Speaker

Nursing leadership for disruptive times

Susan Dentzer
Visiting Fellow, Robert J. Margolis Center for Health Policy, Duke University

Susan Dentzer is one of the nation’s most respected health and health policy thought leaders and a frequent speaker and commentator on television and radio, including PBS and NPR. She has written commentaries and analyses in print publications such as Modern Healthcare, the Annals of Internal Medicine, the New England Journal of Medicine, and NEJM Catalyst. She is also the editor and lead author of the book Health Care Without Walls: A Roadmap for Reinventing U.S. Health Care.

Ms. Dentzer is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, the Washington, D.C.-based arm of Duke University that focuses on health system transformation, biopharmaceutical policy, and other key health policy issues. At the Center, she focuses on research and thought leadership for modernizing the health care system through the use of greater virtual care and a reconfigured health care workforce, improving health and health care in rural areas, anticipating a future of effective treatments for Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and other topics.

From 2016 to January 2019, Ms. Dentzer was President and Chief Executive Officer of NEHI, the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization composed of more than 80 stakeholder organizations from across all key sectors of health and health care. From 2013 to 2016, she was senior policy adviser to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest philanthropy focused on health and health care in the United States, and before that, was the editor-in-chief of the policy journal Health Affairs. From 1998 to 2008, she was the on-air health correspondent for the PBS NewsHour. Ms. Dentzer also wrote and hosted the 2015 PBS documentary, Reinventing American Healthcare, focusing on innovations pioneered by Geisinger Health System and spread across the nation.

Ms. Dentzer is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) and serves on the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations; a fellow of the National Academy of Social Insurance; and a fellow of The Hastings Center, a nonpartisan bioethics research institute. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Rescue Committee, a leading global humanitarian organization; a member of the Board of Directors of Research!America, which advocates on behalf of biomedical and health-related research; and a member of the Board of Directors of the Public Health Institute, a nonprofit organization addressing public health issues and solutions nationwide. From 2011 to 2017, she was a public member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Medical Specialties, which assists 24 medical specialty boards in the ongoing evaluation and certification of physicians. She also is a member of the RAND Health Board of Advisors and serves on the global public policy advisory committee for Roche Pharmaceuticals.

Ms. Dentzer graduated from Dartmouth College, is a trustee emerita of the college, and chaired the Dartmouth Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2004. She has served as a member of the Board of Advisors of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth for more than two decades. Ms. Dentzer holds an honorary master’s degree from Dartmouth and an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio.