Jeff Balser, MD, PhD, President and CEO of Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Dean of the School of Medicine, has appointed a 14-member committee to conduct a national search for the new chair of the Department of Health Policy.
The committee will be chaired by Steven Webber, MBChB, MRCP, chair of the Department of Pediatrics, James C. Overall Professor and pediatrician-in-chief at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.
The new chair of Health Policy will succeed Melinda Buntin, PhD, Mike Curb Professor, who is leaving June 30, 2023, to create a Center for Health Systems and Policy Modeling at Johns Hopkins University.
“Dr. Buntin built a very strong foundation for Health Policy. It will be important to identify a talented successor to serve as the department’s next chair. I want to thank Dr. Webber and other members of the search committee for the important work ahead,” said Balser.
Under Buntin’s leadership, the department created a Health Policy track in Vanderbilt University’s Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program in 2015, and in 2019, the department established a Health Policy PhD program. The department has steadily added faculty members with multidisciplinary expertise, research initiatives and educational programs and now has 22 faculty members; 16 faculty members were hired by Buntin over the past nine years.
Members of the search committee are:
- Ronald Alvarez, MD, Betty and Lonnie S. Burnett Professor and chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
- Andre Christie-Mizell, PhD, professor of Sociology.
- Peter Embi, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation.
- Angela Jefferson, PhD, professor of Neurology and Herbert O. and Vineta Christopher Director in Alzheimer’s Disease.
- Lindsay Mayberry, PhD, associate professor of Medicine.
- Jonathan Metzl, MD, PhD, Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Medicine, Health and Society.
- Ben Ho Park, MD, PhD, B.F. Byrd Jr. Professor of Oncology and director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
- David Penson, MD, MD, MPH, MMHC, Paul V. Hamilton, M.D., and Virginia E. Howd Professor and chair of the Department of Urologic Surgery.
- Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, Hugh Jackson Morgan Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine.
- Russell Rothman, MD, MPP, director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health and Senior Vice President for Population and Public Health, Ingram Professor of Integrative and Population Health and professor of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Health Policy at VUMC.
- Beth Shinn, PhD, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair and professor of Human, Organizational and Community Development.
- Kristin Swygert, DPT, PhD, professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
- Consuelo Wilkins, MD, MSCI, professor of Medicine and Senior Vice President and senior associate dean for Health Equity and Inclusive Excellence.
