Who We Are
George D. Lundberg, MD
A 1995 “pioneer” of the medical Internet, Dr. Lundberg was born in Florida in 1933, grew up in lower Alabama, and holds earned and honorary degrees from North Park College; Baylor University; the University of Alabama (Birmingham and Tuscaloosa); the State University of New York, Syracuse; Thomas Jefferson University; and the Medical College of Ohio.
Dr. Lundberg received his MD in 1957 and has split the ensuing 62 work years across 4 key domains:
- First Quarter: government service; U.S. Army Medical Corps, Vietnam Era, LTC, and Los Angeles County (Laboratory Director).
- Second Quarter: full time academia; USC (Professor of Pathology) and UC Davis (Professor and Chair of Pathology).
- Third Quarter: not-for-profit publishing (Editor in Chief JAMA and VP for all scientific publishing AMA)
- Fourth Quarter: for-profit entrepreneurialism (Medscape, WebMD, MedPage Today, Everyday Health, CollabRx, Self Care Catalysts, PotentiaMetrics, Cureus) and not for profit (Cancer Commons, Harvard, Stanford, Northwestern,The Lundberg Institute).
Dr. Lundberg has worked in tropical medicine and forensic medicine in multiple countries. He is past president of the American Society for Clinical Pathology. A frequent lecturer and webcasting guest and host and a member of the National Academy of Medicine, in 2000, The Industry Standard dubbed Dr. Lundberg “Online Healthcare’s Medicine Man.”
Kathryn R. Watson, JD, MPH
Kathryn lives in Baltimore, Maryland where she is counsel to two safety-net hospitals and oversees the compliance of operations and works to assure health care initiatives are successfully serving the community. Kathryn is a graduate of Brown University and was a Public Interest Law Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Kathryn was a health outreach worker, focused on HIV/AIDS prevention and redressing health disparities. Kathryn attended Johns Hopkins’ Master’s in Public Health program as a bio-ethics fellow. Her entire career centers around health care reform, not only her community but where ever her work is shared. In addition to this, she volunteers in criminal justice reform in Baltimore, focused on criminal record expungement and prostitution vacatur work. Kathryn consistently carries these important topics to her home, especially at the dinner table, along with her wife (who works advancing racial justice) and their daughters.
Peter A. Jensen, MFA
Mr. Jensen is a high-performance CEO with over thirty years expertise in life sciences, computer sciences, mobile, multimedia, entertainment, fintech, finance and distributed ledger technology. Mr. Jensen earned a Master of Fine Arts at UCLA Motion Picture Film and Television Producer’s Program (1988) and a Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences at UCSB (1980) magna cum laude. Mr. Jensen is an entrepreneur focused on delivery of social enterprise ventures for competitive financial returns and extraordinary social impact.
Alan Greene, MD, FAAP
Dr. Greene is the Founding President of the Board of the Society for Participatory Medicine and has served as both President and Board Chair of Hi-Ethics (Health Internet Ethics), the non-profit organization formed to address privacy, advertising and content quality issues for Internet health consumers. He has also served as an advisor to URAC for both their inaugural and their updated health web site accreditation program. He is a founding member of the e-Patient Scholars Working Group, and a founding board member of the Center for Information Therapy. Dr. Greene is the founder and CEO of the pioneer physician website, DrGreene.com, the Medical Director of HealthTap, and the Deputy Editor of the Journal of Participatory Medicine. Dr. Greene is the author of four books including Feeding Baby Green and Raising Baby Green. He is a gifted public speaker and appears frequently on TV, radio, websites, and in newspapers and magazines around the world, including such venues as the TODAY Show, the Dr. Oz Show, Good Morning America, Fox and Friends, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Time Magazine. Dr. Greene has been recognized by Advance for Health Information Executives as one of the “Top 15 Most Influential Forces in Healthcare IT” and as one of the “Future Health 100” by Healthspottr. He was named the Children’s Health Hero of the Internet by Intel.
Kenneth W. Kizer, MD, MPH
Dr. Kizer is an internationally respected healthcare thought leader and consultant and one of very few persons ever elected to both the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration. He has been selected as one of the ‘100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare’ by Modern Healthcare magazine on several occasions, and his work has been featured in Time, BusinessWeek, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and numerous other magazines, newspapers and national television shows. Dr. Kizer’s professional experience includes positions in both the public and private sectors, including serving as President, CEO and Chairman of Medsphere Systems Corporation, the nation’s leading commercial provider of open source healthcare information technology; founding president and CEO of the National Quality Forum, a Washington, DC-based quality improvement and consensus standards setting organization; Under Secretary for Health in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and chief executive officer of the nation’s largest healthcare system; Director of the former California Department of Health Services; Professor and Chairman of the Department of Community and International Health and Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, Davis; and Director of the Emergency Medical Services Authority for the State of California. He has served on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and as Chairman of the Board of The California Wellness Foundation, the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted to health promotion and disease prevention, as well as on the governing boards of two managed care companies, several other foundations and various professional associations and non-profit organizations. Dr. Kizer is an honors graduate of Stanford University and UCLA, and the recipient of two honorary doctorates. He is board certified in six medical specialties and/or subspecialties, and has authored over 400 original articles, book chapters and other reports. He is a fellow or distinguished fellow of 11 professional societies and a member of Alpha Omega Alpha National Honor Medical Society and Delta Omega National Honorary Public Health Society, as well as the IOM and NAPA. He is also a Fellow National of the international Explorer’s Club, a founding member and past president of the international Wilderness Medical Society, a former U.S. Navy diver, and a nationally recognized expert on diving and aquatic sports medicine and the medical aspects of wilderness activities.
