Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA is president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a position she has held since 2003. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the nation’s largest philanthropy dedicated solely to health and health care.

With more than 30 years of personal experience as a medical practitioner, policy-maker, professor and nonprofit executive, Lavizzo-Mourey has built on the Foundation’s 40-year history of addressing key health issues by adopting bold, forward-looking priorities that include:

• Building a Culture of Health for all Americans.
• Reversing the childhood obesity epidemic.
• Creating a health care system that provides the best possible care at a reasonable cost.
• Expanding the role of highly trained nurses.
• Convincing government, business, and civic leaders to consider the public’s health when making decisions.
• Addressing the social factors that impact health, especially among the most vulnerable.
• Ensuring that all Americans have access to stable and affordable health care coverage.
• Supporting a new generation of health leaders. 

 

A specialist in geriatrics, Lavizzo-Mourey came to the Foundation from the University of Pennsylvania, where she served as the Sylvan Eisman Professor of Medicine and Health Care Systems. She also directed Penn’s Institute on Aging and was chief of geriatric medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. She served as deputy administrator of what is now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality and worked on the White House Health Care Reform Task Force, co-chairing the working group on Quality of Care. She also has served on the Task Force on Aging Research, the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics and the President’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry.

A graduate of the University of Washington and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Lavizzo-Mourey earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School. She also holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Lavizzo-Mourey is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the President’s Council for Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. She serves on the Smithsonian Board of Regents and several other boards of directors.

She and her husband of nearly 40 years have two adult children and one grandchild.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Public Health Initiatives, Center for Health Behavior Research, Penn Institute on Aging, and the School of Nursing.

Sponsored by the Charles C. Leighton, MD Memorial Lecture Fund