Health Center in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Mullan graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1964 with a degree in history and from the University of Chicago Medical School in 1968. He trained in pediatrics at the Jacobi and Lincoln Hospitals in the Bronx, New York. In 1972 he was commissioned in the United States Public Health Service and practiced in New Mexico as one of the first physicians in the National Health Service Corps. From 1977 through 1981 he served as Director of the National Health Service Corps in Washington, D.C., followed by tours as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute of Medicine, as a senior medical officer at the National Institutes of Health and, in 1984-1985, as the Secretary of the Health and Environment Department for the state of New Mexico. During 1986-88 he was on faculty in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health followed by a two years on the staff of the Surgeon General, directing the Office of Public Health History. He was appointed Director of the Bureau of Health Professions in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in 1990 and to the rank of Assistant Surgeon General (Rear Admiral) in 1991. In subsequent years, he served on both the President’s Task Force on Health Care Reform and the Council on Graduate Medical Education. In 1996, he retired from the Public Health Service and joined the staff of the journal Health Affairs as a Contributing Editor and the Editor of the Narrative Matters section, positions he continues to hold. In recent years his research and policy work has focused on US and international health workforce issues with particular emphasis on capacity building in Africa.
Dr. Mullan has written widely for both professional and general audiences on medical and health policy topics. His books include White Coat Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician (Macmillan, 1977), Vital Signs: A Young Doctor's Struggle with Cancer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service (Basic Books, 1989), Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care (University of California Press/Milbank Fund, 2002). He is the senior editor of Healers Abroad: Americans Responding to Human Resource Crisis in the HIV/AIDS (National Academy Press, 2005) and Narrative Matters: The Power of the Personal Essay in Health Policy (Johns Hopkins Press, 2006.)
Dr. Mullan is the Founding President of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. He is the recipient of the American Cancer Society's 1988 Courage award, the Society for Surgical Oncology's 1989 James Ewing medal, as well as the Surgeon General's Medallion, and the United States Public Health Service's Distinguished Service Medal. He serves as Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Health Museum. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Janice Blanchard, MD
Dr. Blanchard is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at George Washington Medical Center. She received her BS in biology from Stanford University and her MD and MPH from Harvard Medical School. She completed residency in Emergency Medicine at George Washington University Medical Center. Following residency, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UCLA/RAND. She is currently completing her PhD in policy at the RAND Graduate School. She has conducted research and published a number of articles in the area of racial disparities in health and access to medical care. She most recently received a Robert Wood Johnson Faculty Development award to evaluate the impact of local safety net funding on access to care.
Candice Chen MD, MPH
Dr. Chen is the Co-Principal Investigator of the Medical Education Futures Study an Investigator on the Sub-Saharan African Medical Schools Study at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services and an Attending Physician at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She received her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine and her Masters of Public Health from George Washington University with a concentration in Community Oriented Primary Care.
In her clinical work, she provides primary care to an underserved population in Southeast, Washington D.C. In her public health work, she is investigating the role of medical education in developing a socially responsible physician workforce in the United States and the state of medical education in Africa.
She has also developed an online advocacy education site, www.AdvocacyOnCall.org, to increase resident and physician basic knowledge on federal programs affecting the health and well-being of children and a community campaign to increase youth participation in after-school activities with the goal of reducing high-risk behaviors.
James L. Griffith, MD
James L. Griffith, MD is Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC. Dr. Griffith received his MD in 1976, followed by Neurology Residency and an M.S. in Neurophysiology at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in 1979. He completed psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 1983.
Dr. Griffith currently serves as Director of the Psychiatry Residency Program, Director of the Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Service in George Washington University Hospital, and Associate Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center.
As an educator, Dr. Griffith has developed a program of psychiatric residency training that balances biological and psychosocial therapies in the treatment of patients within their family, community, and cultural contexts. His first book, The Body Speaks: Therapeutic Dialogues for Mind-Body Problems, introduced family-centered approaches for treating psychosomatic disorders and psychosocial sequelae of chronic medical illnesses. A new book, Encountering the Sacred in Psychotherapy: How to Talk to People about their Spiritual Lives articulates methods for engaging the spiritual and religious resources that people bring to clinical settings.
