By CQ Staff
November 29, 2012 -- Karen Davis, who is leaving The Commonwealth Fund after serving as its president for two decades, is returning to Johns Hopkins University. Starting Jan. 1, she will be director of the Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care.
Davis will also be the second Eugene and Mildred Lipitz professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, a department she chaired for 11 years before joining the Commonwealth Fund.
"I am excited about the opportunity to head the Lipitz Center and continue its important work on developing innovative health care payment and delivery models in order to improve care for our nation's most vulnerable people, including the disabled," Davis said. "With the imminent retirement of much of the boomer generation, the need for new models of patient-centered care that improve quality of care while advancing efficiency is paramount."
Davis also has worked at the Brookings Institution, has lectured at Harvard University and was a deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Jimmy Carter administration. In 1980 she became the first woman to head a U.S. public health service agency when she became the administrator of the Health Resources Administration. She announced her intention last year to step down from The Commonwealth Fund.
The Commonwealth Fund has already named David Blumenthal, a professor at Harvard Medical School and President Obama's former national coordinator for health information technology, to succeed Davis.