Patricia Lundberg, PhD
Dr. Lundberg is Senior Advisor to the Lucas Arts Program at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga. From 2013-20 she served on the Board of Ars Minerva, an opera company in San Francisco, and, previously, on the Board of the Marines’Memorial Foundation. From 2007-18 she was CEO and Executive Director of Humanities West, a San Francisco non-profit that offers interdisciplinary arts and culture programming for the public in collaboration with noted academics and performers. She is Professor Emerita of English and Women’s Studies on the Indiana University Northwest faculty, where she also served as Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Interim Dean and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Founding Executive Director of the Center for Regional Excellence and the Center for Cultural Discovery and Learning. Her doctorate is from Loyola University Chicago, where she also earned a BA Summa Cum Laude and a Masters in English. She is the recipient of several grants and awards and has post-doctoral training from Harvard in leadership. Prior to her academic career she had ten years experience as a medical association executive and publisher. Her publications include poetry, literary analyses, and biography, as well as health care essays in collaboration with Dr. George Lundberg.
Teri Reynolds MD, PhD
Dr. Reynolds is a Clinical Fellow in Emergency Medicine Ultrasound and a MS candidate in Global Health at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, CA. Dr Reynolds holds a PhD in English from Columbia University in New York and an MD from UCSF. She completed her residency in Emergency Medicine at the Highland Alameda County Medical Center in Oakland. During her medical training following her work in academic English, Dr Reynolds performed in leadership roles in medical editing and journalism both for the Journal of the American Medical Association and for the Medscape Journal of Medicine, serving as the top editor for the medical student components of both.
Our Advisory Board
Malinda H. Bell, MD
Dr. Bell was originally educated as a journalist and received her MD at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is board certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She trained in Emergency Medicine at the Truman Medical Center and has practiced Emergency Medicine in Kansas and Michigan for about 20 years.
Paul Billings MD, PhD
Dr. Paul R. Billings is a board-certified internist and clinical geneticist, who also holds a PhD in Immunology, from Harvard University. He worked there with Dr. Baruj Benacerraf, who subsequently received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In 2018, Dr. Billings became the Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs at Natera, Inc., a global leader in human genetic testing. Dr Billings recently has been a Partner in the diagnostic medicine consultancy, the Bethesda Group, and the Managing Director of the Bethesda Group Fund. He is Chairman of PlumCare, LLc and Synergenz Biosciences Limited. He has held academic and research appointments at Harvard University, UC San Francisco, Stanford University and UC Berkeley. He has published approximately 200 papers and volumes. He co-founded the stem cell company, CBR Systems, was a Director at Ancestry.com and Signature Genomics Inc, and is co-founder and senior advisor of Fabric Genomics, Inc., a leading genome informatics firm. Since June of 2019 he is also Chairman of the Board of OmniSeq, Inc, a cancer diagnostic company affiliated with Roswell Park Cancer Center in Buffalo, NY. He is also a Director at
OmniSeq Inc., which provides novel cancer and immunodiagnostic testing. Dr. Billings advises
or directs several other firms in the precision medicine field. Until 2018, Dr. Billings was the Chairman of Biological Dynamics, a revolutionary molecular measurement platform. Dr. Billings was the SVP and Senior Physician at Laboratory Corporation of America, Inc. and Chief Medical Officer at Life Technologies Inc,(Applied Biosystems) and later the clinical division of
ThermoFisher Scientific Inc. He is an expert in precision medicine diagnostics particularly in Oncology, Transplantation and Women’s Health.
Arthur Caplan, PhD
Dr. Caplan received his BA from Brandeis, and his MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia University. His long and stellar career has lead him through the Hastings Center, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Minnesota from 1979-1994. Since 1994, Dr Caplan has served as Professor of Medicine, Philosophy and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania while heading up Bioethics. In 2009, he was also named the Sidney D Caplan Chair of Medical Ethics. Professor Caplan’s prolific work in writing,speaking and consulting have resulted in hundreds of such activities.
Linda L. Emanuel, MD, PhD
Dr. Emanuel received her PhD from University College, London, and her MD from Harvard. She worked in General Medicine, Public Health and Ethics in Boston prior to becoming the first Director of the Ethics Institute at the American Medical Association. Now Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the Buehler Center on Aging at Northwestern University, Dr. Emanuel is an eminent authority on ethics and medical practice in palliative care.
