The Visible Voices

Suzanne Koven Physician Essayist

Suzanne Koven, received her B.A. in English literature from Yale and her M.D. from Johns Hopkins. She also holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars. After her residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital, she joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and has practiced primary care internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital for over 30 years. She is an associate professor of medicine at HMS and holds the Valerie Winchester Family Endowed Chair in Primary Care Medicine at Mass General.  In 2019 she was named inaugural Writer in Residence at Mass General. Her essays, articles, blogs, and reviews have appeared in The Boston Globe, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, NewYorker.com, Psychology Today, The L.A. Review of Books, The Virginia Quarterly, STAT, and other publications. Her monthly column “In Practice” appeared in The Boston Globe and won the Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Writing from the American Medical Writers Association in 2012. Dr. Koven co-directs the Media and Medicine certificate course at HMS and speaks to a wide variety of audiences on literature and medicine and the role of women in medicine. Her essay collection, Letter to a Young Female Physician, was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2021. 

Soledad O’Brien A Consummate Visible Voice

Soldedad O'Brien is award-winning journalist; anchor and producer for Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien; founder and CEO of Soledad O’Brien Productions Soledad O’Brien Productions is a multi-platform media production and distribution company dedicated to uncovering stories on the divisive issues of race, class, wealth, poverty, and opportunity through personal narratives. Soledad O’Brien has spent her career championing the stories of marginalized communities, and has been the recipient of three Emmy awards, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the Alfred I. DuPont Award for her reporting work. SO’B Productions has produced a number of documentaries, including the Black in America and Latino in America series and most recently The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks, which aired at the 2022 Tribeca Film FestivalSoledad serves on the Board of Trustees for the National Museum of the American Latino Board of TrusteesWith her husband Soledad founded The PowHERful Foundation, whose mission is to get young women to, and through, college

Kevin Volpp Improving Health Behavioral Economics and Nudging

Kevin Volpp MD PhD is the founding Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE), Division Chief of Health Policy for the Department of Medical Ethics and Policy, and the Founders President’s Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and Health Care Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has led CHIBE since its inception turning it into an entity that involves more than 90 faculty members and trainees across the University of Pennsylvania and which was 1 of 2 original NIH Centers nationally on behavioral economics and health. Dr. Volpp’s work focuses on developing and testing innovative ways of applying insights from behavioral economics in improving patient health behavior and increasing value in the health system by influencing provider performance. He has competitively been awarded more than $70 million to lead projects with a variety of employers, insurers, health systems, and consumer companies in testing the impact of different behavioral economic strategies on behavior.Dr. Volpp has published more than 250 articles, book chapters, and commentaries, and his work has served as the foundation for numerous widely implemented programs such as benefit design initiatives using financial incentives for smoking cessation among GE and CVS employees, a prescription refill synchronization program for Humana members, a simple health insurance plan called “Humana Simplicity”, and an ‘enhanced active choice’ approach used among tens of millions of CVS members to increase the ease of receiving automated medication refills.Penn Medicine's Nudge Unit is the world's first behavioral design team embedded within a health system. We leverage insights from behavioral science and implementation science to design, implement, evaluate, and disseminate scalable nudges to steer medical decision-making toward higher-value care, improved patient outcomes, and more equitable health care delivery. Follow Kevin on Twitter and follow CHIBE on Twitter.