Currently, Dr. Griffith provides psychiatric treatment for immigrants, refugees, and survivors of political torture at the Center for Multicultural Human Services in Falls Church, VA. He has received the Human Rights Community Award from the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area, and the Margaret B. and Cyril A. Schulman Distinguished Service Award from the George Washington University Medical Center, both for the training of mental health professionals and development of mental health services for survivors of political torture in the Washington metropolitan area. In 2003, he was honored as “Psychiatrist of the Year” by the Washington Psychiatric Society.
Dr. Griffith also has served from 2000-2004 as director of training for the Kosovar Family Professional Educational Collaborative, a project to develop a family-centered mental health system in Kosovo. This project has reconnected homeless mentally-ill people with family kin in Kosovo, a country which after the 1999 war had few psychiatrists and no psychiatric hospital for the chronically-mentally ill. Dr. Griffith has supervised the training of Kosovar mental health clinicians who provide family psychoeducation, multi-family psychoeducational groups, in-home crisis intervention, psychopharmacological treatment, and emergency hospitalization services as a supportive infrastructure for these Kosovar families. These programs have been institutionalized as mandated care for the chronically mentally-ill each of the seven new community mental health centers and are now funded through the Ministry of Health of Kosovo.
Atul Grover, MD, PhD, FACP, FCCP
Atul Grover currently serves as Director, Government Relations, at the
Association of American Medical Colleges. He has been a health care
consultant and has worked closely with hospitals, health systems,
government agencies and NGOs for over a dozen years. He is widely recognized as an expert on physician workforce and related policy issues
in medical education, financing, and training. Dr. Grover earned a PhD
in Health and Public Policy at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg
School of Public Health where he completed a three-year fellowship in
health services research; there, he remains on Faculty in the Department
of Health Policy and Management. He is a board certified internist and a
Fellow of both the American College of Physicians and the American
College of Chest Physicians. Prior to his consulting career, he served
as Chief Medical Officer in the National Center for Health Workforce
Analysis at HRSA. He holds an MD from the George Washington University (where he is currently Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine), a BA
in English from Cornell University, and completed his training in
primary care internal medicine at the University of California San
Francisco.
Seiji Hayashi, MD
Dr. Seiji Hayashi is the Director, Community Oriented Primary Care Program in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. Dr. Hayashi received his undergraduate degree from Vassar College and his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. After completing his family medicine residency at University of California, San Francisco he completed a fellowship in Minority Health Policy at Harvard University, along with his MPH degree. In 2001, he accepted an academic appointment in the Department of Community Health at Georgetown University. He practices clinically at Congress Heights Community Health Center in Washington DC, which is designated as one of the city’s neediest health professional shortage area. He has published nationally and internationally on service learning, ethnicity and risk factors, and culturally competent health care.
Brad B. Moore, MD, MPH, FACP
Dr. Moore is Medical Director of the Physician Assistant Program and an Associate Professor of Medicine and of Health Policy at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. He practices general internal medicine at the GW Medical Faculty Associates and teaches extensively in the Medical School and School of Public Health and Health Services.
His areas of interest and research include: health policy, medical informatics, spirituality and health, asthma, preventive medicine, and health professions education
L. Gregory Pawlson MD, MPH
Greg Pawlson, MD, MPH, has been the Executive Vice President of National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) since January 1, 2000. NCQA is a leading evaluator of health care services and is especially well known for its development of HEDIS® clinical performance measures. At NCQA, beyond his role as a senior member of the leadership team at NCQA, Dr. Pawlson has oversight and responsibility for research and analysis, federal and state contracting, performance measure development and corporate/foundation relationships. Prior to joining NCQA, Dr. Pawlson was Senior Associate Vice President for Health Affairs and worked with the Quality and Utilization Management program for the Faculty Practice at the George Washington University. Prior to his role as Senior Associate VP, Dr. Pawlson had served at GW as Chairman of the Department of Health Care Sciences (DHCS) and Director of the Institute for Health Policy, Outcomes and Human Values.
Dr. Pawlson received his undergraduate degree from Penn State, his MD from the University of Pittsburgh and did his internship/residency at Stanford. He was then a staff associate of the National Institutes of Health, and later an Endocrine fellow and Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Washington. During that time Dr. Pawlson completed a MPH degree with a focus on health systems and management, and did several studies involving systems at Group Health Puget Sound. His clinical expertise is in the area of geriatrics and prior coming to NCQA he served as clinical chief of geriatrics at the George Washington University Hospital and faculty practice, and as medical director for several nursing homes in Washington D.C.
