After serving two decades as President of The Commonwealth Fund, Karen Davis, Ph.D., is returning to the Johns Hopkins University, where she previously chaired the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Davis has been appointed the second Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care. She assumes her new position on January 1, 2013.
"To say we are thrilled to have Karen back at Hopkins is an understatement," said Ellen MacKenzie, Ph.D., Fred and Julie Soper Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School. "Her leadership, vision and expertise will form the new bedrock of the Roger C. Lipitz Center and define the center's course for generations to come."
The Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professorship and the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care were established by Roger Lipitz, in honor of his family's lifelong legacy of serving the elderly, the chronically ill and underserved populations. The center strives to discover and disseminate practical, cost-effective approaches to providing comprehensive, coordinated and compassionate health care to chronically ill people and their families.
"I am excited about the opportunity to head the Lipitz Center and continue its important work on developing innovative health care payment and delivery models in order to improve care for our nation's most vulnerable people, including the disabled," Davis said. "With the imminent retirement of much of the boomer generation, the need for new models of patient-centered care that improve quality of care while advancing efficiency is paramount."
David Blumenthal, M.D., a preeminent health information technology expert and health policy scholar, will succeed Davis as the next president of The Commonwealth Fund on January 1.