Black Motherhood Through the Lens

Black Motherhood Through the LensDr. Komal Bajaj is an innovator and healthcare leader based in New York City, catalyzing quality and safety transformation across all facets of healthcare delivery. Dr. Bajaj is the Chief Quality Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi/NCB. She is also Clinical Director for NYC Health + Hospitals Simulation Center, which delivers more than 12,000 interprofessional participant encounters throughout its 9 simulation centers annually. She co-chairs the health system’s Monitoring & Evaluation Subcommittee for its Equity & Access Council. Dr. Bajaj is a Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She was recently appointed to the AHRQ National Advisory Committee, a 20-member board that advises the Secretary of Health and Human Services and AHRQ Director on priorities for a national health service research agenda. Ade Osinubi is a documentary filmmaker, photographer, and an Emergency Medicine Resident Physician at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a recent graduate from the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Ade's work focuses on sharing the stories of minority populations that often go untold. At the age of 16, Ade traveled to Mekelle, Ethiopia to co-produce her first documentary.  Since then, Ade has produced films educating the public about various health topics ranging from the COVID-19 vaccine to postpartum pelvic floor conditions. Starting from her first year of medical school, she independently filmed and produced Black Motherhood through the Lens, a documentary about four Black women’s experiences in navigating infertility, childbirth, and postpartum mood disorders. Black Motherhood through the Lens has been accepted to 7 film festivals including the American Public Health Association Film Festival and it received the “2021 Best Short Collective Award” at the Rhode Island Black Film festival. Her work on the documentary was also recently recognized in Forbes Magazine amongst other places. In addition to filmmaking, Ade has published articles for the Washington Post and Glamour Magazine on topics related to health equity. She was recently named a National Minority Quality Forum 2022 40 under 40 Leader in Health and is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha and Gold Humanism Honor Societies. In the future, Ade hopes to pursue a career in health journalism, using her passion for photography and film to elevate the voices of communities of color.

Hella Pick Pioneering British-Austrian Journalist

Hella Pick was born in Vienna, came to the UK on a Kindertransport and has lived in UK since 1939. She is a Graduate of the London School of Economics, was awarded a CBE in 2000, and received an honorary doctorate from Sussex University in 2018. She is a British-Austrian journalist who spent 35 years reporting for the Guardian in Washington, at the UN and all over Europe. Her memoir Invisible Walls was published in 2021She was on the staff of the Guardian newspaper from 1961- 1997, working first as UN correspondent, later Washington correspondent, East-West affairs correspondent, Diplomatic Editor, and Associate Foreign Affairs Editor. She has been a frequent contributor to BBC news programs and appearances on German and Austrian TV.Since 1998 she has worked a Senior consultant first for Lord Weidenfeld’s Club of Three and after its  foundation for his Institute of Strategic Dialogue, where she became Director of the Arts and Culture Programme organising international meetings on political/strategic, economic and arts issues, and also for five years an annual Europe-China Media exchange project. Hella has served on the Advisory Board of the German-Jewish Studies Centre at Sussex University for more than 10 years, and on behalf of Lord Weidenfeld was closely involved in the establishment of the Chair of Israel Studies at Sussex University.  She is currently acting in an advisory capacity for the establishment of the Sussex University Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies She is the author of Simon Wiesenthal - A Life in Search of Justice published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1996). Her latest book , her memoir is Invisible Walls – a Journalist in search of her Life’  was published by Weidenfeld&Nicolson (2021).

Don Berwick Nana Twum-Danso The Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, FRCP, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, is also former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. A pediatrician by background, Dr. Berwick has served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and on the staffs of Boston's Children's Hospital Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has also served as Vice Chair of the US Preventive Services Task Force, the first "Independent Member" of the American Hospital Association Board of Trustees, and Chair of the National Advisory Council of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. He served two terms on the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Governing Council, was a member of the IOM's Global Health Board, and served on President Clinton's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Healthcare Industry. Recognized as a leading authority on health care quality and improvement, Dr. Berwick has received numerous awards for his contributions. In 2005, he was appointed "Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire" by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his work with the British National Health Service. Dr. Berwick is the author or co-author of over 160 scientific articles and six books. He currently serves as Lecturer in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Follow Don on TwitterNana Twum-Danso, MD, MPH, FACPM, ​Senior Vice President, Global, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), leads all global strategy and client development, with top-line revenue responsibility. Previously she was Managing Director for Health at The Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing a strategy designed to transform the practice of public health through data science. She is a public health and preventive medicine physician with 20 years of experience in health policy, practice, strategy, monitoring, learning, evaluation, research, and philanthropy at local, national, and international levels. Dr. Twum-Danso is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She worked at the Task Force for Global Health in Atlanta, Georgia; was Director of IHI’s nationwide CQI initiative in Ghana; Senior Program Officer in the MNCH Department at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; independent consultant; and Founder and CEO of MAZA, a social enterprise that provided on-demand health care transportation for pregnant women and sick infants in remote areas of Ghana. She also served on technical advisory committees for the World Health Organization, the US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and the Canadian International Development Research Centre. Dr. Twum-Danso received her undergraduate and medical education from Harvard University and her public health and preventive medicine residency training from Emory University.  Follow Nana on Twitter.

