ARCHeS Advisory Board
Nancy Barrand
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Nancy Barrand is a Senior Advisor on Program Development at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Since starting with RWJF in 1986, she has worked on a range of programming concerning health care policy research and financing, supportive housing for the chronically homeless, integrating community and correctional health care, long term care, and rural health care.
As a member of the foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio, she has helped to develop such programs as Rapid Learning, ARCHeS, Project Echo, and the Changemakers competitions. Before coming to RWJF, Nancy served on the staff to US Senator Alan Cranston and prior to that was on the staff of the California Assembly Land Use and Natural Resources Committee.
Margaret E. O’Kane
National Committee for Quality Assurance
Margaret E. O’Kane is the president of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Under O’Kane’s leadership, NCQA developed the first national system for measuring health plans’ quality performance, the first and most rigorous system for accrediting health plans, and the most widely adopted program for transforming medical practices into patient-centered medical homes.
O’Kane has served as co-chair of the National Priorities Partnership and is a board member of the Foundation for Informed Decision Making and the American Board of Medical Specialties. In 2011, Modern Healthcare named O’Kane one of the Top 25 Women in Healthcare.
Richard Kahn
University of North Carolina
Richard Kahn, PhD, is an independent consultant/researcher and is a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine since mid-2009.
Prior to his retirement from the American Diabetes Association as Chief Scientific and Medical Officer, Dr. Kahn was responsible for the scientific and medical affairs of the Association for nearly 25 years. He provided senior management oversight for all professional education activities. Dr. Kahn also oversaw the development of clinical practice guidelines and consensus statements, and he provided senior staff direction for the professional books and journals produced by the Association. Dr. Kahn received his doctorate in physiology from Georgetown University and has published over 65 papers as well as numerous book chapters.
Lew Sandy
UnitedHealth Group
Lew Sandy, MD, is Senior VP for Clinical Advancement, UnitedHealth Group. He is responsible for advancing productive partnerships and collaborations among physicians and medical/specialty societies, along with a wide range of clinical innovation initiatives across UnitedHealth Group and its stakeholders. He also is a principal in the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and Modernization, with a focus on payment/delivery innovation and policy.
He was formerly EVP/Chief Medical Officer for UnitedHealthcare and EVP of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Ronald A. Howard
Stanford University
Ronald A. Howard is Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford. Professor Howard directs teaching and research in the Decision Analysis Program, and is the director of the Decisions and Ethics Center. He defined the profession of decision analysis in 1964 and has since supervised several doctoral theses in decision analysis every year.
His experience includes dozens of decision analysis projects that range over many fields of application, from research strategy to nuclear waste isolation. He was a founder and chairman of Strategic Decisions Group. He is president of the Decision Education Foundation, devoted to teaching decision skills to young people.
Patricia Flatley Brennan
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, is the Theme Leader of the Living Environments Laboratory at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. Dr. Brennan received a MSc in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She developed the ComputerLink, an electronic network designed to reduce isolation and improve self-care among home care patients and directed HeartCare, a WWW-based tailored information and communication service that helped home-dwelling cardiac patients recover faster and with fewer symptoms.
Dr. Brennan is National Program Director of Project HealthDesign, a RWJ- funded initiative designed to stimulate the next generation of personal health records.
Mark B. McClellan
Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform
A medical doctor and economist, Mark McClellan works on promoting high-quality, innovative, and affordable healthcare. Once commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. McClellan now directs the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform.
Dr. McClellan received his MD from Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his PhD from MIT, and his MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
James R. Gavin III
Emory University School of Medicine
Dr. James R. Gavin III is a clinical professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is also chief executive officer and chief medical officer of Healing Our Village, Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Gavin is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and the American Diabetes Association, of which he is a past president. He is widely published, and in 2009 he was named a “Living Legend in Diabetes” by the American Association of Diabetes Educators.
Edmond J. Ghisu
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
As senior counsel at the Foundation, Edmond J. Ghisu, JD, works on investment matters, co-chairs the Foundation's Impact Capital Committee, and serves as a legal representative for the Quality/Equality Targeted Portfolio team, the Vulnerable Populations team, and the Pioneer Portfolio team. He also works with RWJF’s human resources department on employee benefit matters.
Drawn to the Foundation’s focus on improving the health and healthcare of all Americans, he praises its state-of-the-art legal work in investments and grant making. As he notes: “The Foundation is all about doing something good for society.” Ghisu joined the Foundation in 2006 after serving as a business and finance attorney at Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll.
Lynn M. Etheredge
Rapid Learning Project
Lynn Etheredge is an independent consultant on healthcare and social policy issues and heads the Rapid Learning Project at George Washington University. His career started at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where he was OMB’s principal analyst for Medicare and Medicaid and led its staff work on national health insurance proposals.
Lynn headed OMB’s professional health staff in the Carter and Reagan administrations. In 2007, he proposed the concept of the “rapid-learning health system” and is collaborating widely in developing this approach. Lynn is author of more than 85 publications and is a graduate of Swarthmore College.
Paul A. Bleicher
Humedica
Paul Bleicher, MD, PhD, is Chief Medical Officer of Humedica, a clinical informatics company that provides novel business intelligence solutions to the healthcare and life science industry where he has responsibility for medical informatics, data analytics, and product management.
Prior to Humedica, he was the founder and Chairman of Phase Forward, where he grew the organization from concept to a publicly traded company that was the leading provider of integrated clinical trial data management software and safety solutions for the biopharmaceutical industry. Previously, he had led clinical trials at a biotechnology company and contract research organization. Dr. Bleicher received his MD/PhD from the University of Rochester and his BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Leslie A. Lenert
University of Utah School of Medicine
Leslie Lenert, MD, MS, FACMI, FACP is professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Dr. Lenert works to develop advanced healthcare delivery systems based on primary care provider—specialist collaboration and researches the application of information technology to enhance population health and empower patients.
Prior to coming to the University of Utah, Dr. Lenert held faculty posts at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California San Diego and was also associate director for Informatics of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Techology. From 2007 to 2009, Dr. Lenert was the director of the National Center for Public Health Informatics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
