California Surgeon General

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris is an award-winning physician, researcher and advocate dedicated to changing the way our society responds to one of the most serious, expensive and widespread public health crises of our time: childhood trauma. She was appointed as California’s first-ever Surgeon General by Governor Gavin Newsom in January 2019.

Dr. Burke Harris’ career has been dedicated to serving vulnerable communities and combating the root causes of health disparities. After completing her residency at Stanford, she founded a clinic in one of San Francisco’s most underserved communities, Bayview Hunters Point. It was there that Burke Harris observed that, despite the implementation of national best-practices for immunizations, asthma, obesity treatment and other preventive health measures, her patients still faced outsized risks for poor health, development and behavioral outcomes.

Drawing in research from the CDC and Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Burke Harris identified Adverse Childhood Experiences as a major risk factor affecting the health of her patients. In 2011, she founded the Center for Youth Wellness and subsequently grew the organization to be a national leader in the effort to advance pediatric medicine, raise public awareness, and transform the way society responds to children exposed to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress. She also founded and led the Bay Area Research Consortium on Toxic Stress and Health, to advance scientific screening and treatment of toxic stress.

She currently serves as a government liaison for the American Academy of Pediatrics’ National Advisory Board for Screening and sat on the board of the Committee on Applying Neurobiological and Socio-behavioral Sciences From Prenatal Through Early Childhood Development: A Health Equity Approach for the National Academy of Medicine.

Her work has been profiled in best-selling books including “How Children Succeed” by Paul Tough and “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance as well as in Jamie Redford’s feature film, “Resilience”. It has also been featured on NPR, CNN and Fox News as well as in USA Today and the New York Times. Dr. Burke Harris’ TED Talk, “How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across the Lifetime” has been viewed more than 6 million times. Her book “The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity” was called “indispensable” by The New York Times.

Dr. Burke Harris is the recipient of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award presented by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Heinz Award for the Human Condition. She was named one of 2018’s Most Influential Women in Business by the San Francisco Business Times.

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Senior Advisor for Strategy & Policy Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

Christine K. Cassel is the Senior Advisor for Strategy and Policy in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is working on the role of technology in health care, clinician wellbeing and biomedical ethics.

In March of 2018, Dr. Cassel completed her term as Planning Dean for the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, based in Pasadena, CA. From 2013-2016 she was the President and CEO of the National Quality Forum and prior to that served as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation.

Dr. Cassel was one of 20 scientists chosen by President Obama to serve on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). She was the co-chair and physician leader of PCAST reports on health information technology, scientific innovation in drug development and evaluation, systems engineering in healthcare, technology to foster independence and quality of life in an aging population, and safe drinking water systems.

Dr. Cassel graduated from the University of Chicago, completed her MD degree at the University of Massachusetts, and did her postgraduate training at University of California San Francisco and Oregon Health Sciences University.

She was chair of the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Chief of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago and Dean of the Medical School at OHSU.  She is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics, health policy and quality of care. Among her many professional achievements and honors, Dr. Cassel was elected to membership of the National Academy of Medicine in 1992. She was the first woman to be President of the American College of Physicians and, subsequently, Chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine; she has served as Chair of the Board of the Greenwall Foundation, a national foundation in bioethics, was the President of the American Federation for Aging Research; and was a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Cassel’s other board service includes serving on the Boards of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals, Premier, Inc, and the Russell Sage Foundation. She has received numerous honorary degrees and is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Medicine of the U.K. and Canada. She is author of over 200 articles and author or editor of 11 books, including one of the leading textbooks in geriatric medicine, and Medicare Matters: What Geriatric Medicine Can Teach American Health Care.

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Associate Dean, Stanford University SOM, Chief Wellness Officer, Stanford Medicine Director, WellMD Center, Stanford University

Dr. Tait Shanafelt is the chief wellness officer, associate dean, and Jeanie and Stewart Richie Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Shanafelt’s is a hematologist/oncologist whose clinical work focuses on the care of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.  He served a 7-year term on the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Leukemia Steering Committee from 2014-2020 and is currently the principle investigator on three R01 grants from the NCI.  He has been the principle investigator on numerous clinical trials testing new treatments for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia including two national phase three trials for the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG).  He has published >450 peer review manuscripts and commentaries in addition to more than 100 abstracts and book chapters.

In addition to his leukemia research, Tait is an international thought leader and researcher in the field of physician well-being and its implications for quality of care.  His pioneering studies in this area nearly 20 years ago are credited with helping launch the entire field of organizational efforts to promote physician well-being. He previously served as the founding director of the Mayo Clinic Department of Medicine Program on Physician Well-being and served a 3-year term as the president of the Mayo Clinic Voting Staff.  In 2017, he moved to Stanford where he leads the WellMD Center.  He is a member of the American College of Physicians Taskforce on Physician Well-being and served as a member of the National Academy of Medicine Committee on System Approaches to Support Clinician Well-being.  He has helped hundreds of organizations and their leaders work to improve burnout and promote professional fulfillment for physicians. He has served as a keynote speaker to the AMA, ACGME, AAMC, and ABIM.  Tait’s studies in this area have also been cited in CNN, USA Today, U.S. News, and the New York Times. In 2018, he was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in healthcare.