Mati Hlatshwayo Davis Health Director

Dr. Matifadza (Mati) Hlatshwayo Davis is a Zimbabwean born, American based physician and public health expert in Missouri. Her subspecialty is infectious diseases, with a focus on community engagement addressing health disparities amongst people from historically marginalized groups. She serves as the Director of Health for the City of St. Louis Department of Health.Follow Mati on Twitter and LinkedIn

Joyce Lee and Kristy Shine Design Researchers

Joyce Lee MD is a Physician, Designer, Researcher, and the Robert P. Kelch, MD, Research Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. She is a Diabetologist (Pediatric Endocrinologist focused on Diabetes) and a clinical/health outcomes researcher with work focusing on the creation of learning health systems. She serves as Ambulatory Clinical Chief of Pediatric Medical Specialties, Associate Chief Medical Information Officer for Pediatric Research, and Associate Chair of Health Metrics and Learning Health Systems for the Department of Pediatrics.  Joyce on TwitterKristy M. Shine, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Director of Scholarly Inquiry, Design, at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. In addition to her role as attending physician and core faculty for the residency, Dr. Shine has worked in the medical device industry and holds graduate degrees in mechanical engineering and medical engineering/medical physics.  She believes that training doctors to be compassionate innovators will change the future of medicine. Kristy on Twitter

Cindy Gallop Women Challenge the Status Quo Because We are Never It

Cindy Gallop is a graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, whose background is over 30 years in brand-building, marketing and advertising - she started up the US office of ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York in 1998 and in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year.  She is the founder and CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld, co-action software launched in beta at TED 2010 and subsequently written up and taught as a Harvard Business School case study, which enables brands to implement the business model of the future – Shared Values + Shared Action = Shared Profit (financial and social). She is also the founder of MakeLoveNotPorn – ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference’ - a social sextech platform designed to promote good sexual behavior and good sexual values, which she launched at TED 2009, You can follow her on Twitter @cindygallop.The Future For White Men In Advertising: Cindy Gallop (2019)Cindy Gallop: Where The Money Is – Closing Keynote 2017 3% Conference (2017)

Andrew Petrosoniak and Al’ai Alvarez on The Process of Health Design

Al'ai Alvarez, MD aka LA is a national leader and educator on Wellness and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He is a clinical assistant professor of Emergency Medicine and the Director of Well-Being at Stanford Emergency Medicine. He co-leads the Human Potential Team and serves as the Fellowship Director of the Stanford EM Physician Wellness, and Co-Chair of the Stanford WellMD's Physician Wellness Forum. His work focuses on humanizing physician roles as individuals and teams through the harnessing of our individual human potential in the context of high-performance teams. This includes optimizing the interdependence between Process Improvement (Quality and Clinical Operations), Recruitment (Diversity), and Well-being (Inclusion). Currently, he is one of the 2021-2022 Faculty Fellows at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign. Andrew Petrosoniak MD is a trauma team leader and emergency physician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Canada. He's an assistant professor at the University of Toronto and he leads the translational simulation program at St. Michael's Hospital. His research focuses on the use of in situ simulation and design thinking to support human-centered care. He's also co-principal at Advanced Performance Healthcare Design, a firm that consults with hospitals, start ups and high stake industries using simulation to improve decision making and inform the design of systems, spaces and teams. White paper on simulation informed design.In 2004, Patrick MacLeamy drew a set of curves based on a pretty self-evident observation: an architectural project becomes more difficult to change the more developed it becomes. For this earth-shattering revelation MacLeamy named the curve after himself (although the title should probably go to Boyd Paulson who drew the curve much earlier [see Noel’s comment to this post]). You have probably seen the graph before. It gets trotted out in every slide deck promoting BIM / IPD / or early-stage environmental analysis.  The key point is that architects expel their effort at a time when design changes are relatively costly. MacLeamy and his disciples advocate shifting design effort forward in the project, front loading it, in order to reduce the cost of design changes.