Within organized medicine Dr. Pawlson served as Chairman of the Public Policy Committee, and later as President and Chairman of the Board of the American Geriatrics Society. He also served as a member of the National Council of the Society for General Internal Medicine and in 1986-87 was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow, serving on staff of Sen. George Mitchell (D-Me). Dr. Pawlson has been on the Board of Directors of several national organizations including the Bon Secours Hospital System and the United States Soldier’s and Airman’s Home, and was the associate director of the national program “Partnerships for Quality Education”. He also served as a member of the IOM Committee on “Identifying Priority Areas for Quality Improvement” and is currently a member of the subcommittee on Performance Measurement of the American College of Physicians.
Beyond his educational and administrative roles, Dr. Pawlson has had an active research focus in policy and health services research with a focus early in his career on health professions education, health policy and health care financing of the care of older persons and more recently on quality measurement, improvement, evaluation and reporting. He has over 100 publications in books, proceedings, and peer-reviewed journals and has served on the editorial board of numerous publications and on review panels for various foundations and agencies including RWJ, AARP, HRSA, AHRQ and NIH.
Kyu Rhee, MD, MPP
Dr. Kyu Rhee serves as a Medical Officer and Director of the new Office of Innovation and Program Coordination (OIPC) at the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Prior to coming to NIH, Dr. Rhee served 5 years as a National Health Service Corps scholar, primary care physician, and Medical Director of community health centers in both Washington, DC and Baltimore. Most recently, he served as the Chief Medical Officer of Baltimore Medical System (BMS), the largest network of community health centers and school-based health sites serving the underserved in Baltimore.
Dr. Rhee also teaches as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health in the Departments of Prevention and Community Health and Health Policy. He teaches on Health Disparities and Community Health Leadership and Management. He currently serves on: the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Roundtables on Health Literacy and Health Disparities; the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Commission to End Health Disparities; the editorial board of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved (JHCPU). He recently finished service on the Institute of Medicine Committee that published “Examining the Health Disparities Research Plan of the National Institutes of Health: Unfinished Business.”
Dr. Rhee is board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. He did his residency and served as a Chief Resident in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. His medical school training occurred at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He also finished a Masters degree in Public Policy with a concentration in Health Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His undergraduate education was at Yale University where he received a Bachelor degree in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry.
Sara Rosenbaum, JD
Sara Rosenbaum is Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy. She also holds an appointment as Professor of Health Care Sciences at GW's School of Medicine and Law.
As a scholar, an educator and a national leader, Professor Rosenbaum has dedicated her career to promoting more equitable and effective health care policies in this country, particularly in the areas of Medicaid and Medicare, managed care, employee health benefits, maternal and child health, community health centers and civil rights in health care systems. Her commitment to strengthening access to care for low-income, minority and medically underserved populations has had a transforming effect on the lives of many Americans, particularly children.
In addition to her responsibilities as Chair of the Department of Health Policy, which she founded and developed, Professor Rosenbaum is Director of the Center for Health Services Research and Policy, the institutional home for many of the Department's research activities, and Director of the Hirsh Health Law and Policy Program. As a mentor, she is drawn to young people interested in improving health care for the poor. "I am always on the lookout for students who have a keen desire not only to learn health policy, but to apply their knowledge to systemic problems that disproportionately affect low-income, medically underserved, or disabled children and adults," she says.
Professor Rosenbaum has been named one of the nation's 500 most influential health policy makers by McGraw Hill. Among other honors, she has received the Investigator Award in Health Policy from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and has been recognized by the Department of Health and Human Services for distinguished national service on behalf of Medicaid beneficiaries. As a member of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Clinton, she directed the drafting of the Health Security Act and oversaw the development of the Vaccines for Children program.
Katalin Roth, MD
Dr. Roth attended Barnard College, Yale Law School and Yale Medical School, and did her residency in internal medicine at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. She is board-certified in internal medicine, geriatrics, and palliative medicine. Her diverse interests also include medical ethics, women's health, underserved populations, HIV, international health, medical humanities. She is currently Division Director of the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine; from 1997-2006 she served as program director of the Primary Care residency program at GW. She is a member of the GW Hospital Ethics Committee and is a volunteer physician for the Washington Asylum Network.