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Medical Director, Office of the Chief Medical and Scientific Office, UPMC Department of Medicine

Dr. Jennifer Berliner received her undergraduate degree from Tufts University in 1997.  She then completed her M.D. degree at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York in 2001.  During medical school, she was selected to the Alpha Omega Alpha chapter of the Albert Einstein School of Medicine.  Subsequently, she completed her internship and medical residency at the New York Presbyterian-Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.  She then completed her fellowship in cardiovascular disease at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois in 2007.  She focused on non-invasive imaging.  She completed an additional fellowship in advanced cardiac imaging at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and trained at the University of Erlangen in Erlangen, Germany learning specialized cardiac computed tomography techniques, achieving Level III certification in echocardiography, cardiovascular computed tomography and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging as well as certification in nuclear cardiology.  During her fellowship she won the Siemens Outstanding Academic Research Award and Grant.  In March of 2018, she started her current position as a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the Director of Physician Well-Being and the Medical Director of the Chief Medical and Scientific Office.  In this role, she is working towards developing a physician well-being program for UPMC physicians. She is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease, Echocardiography and Nuclear Cardiology.  She is currently a member of the Scientific Board and the Administrative Board of the Physician Wellness Academic Consortium.

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Chief Wellness Officer, University of Michigan Medical School

Dr. Kirk J. Brower is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan (U-M) Medical School. He graduated from medical school at the University of California at Irvine and completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA. He currently serves as the Chief Wellness Officer for the U-M Medical School and faculty director of the Wellness Office for Michigan Medicine. The Wellness Office promotes workplace wellbeing for all faculty, staff, and learners at Michigan Medicine. He is the founding Executive Director of U-M Addiction Treatment Services, the founding director of the U-M Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship Program, and a Distinguished Fellow of both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

In 2017, Dr. Brower co-edited a book titled, Physician Mental Health and Well-Being: Research and Practice. This year he was lead author of an article titled, “The evolving role of the Chief Wellness Officer in the management of crises by health care systems: lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic (NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery), in collaboration with wellness officers from eight other healthcare organizations. Finally, he is committed to reducing stigma and other barriers that clinicians encounter when considering access to mental health care.

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Chief Wellness Officer, Yale New Haven Hospital

Kristine Olson, MD MSc is inaugural Chief Wellness Officer at Yale New Haven Hospital, a 1541-bed tertiary medical center and primary teaching hospital of Yale School of Medicine. She trained in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Yale New Haven Hospital, followed by an NIH/AHRQ fellowship in Health Services Research and Epidemiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. She models health systems and the effects of health policies, measuring how professional wellbeing can serve as a leading indicator of organizational performance in providing reliable access to cost-effective high-quality patient-centered care from thriving faculty advancing medicine. Selected as an emerging leader in healthcare, she received an executive education at Yale School of Management. Dr. Olson served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Namibia. She is a Minnesotan and graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School.

In becoming Chief Wellness Officer, Dr. Olson collaborated with organizational leadership in the first assessment of burnout galvanizing support for the work-life well-being mission, vision, values, charter, structure, process, strategy, and tactics. Nationally, she served on the American Medical Association’s steering committee for the Joy in Medicine, convening healthcare executives and researchers to establish national priorities. She serves on the scientific board of the Stanford-led Physician Wellness Academic Consortium. She is actively engaged with CWO’s around the country.

As Chief Wellness Officer, Dr. Olson executes the annual wellness assessments and has led the Clinician Wellness Council since 2016 in inventorying resources and needs, accelerating adoption of best practices and innovative interventions. She communicates, coordinates, and collaborates in optimizing culture-climate (leadership, teamwork, collegiality, belonging, meaningful mission), practice efficiency (agency, hustle and hassle factors), and resiliency (including work-life integration, retention, job-crafting, peer support and self-care). Appointed CWO during the pandemic, she has been integral to the health systems traumatic-disaster pandemic response. She is now looking forward to advancing the work-life well-being program at Yale New Haven Hospital.

She is grateful for her many role-models, teachers, mentors, sponsors, allies, friends, and family.

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Chief Wellness Officer, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Ripp received both his undergraduate and medical degrees from Yale University and completed internship and residency in Internal Medicine (IM) at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. In the role of chief wellness officer, Dr. Ripp oversees efforts to assess and provide direction for system- and individual-level interventions designed to improve well-being for all students, residents, fellows, faculty and other health professionals in the Mount Sinai Health System. He is the former Associate Dean of GME for Trainee Well-Being within the ISMMS Office of Graduate Medical Education’s in which capacity he served to help spread well-being initiatives across the training programs of the Mount Sinai Health System. In the Department of Medicine, Dr. Ripp practices as a clinician in the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors home-based primary care program where he maintains an active patient panel.  In addition, Dr. Ripp is the Co-founder and Co-Director of CHARM, the Collaborative for Healing and Renewal in Medicine, an international group of medical educators, academic medical center leaders, experts in burnout research and interventions, and learners all working to promote learner and trainee wellness. CHARM maintains several leadership networks, including the CHARM Chief Wellness Officer Network and the CHARM GME Well-Being Leaders Network, and also actively develops important content to advance the literature and field of clinician well-being. Recognized for his leadership in this area, Dr. Ripp has been invited to participate in the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Symposia on Physician Well-Being, join the American College of Physician’s Promoting Physician Wellness Task Force and participate in the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-being and Resilience. He also chairs the Greater New York Hospital Association’s Clinician Well-Being Advisory Group. Dr. Ripp’s primary research interest is in physician burnout and well-being, for which he has received grant support and has published and lectured widely. His multicenter studies have served to better elucidate the causes and consequences of physician burnout and have explored interventions designed to promote clinician well-being.

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