Rishi Manchanda, MD, MPH is CEO at HealthBegins, a national firm that helps Medicaid-serving executives and teams meet growing state and federal requirements for health equity and social needs, exceed performance goals, and achieve long-term impact for people harmed by societal practices. He has advanced this mission throughout his career as a primary care physician, executive, and public health champion.

In this conversation, Manchanda puts the current wave of upstream service development in perspective and reinforces the concept of pursuing investments in health equity with a "portfolio" approach to maximize effectiveness and avoid the perils inherent to any emerging model of care.

Our hosts Department of Health Policy and Management Instructor Aaron Holman and second year Masters student Morgan Cooper discuss concepts from Manshanda's book and career defining and refining what it means to be a healthcare "upstreamist" and how improving outcomes can be pursued by addressing social and structural drivers of health equity, including patients’ social needs, community-level social determinants of health, and structural determinants of health equity.

Cecilia Gerard, is the Managing Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. Tufts has been at the forefront of nutrition policy since its really been an issue.

Cecilia (an alumni of the Department of Health Policy and Management here at Harvard) has been a private sector consultant with Deloitte, a public sector consultant across several agencies, she worked at the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission and was also an early employees of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO).

Cecilia was recently at Point32 Health where she worked on the Point32’s Medicaid ACO and also assisted with various aspects of M&A work at the plan.

Our hosts Aaron Holman, Instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and second year masters student Morgan Cooper provide an overview of what "FIM" means today, what was discussed during their recent annual conference and where Cecilia sees promise in the future of the movement.

Jason Helgerson is the founder of the Helgerson Solutions Group, as well as former Medicaid Director of both New York and Wisconsin. Jason’s group works in the health and social services space with a particular focus on bringing those two worlds together through effective value-based payment designs. While Medicaid Director under Governor Cuomo, Jason designed and oversaw NY DSRIP program, one of the largest and most audacious Medicaid reform efforts in American history.

Jason is also the host of Health2049 a podcast that explores how to use design strategy to fix big societal challenges, including those in health.

In this wide-ranging interview, our hosts Aaron Holman, Instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and second year graduate student Abigail Bartlett ask Jason about where he sees innovation coming from in value based payment (VBP) design, where work remains to be done to complete a transition to VBP, and how consultants may or not be helping this transition.

An internist and infectious diseases physician with extensive experience in community health and serving the most vulnerable populations, Dr. Julita Mir is the former Chief Medical Officer of Community Care Cooperative (C3), a position she has held from 2017 - 2023. In this role, she oversaw medical operations for C3 and its network of 18 community health centers throughout Massachusetts.

Dr. Mir has a more than 20-year career working as a clinician in Boston’s federally qualified health centers and managing HIV and Hepatitis programs locally. Prior to her work for C3, she served as Chief Medical Officer for DotHouse Health in Dorchester, Massachusetts, where she continues to see patients weekly.

Dr. Mir completed her medical degree at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, where she first developed her passion for community health and serving the most vulnerable. She is a graduate of the Boston University School of Medicine, where she has continued to teach residents and medical students as an Assistant Professor since 1999.

Our hosts Aaron Holman, instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and recent graduate Rita Bandi discuss with Dr. Mir the state of FQHCs in America, where she sees progress in the integration of social services with medical care, and how she sees upcoming technology innovations changing the game in delivery.

This episode is a live-recording conducted on Harvard's central campus.

Dan Shapiro, PhD is a Senior Partner and Executive Director of the Chartis Center for Burnout Solutions. Soon after taking his first faculty position in 1995 he was appointed an in-house psychologist and began treating physicians and nurses. In 2003 Random House published his landmark memoir about one physician’s burnout, titled, “Delivering Doctor Amelia.”

In 2017 he developed a systematic method for assessing and addressing burnout and grew a boutique consultancy focused on helping leaders of multi-hospital systems address burnout. In 2023, Dan joined Chartis to lead the Center for Burnout Solutions.

Fun Fact: As a hobby, he worked for ten years as a weekly consultant to the hit television shows Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, How to Get Away With Murder and on-camera for the Discovery, National Geographic, and FYI channels.

In this conversation, our hosts Aaron Holman, Instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and second year graduate student Abigail Bartlett explore where we are as a nation in the post-Covid burnout crisis, what Dan sees as key factors that commonly drive burnout inside of healthcare delivery systems, and how health system leaders can work to mitigate the factors that contribute to burnout.

Caroline Pearson is the Executive Director at the Peterson Center on Healthcare, where she leads initiatives and grantmaking to fulfill the Center’s mission to create a high performing health system that delivers better care at lower cost. Caroline also designed and built the Peterson Health Technology Institute, which launched in 2023 to evaluate the clinical and economic impacts of digital health solutions.

Our hosts Aaron Holman, an instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and second year Master's student Gabriella Garcia speak with Caroline about the current state of employer sponsored insurance (ESI) and some of her latest research on what is working, what is not working, and how employers can continue to offer high value care to their employees while also helping to reduce healthcare cost growth.