Shantanu Agrawal, M.D., M.Phil., is chief health officer at Elevance Health, where he oversees the enterprise whole health strategy, including medical policy, clinical quality, and delegation oversight, as well as our industry-leading work to address health-related social needs and health equity. Passionate about improving health outcomes and reducing disparities, Agrawal draws on his clinical and business expertise to push for a more equitable health space for the people Elevance Health serves. Accordingly, he also leads Elevance Health’s community health strategy and the Elevance Health Foundation. Outside of Elevance Health, Agrawal serves on numerous boards and committees that deepen his commitment to advancing health. He serves on the Board of Directors for both the Healthcare Leadership Council and the Pharmacy Quality Alliance. He is on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery and part of the National Academy of Medicine Leadership Consortium. Agrawal is a member of the Brown University Corporation Committee on Medical and Health Affairs and serves on the Chief Medical Officers Committee at America’s Health Insurance Plans. Prior to joining Elevance Health, Agrawal served as president and chief executive officer of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a non-profit organization dedicated to working with diverse members of the healthcare community to drive measurable health improvements. He is also the former deputy administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), where he led an effort to improve the physician experience with Medicare and was an architect of CMS’s strategy to address the national opioid epidemic. Agrawal served as director of the Center for Program Integrity (CPI), where he was instrumental in launching new initiatives in data transparency and analytics, utilization management, and payment models. Agrawal completed his undergraduate education at Brown University, medical education at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and clinical training in emergency medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his master’s degree in social and political sciences from Cambridge University.
Contact: shantanu.agrawal@anthem.com
Melinda Dutton, J.D., focuses on supporting large-scale transformative change in complex environments with a practice that sits at the intersection of law, policy, strategy and business. Bringing deep knowledge and experience in publicly financed health care—including Medicaid, CHIP and Affordable Care Act marketplaces; coverage expansion, delivery system transformation; and payment reform—Melinda guides federal and state regulators, local governments, providers, payers, life sciences companies and foundations in navigating the legal, regulatory and market challenges of today’s dynamic health care landscape. An innovator in the health care industry, Melinda is one of the architects of Manatt Health’s groundbreaking, multidisciplinary professional services model, integrating legal, regulatory and consulting support to meet the evolving needs of a diverse array of health care stakeholders. She also oversees the Manatt on Health premium content portal, providing exclusive access to Manatt’s thought leadership on the topics most critical to the health care industry. A frequent author and presenter on emerging trends and policies, she has been vocal on the importance of the social determinants of health (SDOH). Her cutting-edge work supporting the design and implementation of North Carolina’s “Healthy Opportunities Pilots,” created to help the state better understand and address SDOH, has been cited in “Managed Healthcare Executive.” In addition, Melinda has served as a guest lecturer for health law and policy courses at colleges and universities, including New York University School of Law, Columbia Law School and New York Medical College. She was practitioner-in-residence at Saint Louis University School of Law. Prior to joining Manatt, Melinda worked at the Children’s Defense Fund in New York. There, she helped develop and secure legislation expanding publicly funded health insurance programs for children. Her career in legal advocacy started in Brooklyn, where she helped establish a health law practice serving the borough’s low-income population.
Contact: mdutton@manatt.com
Bryant Cameron Webb, M.D., J.D., is a physician, attorney, and political candidate from Virginia. He currently serves as the White House senior policy advisor for COVID-19 Equity in the Biden administration. Webb was a White House Fellow in 2016 and 2017. He works at the University of Virginia Health System as an assistant professor of Medicine and Public Health Science. Webb was the Democratic Party nominee for Virginia’s 5th congressional district in the 2020 election. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Virginia, a Doctor of Medicine from the Wake Forest School of Medicine, and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
Contact: bryant.c.webb@who.eop.gov
Rachel Nuzum, MPH, is vice president for the Federal and State Health Policy initiative at The Commonwealth Fund, working closely with policymakers at the state and federal level. Ms. Nuzum is responsible for developing and implementing the Fund’s national policy strategy for improving health system performance, ensuring that the work of the Fund and its grantees informs the policy process in both the legislative and executive branches of state and federal government. Ms. Nuzum’s work also includes fostering public–private collaboration on health system performance improvement with state and federal stakeholders and organizations. Ms. Nuzum has over 15 years of experience working in health policy at the federal, state, and local levels of government, as well as in the private sector. Before joining the Fund in January 2007, Ms. Nuzum was a legislative advisor for Senator Maria Cantwell (Wash.) on health, retirement and tax issues. Prior to joining Senator Cantwell’s office, she served as a David Winston Health Policy Fellow in Senator Jeff Bingaman’s (N.M.) office. In this role, Ms. Nuzum staffed the Senator on the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Before arriving in Washington, D.C., she served former Governor Roy Romer of Colorado in the office of Boards and Commissions and worked as a health planner in west central Florida. She holds a B.A. in political science from the University of Colorado and an MPH in Health Policy and Management from the University of South Florida. She is on the faculty of Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Nursing and Health Professions and is on the board of the Winston Health Policy Fellowship.
Contact: rn@cmwf.org
Ruqaiijah Yearby, J.D., MPH, is the inaugural Kara J. Trott Professor in Law at the Moritz College of Law and a faculty affiliate of the Kirwan Institute at The Ohio State University. She is also co-founder and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity. Recently, Professor Yearby received over $5 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study structural racism and discrimination in vaccine allocation as well as the equitable enforcement of housing laws and structural racism in the health care system. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Bioethics, Health Affairs, and the Oxford Journal of Law and the Biosciences and used in law, medical school, and social science classes at schools such as Harvard, NYU, Fordham, and the University of California Berkeley. She earned her B.S. in Honors Biology from the University of Michigan, MPH from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as an assistant regional counsel and served as a law clerk for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Contact: yearby.1@osu.edu
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