Board
Staff | Clinical Advisors | Medical Editors
John Billings, JD, Chairman
John Billings was one of the founders of the Foundation and currently serves as its board chair. He is an associate professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and is the director of the school's Center for Health and Public Service Research. In 1986-7, Mr. Billings was a Visiting Professor at Duke University, conducting research on the physician decision making process and the quality of medical evidence. Mr. Billings holds a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
Mr. Billings is currently involved in several studies as co-principal or principal investigator, including:
The Safety Net Assessment Project, an initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to examine the performance of health care safety nets in 70 U.S. cities.
Another project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which assesses models for delivering primary care to low-income populations. Working with Columbia University and the United Hospital Fund of New York, he is evaluating the impact of Medicaid managed care in New York City.
A project supported by the Commonwealth Fund to monitor use of emergency departments by uninsured patients in New York City -- to learn more about the factors that contribute to emergency room use for conditions that could be treated effectively in a primary care setting.
Evaluation of the New York City Asthma Initiative, which seeks to improve asthma outcomes in low-income neighborhoods in New York City.
Mr. Billings is also participating in a CDC-funded project to reduce racial disparities in health outcomes in the South Bronx, involving improving health care delivery, educating patients on self care management, and organizing community-based organizations to help implement and monitor the project activities.
Directors
James R. Bell, PhD
Dr. James R. Bell is the Director of the Industry Standards Program Office for Hewlett-Packard Company. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of a focused strategy for effective, coordinated participation by HP businesses in industry consortia and standards organizations. He also represents HP on the Governing Board of The Open Group and serves on the Advisory Council and Advisory Board of the WorldWide Web Consortium.
He earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Richard A. Deyo, MD, MPH
Dr, Deyo is Professor of Medicine and of Health Services, University of Washington; Co-Director, University of Washington Center for Cost and Outcomes Research; and Co-Director, Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, University of Washington.
Carmen Hooker Odom
Carmen Hooker Odom began serving as President of the Milbank Memorial Fund on October 1, 2007. The Fund is the nation’s oldest operating foundation in health care and population health.
Prior to joining the Fund, Governor Mike Easley appointed Carmen Hooker Odom to be Secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services in January 2001. As Secretary, Hooker Odom worked tirelessly on behalf of health and human services issues, including mental health reform, Medicaid management, early childhood education, child welfare, senior prescription drugs, and returning veterans services.
Prior to her appointment as Secretary, she served as Vice President of Government Relations for Quintiles Transnational Corporation in Research Triangle Park. Hooker Odom previously served as the Group Vice President for Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS).
Before moving to North Carolina in 1995, Hooker Odom served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives for nearly 11 years. While in the legislature, Hooker Odom served as House chair of the Joint Committee on Health and advocated for quality health care services for families.
Hooker Odom co-chaired the North Carolina Health Care Reform Commission and is a member of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine. Presently, she serves on the Evidence-Based Medicine Roundtable of the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the UNC School of Public Health.
Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA
Susan Edgman-Levitan, PA, is Executive Director of the John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to coming to MGH, she was the founding President of the Picker Institute. She is a Lecturer in the Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and an Associate in Health Policy, Harvard Medical School. A constant advocate of understanding the patient’s perspective on healthcare, Susan has been the co-principal investigator on the Harvard Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Study (CAHPS) study from 1995 to the present. She has served as Chair of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) Breakthrough Series Collaborative on Improving Service Quality, and is the IHI Fellow for Patient and Family-Centered Care. She is an editor of Through the Patient’s Eyes, a book on creating and sustaining patient centered care, The CAHPS Improvement Guide, and has authored many papers and other publications on patient-centered care. She is a co-author of the Institute of Medicine 2006 report, The Future of Drug Safety: Promoting and Protecting the Health of the Public.
Ms. Edgman-Levitan serves on several boards and national advisory committees, including the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, the National Patient Safety Foundation, and the Harvard Institute for Nursing Healthcare Leadership, and co-chaired the Annual NPSF Congress on Patient Safety from 2002-2008. Ms. Edgman-Levitan is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Duke University Physician Assistant program where she received the Distinguished Alumni award from the Duke Physician Assistant Program and was inducted into the Duke University Medical Center Hall of Fame in 2004. Ms. Edgman-Levitan was awarded the 2007 Leadership and Innovation award from the Center for Information Therapy. She lives in Chestnut Hill, MA with her husband, Richard, and daughter, Amelia.
Arthur Levin, MPH
Arthur Aaron Levin is co-founder and the Director of the Center for Medical Consumers, a New York City based non-profit organization committed to informed consumer and patient health care decision-making, patient safety, evidence-based, high quality medicine and health care system transparency. It receives no funding from the drug, device or health care industry. (www.medicalconsumers.org).
Mr. Levin was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Committee on the Quality of Health Care that published the “To Err is Human” and “Crossing the Quality Chasm” reports. He also served on the IOM committee that evaluated the federal quality effort and made recommendations to Congress in its’ report “Leadership Through Example.”