Bruce Siegel, MD, MPH
Dr. Bruce Siegel is a Research Professor in the Department of Health Policy at the George Washington University Medical Center, School of Public Health and Health Services. There he directs Expecting Success: Excellence in Cardiac Care, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focused on improving health care for minority Americans. His other research projects include work with the Commonwealth Fund and other organizations on hospital quality, disparities and patient flow.
Dr. Siegel has previously held the positions of New Jersey Commissioner of Health, President of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and President of Tampa General Healthcare. In addition, he served as a Director of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, as a Senior Fellow at New School University, and as an advisor to the World Bank, hospitals, hospital associations, philanthropies, state governments and pharmaceutical firms. He is a member of the Board of Stewardship Trustees of Catholic Health Initiatives.
Dr. Siegel received his AB degree from Princeton University, MD from Cornell University Medical College, and MPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. He is board certified in Preventive Medicine. He has written and spoken extensively on health care administration, policy and public health issues. He and his wife, Dr. Maura Cooper, reside with their two daughters in Bethesda, Maryland.
Sian Spurney, MD
Dr. Spurney grew up in the DC area, attended the GW School of Medicine followed by an internal medicine residency and chief resident year at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. She returned to the GW Medical Faculty Associates in 2001 where she worked in the Division of General Internal Medicine for three years. During that time she also worked closely with the Internal Medicine residency at GW as the associate program director. Since 2004 she has worked as a hospitalist at the GW hospital. One of her interests has been the absence of health policy education for physicians in training at the medical school and residency level. She was part of a group of faculty who arranged for internal medicine residents at GW to participate in a health policy rotation during their residency. She remains active in curricular issues in the medical school and residency. Her interests focus on health policy education for physicians and health disparities.
Michael E. Whitcomb, MD
Michael E. Whitcomb, MD, received his undergraduate degree from The Ohio State University (1961), his M.D. from the University of Cincinnati (1965), and completed an internal medicine residency and a fellowship in pulmonary medicine at Walter Reed General Hospital (1970). He served as chief of the pulmonary disease services at Tripler Army Hospital and Walter Reed General Hospital before leaving the Army Medical Corps with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1974. From 1974 to 1977 he was a member of the pulmonary disease division at Boston University. From 1977 to 1982 he was chief of the pulmonary disease division at The Ohio State University. During that time he also served as associate chair of the department of medicine.
In 1981 Dr. Whitcomb was appointed associate dean for clinical affairs, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and medical director of the University Hospitals, positions he held until 1984. During the academic year 1984-85 Dr. Whitcomb was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow of the Institute of Medicine (Congressional Fellowship Program). He returned to Ohio State in 1985 as assistant vice president for health services before serving as dean of the schools of medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia (1986-88) and the University of Washington (1988-90).
In January 1994 Dr. Whitcomb joined the American Medical Association as the first director of the division of graduate medical education. On 1 March 1995 he moved to the Association of American Medical Colleges as senior vice president for medical education and director of the division of medical education. In November 2001 he became editor-in-chief of Academic Medicine and in July 2004 was also appointed as the director of the AAMC Institute for Improving Medical Education.
Dr. Whitcomb has published over 100 papers covering a wide range of topics (clinical medicine, medical education, and health policy issues) and writes a monthly editorial for Academic Medicine. In addition to teaching and conducting scholarly work in clinical medicine, he has held faculty appointments in the health care management departments of two universities and has taught health policy in the graduate programs conducted by those departments.
Nicole Lurie, MD, MSPH
Nicole Lurie, MD, MSPH, is the Director of the RAND Center for Population Health and Health Disparities and Co-Director of the RAND Center for Domestic and International Health Security. She is also a Senior Natural Scientist and the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Professor of Health Policy at RAND. Previously, Dr. Lurie was Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Minnesota, and most recently, Medical Advisor to the Commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Health. From 1998-2001, she served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health at HHS, Dr. Lurie had line responsibility for the Office of Emergency Preparedness, which included development of emergency response plans at state and local levels, including plans for events involving multiple jurisdictions and development of the pandemic influenza plan. She was involved with flu surveillance and response at a time when hospitals in multiple jurisdictions across the country were full, with multiple preparedness and response exercises, and with other efforts to directly link public health and health delivery sectors.
