Wednesday, Oct. 30 | 1:15-1:55 p.m. | Executive Track
Kyu Rhee, MD, MPP, Vice President and Chief Health Officer, IBM Corporation and IBM Watson Health
Ignitor: Richard I. Levin, MD, President/CEO, Gold Foundation
Dr. Rhee serves as Chief Health Officer of IBM, where he has global responsibilities for Watson Health and assuring a Culture of Health at IBM. Prior to joining IBM, Dr. Rhee was Chief Public Health Officer at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which is the primary federal agency for improving access to health care services for people who are uninsured, isolated, or medically vulnerable. While at HRSA, he served on and led numerous national initiatives related to prevention, quality, and public health. Dr. Rhee also served as the Director of the Office of Innovation and Program Coordination at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the primary federal agency for research. While at NIH, he served on and led numerous initiatives related to eliminating health disparities and promoting health equity. Prior to his federal government service, he worked in community health settings as the Chief Medical Officer of Baltimore Medical System Inc., the largest network of Federally Qualified Health Centers in Maryland. In addition, Dr. Rhee served five years as a National Health Service Corps Scholar and Medical Director at Upper Cardozo Health Center, the largest community health center in Washington, DC. During that time, he taught at the George Washington University School of Public Health, where he received a “Best Teacher” award for his class in Community Health Leadership.
Dr. Rhee was a Chief Resident and performed his medical residency training in both internal medicine and pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Southern California. Dr. Rhee also holds a master’s degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University with a concentration in Health Care Policy. He acquired his Bachelor in Science degree from Yale University in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, where he also served as President of the study body.
In addition to his service on various public and private sector committees and boards, including those sponsored by the Institute of Medicine, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, the National Quality Forum, and the National Business Group on Health, Dr. Rhee speaks frequently and has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including American Family Physician, Pediatric Annals, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, and the American Journal of Public Health.
Richard I. Levin, MD, is the President and CEO of The Arnold P. Gold Foundation and an Emeritus Professor at both New York University and McGill University. He is a sought-after international speaker on humanism in healthcare with deep expertise across the health sciences and humanities. Before accepting his current position, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Vice-Principal for Health Affairs at McGill University; prior to that, he was Vice Dean for Education, Faculty and Academic Affairs, and a Professor of Medicine at NYU School of Medicine.
Dr. Levin earned a B.S. with Honors from Yale, where he divided his time between the study of immunoglobulins and appearances on stage at the Yale Dramat. He graduated from the NYU School of Medicine, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha and trained as an internist and cardiologist. Following a postdoc fellowship at the Specialized Center for Research in Thrombosis at Cornell, Dr. Levin practiced cardiology and cell biology at NYU. He holds multiple patents and is the founder of a diagnostics company. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Recently, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wayne State University.
Under Dr. Levin’s leadership, the Gold Foundation has amplified its impact, expanding from its roots in undergraduate medical education into the wider spectrum of humanism and relationship-centered care – reaching schools of nursing, nurses and physicians in practice, researchers, and, through the Gold Corporate Council, global healthcare companies. (Learn more at gold-foundation.org). He is continually recruiting leaders in health to join him in the social movement to re-establish humanism as a core of teaching and practice.
He resides in New York City with his wife, Jane. They have two daughters and three grandchildren.
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