More recently he was a member of the IOM’s Subcommittee on Performance Measures which reported to the Committee on Redesigning Health Insurance Benefits, Payment and Performance Improvement Program. Levin also was a member of the committee that issued a letter report in October 2007; Opportunities for Coordination and Clarity to Advance the National Health Information Agenda, and on the committee that wrote Knowing What Works in Health Care: A Roadmap for the Nation published last fall. He is a member of the IOM Board for Health Care Services. (www.iom.edu/CMS/3809.aspx)
Mr. Levin is co-chair of the NCQA Committee on Performance Measures (www.ncqa.org) that is charged with developing performance measures applicable to health plans. PPO’s and most recently physician practices. He has had past and current service on a number of NQF committees. He is a member of the NQF Consensus Standards Approval Committee (CSAC)
(http://www.qualityforum.org/about/leadership/csac.asp) and has participated in a number of steering committees and technical advisory panels. He is also a member of the Board of the Citizens Advocacy Center (www.cacenter.org) a Washington-based non-profit dedicated to serving public membership on state healthcare professional licensing and oversight boards.
Levin ended four years of service on the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee (DSaRM) in May 2007 and continues to serve on select FDA Advisory Committees as a Special Government Employee consultant expert in drug safety and risk management representing consumers.
At the state level, Levin has served on numerous state health department task forces and workgroups focused on safety, quality, informed consent and bioethical concerns. Most recently he served as a member of a workgroup formed by the Commissioner of Health to set state policy with regard to office based surgery. That work led to the passage of legislation requiring physicians performing surgery in their offices using moderate or higher levels of sedation to do so in an accredited office setting and to report adverse outcomes to the state department of health. Levin has written and worked to pass legislation on physician profiles, hospital profiles (including performance reporting) and most recently a new state law mandating nosocomial infection reporting by hospitals.
On the health information and exchange technology front, Levin is on the board of THINC RHIO, a not for profit health information organization located in the mid-Hudson Valley and is a founding board member of the public-private partnership coordinating statewide HIT development and implementation, the New York State E-Health Collaborative (NYeC).
Levin earned his Masters of Public Health degree in health policy from Columbia University School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Reed College. He has dedicated three decades to consumer advocacy with a special focus on informed consent and decision-making, public accountability, evidence-based practice, improved safety and better quality outcomes.
Floyd J. Fowler, Jr., PhD
Floyd Jackson Fowler Jr. was chosen to be President of the Foundation in 2002. He has worked with the Foundation since its inception, on the dual tasks of understanding patient perspectives on treatment decisions and evaluating the programs designed to help patients make decisions. Dr. Fowler is a social scientist who specializes in survey research methods, and he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Survey Research at UMass Boston since 1971. Dr. Fowler has been a major contributor to research on patient outcomes, and on how patients are affected by the treatments they receive.
Lee Sechrest, PhD
Lee Sechrest is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Arizona and founder of the Evaluation Group for Analysis of Data, a methodological interest group that has been meeting on a continuing basis for 16 years.
The major portion of his current work is aimed at the development of more effective methods of research and data analysis, including dealing with large data sets, longitudinal designs and their analysis, and calibration of measures.
He has co-authored or edited 20 books and monographs and has had published nearly 50 papers, chapters, and articles. He is Past-President of the American Evaluation Association, the American Association for Applied and Preventive Psychology, the Division of Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics of the American Psychological Association, and the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association.
Harold C. Sox, MD
Harold Sox graduated from Stanford University (B.S. physics) and Harvard Medical School. After serving as a medical intern and resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, he spent two years doing research in immunology at the National Institutes of Health and three years at Dartmouth Medical School, where he served as chief medical resident and began his study of medical decision making. He served on the faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine for 15 years before moving back to Dartmouth where he chaired the Department of Medicine for 13 years.
In 2001, Dr. Sox became the Editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. He chaired the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force from 1990 to 1995, the Institute of Medicine Committee to Study HIV Transmission through Blood Products, and the Institute of Medicine Committee on Health Effects Associated with Exposures Experienced in the Gulf War. He chaired the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee of the Center for Medicare Services from 1999 to 2003 and was president of the American College of Physicians in 1998-99. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1993 and to fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002.
His books include Medical Decision Making, Common Diagnostic Tests: Selection and Interpretation, and Graduate Education in Internal Medicine: a Resource Guide.
Margaret E. O'Kane
Since 1990, Margaret E. O'Kane has served as President of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the quality of health care everywhere. Under Ms. O'Kane's leadership, NCQA has developed broad support among the employer and health plan communities; today many Fortune 100 companies will only do business with NCQA Accredited health plans. About three quarters of the nation's largest employers use Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) data to evaluate the plans that serve their employees.
In 2000, Ms. O'Kane received the Centers for Disease Control's Champion of Prevention award, the agency's highest honor. The CDC names a Champion of Prevention infrequently, and only when an individual has made a truly notable contribution to advancing preventive health care.
Ms. O'Kane has repeatedly been voted by her peers as one of Modern Healthcare's "100 Most Powerful People in Health Care." She currently serves as the co-chair of the National Priorities Partnership, a group of 28 diverse stakeholders in health care dedicated to identifying areas for action to transform America’s healthcare system.