Throughout her career, Dr. Lurie's research has focused on health services, primarily in the areas of access to and quality of care, managed care, mental health, prevention, and health disparities. She is leading a collaborative effort, centered at RAND, to study the impact of changes in the health care safety net in the District of Columbia, and to develop a collaborative, public-private health data infrastructure for the District and the region. Dr. Lurie serves as Senior Editor for Health Services Research and has served on editorial boards and as a reviewer for numerous journals. She was President of the Society of General Internal Medicine, is currently on the board of directors for the Academy of Health Services Research, and has served on multiple national committees. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the AHSR Young Investigator Award, the Nellie Westerman Prize for Research in Ethics, and the Heroine in Health Care Award, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Lurie attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed her residency and MSPH at UCLA, where she was also a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar. Dr. Lurie has been a member of several IOM committees and is currently the chair of the IOM Roundtable on Health Disparities. Dr. Lurie is a member of the IOM.
Edward S. Salsberg
Mr. Salsberg is a Senior Associate Vice President and the Director of the Center for Workforce Studies at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington DC. The Center was established in early 2004 to conduct and promote studies to inform the medical education community, policy makers and the public as to the nation’s current and future physician workforce needs. The Center is a national leader in the field of physician workforce data and studies. Mr. Salsberg is also on the faculty at the George Washington University Medical Center.
Prior to joining AAMC, Mr. Salsberg was the Executive Director of the Center for Health Workforce Studies which he established in 1996 at the School of Public Health at the University at Albany of the State University of New York (SUNY). From 1984 until 1996, Mr. Salsberg was a Bureau Director at the New York State Department of Health.
Mr. Salsberg is a frequent speaker across the country on issues related to the physician workforce; he has authored and co-authored numerous reports and papers on the health workforce. Mr. Salsberg has been a member of the U.S. delegation to the International Medical Workforce Collaborative since 1999 and was chair from 2003 to 2006. Mr. Salsberg was on the steering committee of the National Academy for State Health Policy from 1995 till 2004. Mr. Salsberg received his Masters in Public Administration from the Wagner School at New York University.
Brian Biles, MD, MPH
Brian Biles is Professor of Health Policy and of Health Services Management at the George Washington University. At George Washington, his research focuses on key national health issues including Medicare, managed care and efforts to contain health care costs, and long-term care. He teaches graduate courses on current health policy issues and on the organization and operation of the health services delivery system.
Dr. Biles served as staff director of the Subcommittee on Health, of the Committee on Ways and Means, of the U.S. House of Representatives for seven years. At the Subcommittee he supervised the drafting and consideration of major Medicare and health care financing legislation. He has also served on the staff of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Health chaired by Representative Henry Waxman, the Senate Labor Subcommittee on Health chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy, and of Kansas Representative William Roy, MD
Dr. Biles served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 1995. From 1983 to 1986, he was Deputy Secretary of Maryland's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Dr. Biles received his Doctor of Medicine and Bachelor of Arts with honors from the University of Kansas. He studied at the University of Edinburgh as a Rotary International Fellow. Dr. Biles holds a masters degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University.
Jordan J. Cohen, MD
Jordan J. Cohen, MD is professor of medicine and public health at George Washington University and president emeritus of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). He is a Director of the Washington Advisory Group and also serves as chairman of the board of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation for Humanism in Medicine.
Prior to his leadership of the AAMC, he served as dean of the medical school and professor of medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and president of the medical staff at University Hospital. Before that, Dr. Cohen was professor and associate chairman of Medicine at the University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine, and physician-in-chief and chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center.
Dr. Cohen currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation of New York, the Morehouse School of Medicine, the National Medical Fellowships, the National Library of Medicine, and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science & Community Development. He is a former chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine and of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and served as president of the Association of Program Directors of Internal Medicine.
Dr. Cohen is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Medical School and completed his postgraduate training in internal medicine on the Harvard service at the Boston City Hospital. He also completed a fellowship in nephrology at the Tufts-New England Medical Center. He has authored more than 100 publications and is a former editor of Kidney International’s Nephrology Forum.