Convention Keynote Speakers
Dr. Patch Adams
Thursday, March 14
Doctor, Author, Clown, Social Activist, Founder & Director of the Gesundheit Institute
My older brother and I were World War II babies. Dads career was in the army and he fought all of World War II and Korea. We grew up on army bases, outside the US during peacetime and stateside during wartime. Our last seven years with him were in Germany where he died in 1961. He was so damaged by his war experiences that he couldn't connect with me. I had no father. My mother was remarkable. She loved us. She was a schoolteacher and fed me all of my interests, giving me self-esteem and making me a creative, loving man who cared for people.
First, I wanted to go out and engage the world as this happy soul. I started clowning in public and have done it daily since. Second, I set out to quench my thirst for knowledge by studying everything I could get my hands on. In order to become an instrument for peace, justice and care I read thousands of books. I needed to understand so I could create solutions. I became interested in whole systems thinking, looking for ways to integrate it with the hospital-community concepts that emerged in medical school. In my imagination I envisioned a communal eco-village hospital that would address every problem of the way healthcare was delivered in one model. I wrote it up in a paper in March, 1971 and this was the basis of what became the Gesundheit Institute.
In the last 28 years, I´ve created 50 presentations and performed them in 70 countries. I´ve spoken at 90 medical schools in the US and many more around the world. Over the course of the last two decades I´ve been on the road for 200-300 days of the year.
In 1985, I took a group of people on a clown trip to what was then the Soviet Union. Equipped with colorful clothing and compassion we visited hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly as well as just clowning on the street. Since then, these trips have been an integral part of Gesundheit´s global outreach. Apart from returning to Russia every year there have been clown trips to all corners of the world, including visits to war zones, refugee camps and natural disaster sites. We´ve also built clinics and a school at some of the places we´ve visited. I go on six or seven of these trips yearly. They are the sweetest healing work I get to do while I wait for the hospital.
In the summer of 2011 we started construction of our first big building, a Teaching Center & Clinic in West Virginia. This will allow us to see patients once again as well as providing a space to teach health care system design. In the excitement for this moment, I chose to move to Urbana, Illinois to live with my beloved Susan, who has been and continues to be a precise mentor to me. In recent years I’ve had the opportunity to work together with my sons and brother, Wildman, and life doesn’t get any better than that. All this in hopeful preparation for the dream of a crazy free hospital. My life has been a dance with humanity. Friends are my passion.
Fitzhugh Mullan, MD
Friday, March 15
Murdock Head Professor of Medicine and Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health
Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, is currently the Murdoch Head Professor of Medicine and Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health, in the United States, and a professor of pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. While serving as a member of the United States Public Health Service he held many roles, including director of the National Health Service Corps, director of the Bureau of Health Professions, and a position as Assistant Surgeon General. He has been a faculty member at George Washington University since 1998 where his work has focused on human resources for health. Dr. Mullan has a long record of research and publication on issues surrounding the US and global health workforce. He is the principal investigator of the Sub-Saharan African Medical Schools Study (SAMSS) funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) Coordinating Center, a National Institute of Health-funded 12-country African medical education project. Dr. Mullan has written widely for both professional and general audiences on medical and health policy topics. He is a commissioner of the National Health Care Workforce Commission, chartered by the US Congress, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Mullan graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor of arts in history and received his doctor of medicine from the University of Chicago Medical School.
Marcia Angell, MD
Friday, March 15
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School
Marcia Angell, MD, is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine on June 30, 2000. A graduate of Boston University School of Medicine, she trained in both internal medicine and anatomic pathology and is a board-certified pathologist. She joined the editorial staff of the New England Journal of Medicine in 1979, became Executive Editor in 1988, and Editor-in-Chief in 1999.
Dr. Angell writes frequently in professional journals and the popular media on a wide range of topics, particularly medical ethics, health policy, the nature of medical evidence, the interface of medicine and the law, care at the end of life, and the relations between industry and academic medicine. Her critically acclaimed book, Science on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case, was published in June, 1996, by W. W. Norton & Company. Her most recent book is The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, published in August, 2004, by Random House. In addition, Dr. Angell is co-author, with Dr. Stanley Robbins and, later, Dr. Vinay Kumar, of the first three editions of the textbook, Basic Pathology. She also has written chapters in several books dealing with ethical issues.
Dr. Angell is a member of the Association of American Physicians, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences, the Alpha Omega Alpha National Honor Medical Society, and is a Master of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1997, Time magazine named Marcia Angell one of the 25 most influential Americans.
David Nash, MD, MBA
Saturday, March 16
Founding Dean
Jefferson School of Population Health
David Nash is the Founding Dean of the Jefferson School of Population Health on the campus of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Nash is also the Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor of Health Policy and this endowed professorship is one of a handful of such chairs in the nation. The appointment as the Founding Dean culminates a nearly twenty-year tenure at Jefferson.
Dr. Nash, a Board Certified Internist, founded the original Office of Health Policy in 1990. Thirteen years later, the Office evolved into one of the first Departments of Health Policy in an American medical college. In 2008, the Board of Jefferson University approved the creation of the new school. The Jefferson School of Population Health represents the first time a health-sciences university has placed four Masters Programs under one roof, namely a Masters in Public Health, Health Policy, Healthcare Quality and Safety and Chronic Care Management. The goal of this innovative school is to produce a new type of healthcare leader for the future.
