Convention Keynote Speakers
Dr. Arthur Chen
Dr. Arthur Chen is currently a Senior Fellow focusing on building a learning organization that promotes a culture of service excellence and community advocacy at Asian Health Services (a Federally Qualified Health Center [FQHC]) in Oakland, California, where he has practiced inpatient and outpatient medicine as a family physician since 1983 and also served as their Medical Director and Special Programs Director (1984-1995). He also serves as the Deputy Director for the National Leadership Academy for the Public’s Health, a leadership training program sponsored by the CDC. From 2001-2009 he served as the Chief Medical Officer and Medical Director of the Alameda Alliance for Health, a Medicaid Managed Care non-profit public entity serving 100,000 low income residents of Alameda County. From 1996-2001 he was the Health Officer for the Alameda County Public Health Department. Prior to that he served as an emergency room physician and the Associate Medical Director of the Institute of Emergency Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY. He was also the Executive Director of the Chinatown Health Clinic (Charles B. Wang Health Center) in New York City.
On July 1, 2011, he was appointed to the Advisory Committee on Minority Health, a Federal advisory committee established to support Health Equity initiatives undertaken by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Since 2009, he has served on the Board of Directors of the National Council of Asian and Pacific Islander Physicians, a national organization of physicians committed to advancing the health and well being of Asian American and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander peoples and communities. He also serves on the Board (Chairperson, 2006-2008) of The California Endowment, a health foundation focused on improving health status and access to care for California’s medically underserved population. He chaired (1998-2006) the Board of Directors of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum, a national policy and advocacy organization whose mission is to improve the health status of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. From 2001-2003 he was appointed to the Task Force on Culturally and Linguistically Competent Physicians and Dentists for the CA Dept of Consumer Affairs. Between 1997-2001 he served on the National Association of County and City Health Officials MAPP (Mobilization for Action through Planning and Partnerships) planning committee (formerly APEXCPH: Assessment and Planning Excellence through Community Partners for Health. From 1999-2001 and 2004 to present, he served as an Executive Council member of the Alameda Contra Costa County Medical Association. In 1999 he served on the CDC/ATSDR Task Force on Public Health Workforce Development. From 1997-2001 he served as a Board Member and later an Executive Committee member of the California Conference of Local Health Officers.
Dr. Chen was the recipient of the 2008 California Medical Association Foundation’s Robert D. Sparks, MD Leadership Award. He was selected as a fellow to the 1996-7 Public Health Leadership Institute sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and the University of California. During l989-l992 he was a member of the Kellogg National Fellowship Program. He has also served on advisory and planning committees to the Bureau of Primary Health Care of the U.S. Public Health Service, the Office of Minority Health, the National Institutes of Health and the American Lung Association. He has also testified before Congress and President Clinton's Health Task Force.
Among his publications are: "Health is strength": a research collaboration involving Korean Americans in Alameda County; “A behavioral risk factor survey on Korean Americans”; “Community-Sensitive Research”, “Information Management For the 90's”; "Special Health Problems of Asians and Pacific Islanders," "Behavioral Risk Factor Survey of Chinese in California," "Cigarette Smoking Among Chinese, Vietnamese and Hispanics in California," and "Conducting a Culturally-sensitive Health Survey in the Chinese Community."
He completed his postgraduate training at the Residency Program in Social Medicine (Family Practice) at the Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York. He received his B.S. and medical degrees from the University of California at Davis. He has been happily married for 33 years with a family dedicated to improving social equity and human rights in America. His wife serves as the President of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy. His daughter is an attorney and serves as an advisor to the Whitehouse Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. His son works as a community organizer for The Utility Reform Network in San Francisco, CA. Dr. Chen has been a resident of Oakland, California since 1983.
Dr. Lucian Leape
Lucian Leape, MD, is Adjunct Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and a health policy analyst whose groundbreaking research has focused on patient safety and the quality of care.
Dr. Leape is internationally recognized as the leader of the patient safety movement, beginning with the publication of his seminal article "Error in Medicine" in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1994. He is one of the founders of the National Patient Safety Foundation, the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Error, and the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Session on Medical Error.
He was also a member of the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Care in America Committee, which published "To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System" in 1999 and "Crossing the Quality Chasm" in 2001.
Dr. David Ansell
Dr. David Ansell is a physician and nationally-renowned health activist committed to closing the "death gap" that causes Americans to die younger than residents of most other developed nations. He is an Internal Medicine physician and the Chief Medical Officer at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.
After finishing medical school at the State University of New York-Syracuse in 1978, Dr. Ansell moved to Chicago to do his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Cook County Hospital, now John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County. Dr. Ansell continued working there for 17 years as an Attending Physician and had many roles, including his last one as Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine.
His work with others on the problem of patient dumping brought national attention to this issue and resulted in landmark national legislation to end this practice. In 1995, Dr. Ansell moved to Chicago's Sinai Health System, the State of Illinois’ largest private provider of indigent care and one of the foremost safety-net health systems in the U.S., as the Chairperson of Internal Medicine. At Sinai, he was responsible for the creation of the Sinai Urban Health Institute, which has become one of the nation’s leading centers for research and interventions to understand and eliminate health inequities.
After moving to Rush University Medical Center, Dr. Ansell was appointed in 2008 as one of the 11 members of the independent board of directors of the Cook County Health and Hospital System. He continues his service to the medically underserved in his volunteer activities at the Community Health Clinic, a free clinic in Chicago, and with his medical relief work annually in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Dr. Ansell has a research interest in access to health care and health disparity reduction. He helped lead the efforts to start the new Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force (MCBCTF), where he serves as President of the Board. The MCBCTF goal is to decrease the disparity in mortality between African American and white women by improving the quality of breast cancer screening and care for minority women in the Chicago area.
Dr. Ansell has a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Illinois School of Public Health and has written extensively about health disparities. Most recently, he wrote “COUNTY: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital,” a memoir about the years he spent working at County. The book documents the harsh working conditions for doctors and nurses and the suffering the patients experienced there—most of whom were low-income minorities and immigrants. The book speaks to the U.S.' failure to address the most unjust of all the inequities present in the world's richest society - that of health inequity.
Dr. Ansell has spoken widely on that subject, including appearances on media outlets such as PBS’ Chicago Tonight, NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, The Tavis Smiley Show, Fox TV, CBS TV, and many others. He is also a frequent speaker at conferences and meetings such as Physicians for a National Health Program, AMA and others—including several medical schools.
Dr. Ansell lives in Oak Park, IL, with his wife of 36 years, Dr. Paula Grabler, who also trained at Cook County Hospital.