Valerie A. (Val) Jones, MD
Dr. Jones received her BA from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia where she grew up caring for dairy cows on a "yogurt farm." Her MD is from Columbia University. She studied surgery and theology before completing her training in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. After a part-time editorial role at The Medscape Journal, Dr. Jones became a major medical communication figure at Revolution Health. She is now working with the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation on the Quality Practice, Policy and Research committee to advance access to healthcare services for COVID survivors and the disabled at large. She also travels across the US to provide interim coverage for medical directors in inpatient rehabilitation facilities in underserved areas.
Jerome P. Kassirer, MD
Dr. Kassirer earned his MD from the University of Buffalo School of Medicine. Trained as an internist at the Buffalo General Hospital and in Nephrology at the New England Medical Center, he became an early leader in the evolving science of clinical decision making. In 1991 he assumed the role of Editor in Chief of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, where he was a role model for aspiring Editors until 1999. After receiving many awards, Dr. Kassirer returned to Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston where he remains active as a Distinguished Professor of Medicine, also teaching regularly at Stanford Medical School.
Brian Klepper, PhD
Dr. Klepper received his PhD in 1985 in Speech, Hearing and Language Science from the University of Florida, but nearly immediately migrated and has spent his career as an analyst, commentator and advisor in the even murkier waters of health care market dynamics, medical management, health IT, and policy. He has been a longtime advocate for advanced primary care that is dedicated to the management of full continuum clinical and financial risk. Most recently he has crafted value-based arrangements that match validated high performance health care firms - companies that consistently deliver superior health outcomes and/or lower costs, particularly in high value niches - with innovative employers and unions. He also founded and moderates a professional discussion forum, Healthcare Benefits Hackers, with nearly 1,000 participants focused on health care value and high performance.
David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA
From 2012 to 2019 he was the founding President and CEO of DirectTrust, a non-profit trust community charged with supporting secure, encrypted, and interoperable health information exchanges between providers and providers and patients via the Direct Standard(tm). Direct has become a nearly ubiquitous feature embedded in all certified EHRs in the US, and in use in over 250,000 health care facilities. Dr. Kibbe is currently serving as an interoperability expert for the VA.
C Everett Koop, MD
Dr. Koop received his BS from Dartmouth and his MD from Cornell. His long career in medicine found early and sustained brilliance in Pediatric Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. In 1981, Dr Koop became a controversial Surgeon General, serving for 8 years during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. His work as surgeon general was stellar, including as the leader in understanding and coping with the new disease AIDS, and waging a strong campaign against tobacco. America’s best known medical name of the past 50 years, Dr. Koop now holds three professorships at Dartmouth and is a senior fellow at its C. Everett Koop Institute.
LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr., MD
Dr. Leffall received his BS from Florida A and M University, and his MD from Howard. Residency training in surgery was in St. Louis and Washington, DC. After specialized training in Oncology at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and military duty in Germany, Dr. Leffall returned to practice, teaching, and research at Howard University in Washington, DC, becoming a Distinguished Professor of Surgery. Dr Leffall is one of the USA’s premier surgeons, and he has received more honors than just about anyone else in the field. Along the way, his career has been characterized by his breaking many ethnic, color, social, and professional barriers.
Clifton K Meador MD
Dr. Meador, a native of Selma, Alabama, received his BA and MD from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. His internship and residency in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology were at Presbyterian Hospital In New York and Vanderbilt. Over a long career sprinkled with high honors, Dr. Meador served in the US Army, performed private practice, held Professorships at UAB (where he was Dean of Medicine 1968-1973) and Vanderbilt, and served as Chief Medical Officer at St Thomas Hospital in Nashville for 16 years. Dr. Meador authored dozens of scientific articles (including The Art and Science of non-disease in the NEJM), book chapters, and 11 books. The most recent book is "Symptoms of Unknown Origin". He recently directed the Meharry/Vanderbilt Alliance.
Maggie Mahar PhD
Dr. Mahar received her BA and PhD from Yale University, at which she was an English Professor before becoming a journalist. For decades as a writer and editor, she covered topics as diverse as Wall Street finance, Washington, Russian social policy and the politics of the Middle East for Barrons, The New York Times and Bloomberg. In this century Maggie Mahar has specialized in health care, writing books, such as Money-Driven Medicine, which is also now a movie documentary and on DVD at http://money-drivenmedicine.org/ She also writes the highly regarded blog www.healthbeatblog.org for The Century Foundation in New York.
Michael L. Millenson
Mr. Millenson, president of Health Quality Advisors LLC, is an internationally recognized expert on the quality of patient care, patient safety and digital health. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age, and is an adjunct associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Earlier in his career, Millenson was a principal in the health-care practice of a major human resources consulting firm. Before that, he was a health-care reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where he was nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize. He has a BA in history and economics from Washington University in St. Louis.
Arthur Ulene, MD
Dr. Ulene became a board certified Obstetrician and Gynecologist specializing in oncology. As a teacher in southern California, Dr Ulene was attracted to the power of television for health information which led him to a 30-year career as the nation‘s best known health communicator, for 23 years on NBC’s TODAY Program, and through his own company, "Feeling Fine". Dr Ulene has made his home in Los Angeles, teaching, writing and engaging in many third world philanthropic medical education activities. He is currently working on the development of online behavioral programs dealing with the issues of weight loss and healthy aging.