Karen Bollinger DeSalvo (born August 4, 1966) is an American business executive, physician and public health expert. She has been

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

’s chief health officer since 2019. Previously, she served as the Acting

Assistant Secretary for Health The assistant secretary for health (ASH) is a senior U.S. government official within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who serves as the primary advisor to the secretary of health and human services on matters involving t ...

, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and Director of the

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

(ONC).

Career

DeSalvo received her MD and MPH from

Tulane University The Tulane University of Louisiana (commonly referred to as Tulane University) is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by a cohort of medical doctors, it b ...

, and subsequently served as Vice Dean for Community Affairs and Health Policy there. DeSalvo served as New Orleans Health Commissioner from 2011 until 2014, and

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

Mayor Mitchell Landrieu’s Senior Health Policy Advisor. In her role as National Coordinator for health information technology from January 2014 until August 2016, DeSalvo reported directly to

Sylvia Mathews Burwell Sylvia Mary Burwell (; born June 24, 1965) is an American government and non-profit executive who is president of the Harvard Board of Overseers and was the 15th president of American University from 2017 to 2024. Burwell was the first woman t ...

, Secretary of HHS. Beginning in October 2014 DeSalvo served as an acting

in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and on May 7, 2015, she was officially nominated. right before her nomination was set to expire on January 3, 2016, the Senate designated it for carryover to the next Congressional session. On August 11, 2016, it was announced that DeSalvo was resigning as head of the National Coordinator for Health IT to focus on her duties as Acting Assistant Secretary of Health. On January 1, 2016, she was allowed to continue serving as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Health under (b)(2), as her nomination was being held in the Senate due to the

Affordable Care Act The Affordable Care Act (ACA), formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and informally as Obamacare, is a landmark U.S. federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by Presid ...

stripping some families access to Consumer Operation and Oriented Program (CO-OP). The Senate eventually returned her nomination to the President without action on January 3, 2017. DeSalvo left the Assistant Secretary post in January 2017. Between 2017 and 2019, she taught at the University of Texas at Austin's

Dell Medical School The Dell Medical School is the graduate medical school of the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas. The school opened to the inaugural class of 50 students in the summer of 2016 as the newest of 18 colleges and schools on the UT Austin ...

. She was elected to the

Humana Inc. Humana Inc. is an American for-profit health insurance company based in Louisville, Kentucky. In 2024, the company ranked 92 on the Fortune 500 list, which made it the highest ranked (by revenues) company based in Kentucky. It is the fourth la ...

board in November 2017. On October 15, 2019, Humana disclosed that DeSalvo was leaving the board that day to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, in connection with an unknown opportunity. On October 17, 2019, Google appointed DeSalvo its new chief health officer, a newly created role.

Boards

By late 2019, DeSalvo was on several medical boards, and had been on the advisory board of

Verily Verily Life Sciences LLC, also known as Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences), is Alphabet Inc.'s research organization devoted to the study of life sciences. The organization was formerly a division of Google X, until August 10, 2015, when Ser ...

. She is a member of the

National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), known as the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineerin ...

and the Payment Advisory Commission. She served as an external advisory board member of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Health Incentives & Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) from 2016-2023.

References

External links

Dr. Karen DeSalvo Acting Assistant Secretary for Health U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Huffington Post, n.d.. retrieved 21 Feb 17 {{DEFAULTSORT:DeSalvo, Karen 1966 births American medical academics Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alumni Living people Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Suffolk University alumni Tulane University School of Medicine alumni Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine alumni United States Department of Health and Human Services officials Members of the National Academy of Medicine