Dr. Nash is internationally recognized for his work in outcomes management, medical staff development and quality-of-care improvement; his publications have appeared in more than 100 articles in major journals. He has edited nineteen books, including A Systems Approach to Disease Management by Jossey-Bass, Connecting with the New Healthcare Consumer by Aspen, The Quality Solution by Jones and Bartlett, Practicing Medicine in the 21st Century by ACPE, and most recently, Governance for Healthcare Providers by Performance Press. In 1995, he was awarded the Latiolais (“Lay-shee-o-lay”) Prize by the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy for his leadership in disease management and pharmacoeconomics. He also received the Philadelphia Business Journal Healthcare Heroes Award in October 1997 and was named an honorary distinguished fellow of the American College of Physician Executives in 1998. In 2006, he received the Elliot Stone Award for leadership in public accountability for health data from NAHDO. Dr. Nash received the Wharton Healthcare Alumni Achievement Award in 2009.
Repeatedly named by Modern Healthcare to the top 100 most powerful persons in healthcare list, his national activities include membership on the Board of Directors of the DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance, Chair of an NQF Technical Advisory Panel, membership in the American College of Surgeons’ Health Policy Institute and a recent appointment to the ACP Clinical Guidelines Project – four key national groups focusing on quality measurement and improvement. He continues as one of the principal faculty members for quality of care issues of the American College of Physician Executives in Tampa, Florida, and is the developer of the ACPE Capstone Course on Quality. For the last decade, he was a member of the Board of Trustees of Catholic Healthcare Partners in Cincinnati, Ohio – one of the nation’s largest integrated delivery systems and he chaired the Board Committee on Quality and Safety. He recently was appointed to the Board of Main Line Health – a four hospital system in suburban Philadelphia, PA.
Dr. Nash was recently appointed to the Board of Directors of Humana, a Fortune 200 company headquartered in Louisville, KY. He is a consultant to organizations in both the public and private sectors including the Technical Advisory Group of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (a group he has chaired for the last decade), and numerous corporations within the pharmaceutical industry. From 1984 to 1989, he was Deputy Editor, Annals of Internal Medicine, at the American College of Physicians. Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief of four major national journals including P&T, Population Health Management, Biotechnology Healthcare and the American Journal of Medical Quality. Through his writings, public appearances and his digital presence, his message reaches more than 100,000 persons every month.
Dr. Nash received his BA in economics (Phi Beta Kappa) from Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York; his MD from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where he was recently named to the Alumni Council, and his MBA in Health Administration (with honors) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, he was a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and Medical Director of a nine physician faculty group practice in general internal medicine.
Dr. Nash lives in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Esther J. Nash, MD, fraternal twin twenty-two-year old daughters, and eighteen-year old son. He is an avid tennis player. Please visit: http://jefferson.edu/population_health/ and his blog at http://www.nashhealthpolicy.blogspot.com.
Ben Carson, Sr., MD
Saturday, March 16
Neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Dr. Ben Carson is an American neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Maryland. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States by President George W. Bush in 2008.
Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan. His mother, Sonya, had dropped out of school in the third grade and married at the age of 13. Carson's father abandoned the family after Sonya discovered he had another wife and kids, leaving his mother to fend for him and his brother. However, his mother insisted that he and his brother Curtis Carson, who is now an engineer, read at least two books a week then proceed to write reports on these books for her. This early education and encouragement shaped Carson's future. After graduating with honors from his high school, he attended Yale University, where he earned a degree in Psychology. From Yale, he attended University of Michigan Medical School, where his interest shifted from psychiatry to neurosurgery. Carson's excellent hand-eye coordination and three-dimensional reasoning skills made him a gifted surgeon.[citation needed] After medical school he became a neurosurgery resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. At age 32, he became the hospital's youngest Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery.
In 1987, Carson made medical history by being the first surgeon in the world to successfully separate twins (the Binder twins) conjoined at the back of the head (craniophagus twins). Operations to separate twins joined in this way had always failed, resulting in the death of one or both of the infants. Carson agreed to undertake the operation. The 70-member surgical team, led by Carson, worked for 22 hours. At the end, the twins were successfully separated and can now survive independently. Carson's other surgical innovations have included the first intrauterine procedure to relieve pressure on the brain of a hydrocephalic fetal twin, and a hemispherical, in which a young girl suffering from uncontrollable seizures had one half of her brain removed.
Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa
Saturday, March 16
Professor of Neurosurgery
Johns Hopkins
Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa received his medical degree from Harvard, where he graduated with honors. He then completed his residency in neurosurgery at the University of California, San Francisco, where he also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in developmental and stem cell biology.
Now an assistant professor of Neurosurgery and Oncology at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Quiñones serves as the Director of the brain tumor program at the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus. He focuses on the surgical treatment of primary and metastatic brain tumors, with an emphasis on motor and speech mapping during surgery. He is expert in treating intradural spinal tumors as well as brainstem and eloquent brain tumors in adults with the use of neurophysiological monitoring during surgery. He further specializes in the treatment of patients with pituitary tumors using a transphenoidal endonasal approach with surgical navigation and/or endoscopic techniques. He has a strong interest in treating patients with skull base tumors and the use of radiosurgery as an adjunct to the treatment of these lesions.
Dr. Quinones conducts numerous research efforts on elucidating the role of stem cells in the origin of brain tumors and the potential role stem cells can play in fighting brain cancer and regaining neurological function.
His most recent accolade was being honored with the American Association of Neurological Surgeons Ronald Bittner Award. He has also received multiple teaching awards.
Dr. Quinones was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. Who after years of work as a farm worker, saved up enough money to eventually become a US citizen. All the while becoming a brain surgeon and Harvard graduate. He has been featured on CNN Heros, NPR and the New York Times.