A Specialist in Geriatrics to Head Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Nearly two decades ago, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation identified Risa Lavizzo-Mourey as an up-and-coming leader in health care and awarded her a top scholarly honor.

The foundation-supported post-residency training and research program reaffirmed the young doctor’s decision to follow a career in health-care policy and, she says, helped open doors to positions in academic institutions and government.

In 2001, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey was reunited with the foundation when she was hired as its senior vice president and charged with directing the fund’s grant making in health care.

Last month, the foundation — the largest health-care philanthropy, with nearly $8-billion in assets — announced that it would bestow a new title on Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey: chief executive. She is to succeed Steven Schroeder, who headed the fund for 12 years and will retire in December.

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey, whose academic specialty is geriatrics, has held numerous positions in her two-decade career, most of them at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received an M.B.A. in health-care administration from the Wharton School of Finance in 1986. Most recently, she was a professor of medicine and health-care systems at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She also directed the university’s Institute on Aging and was chief of the medical school’s division of geriatric medicine.

From 1992 to 1994, she took a leave from the university to serve as deputy administrator of the federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Health Care Quality).

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey says the foundation, which distributes more than $500-million in grants and contracts each year, will continue to focus on public health and health care, its two primary grant-making areas. It will continue to make grants to prevent smoking and substance abuse, support projects to increase coverage for the uninsured, deal with issues involving long-term health care, and improve care for terminally ill people.

In an interview, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey spoke about her new position.

What are some of the most pressing issues in health and what is the foundation doing about them?

There are the ones that have been with us for a long time — the lack of health insurance for millions of people and issues of the quality of health care that people receive. We need to have greater efforts to ensure that patients are safe and that we are delivering the best health care possible. We have to ensure that people who have chronic conditions that lead to disabilities and end of life have the support that they need. These issues will continue to be a focus of the foundation as we go forward, especially as we look at the aging of our population.

On the public-health side, we have all been made painfully aware of the way our public-health system must be able to coordinate with the medical system in keeping people safe and healthy in the wake of last fall’s terrorist events. We have had a role in helping to strengthen that system, and now we are even more committed to that as a focus, while at the same time realizing that there are some other real threats to the health of the American people. Some of them are ones that are longstanding and we’ve been dealing with, like smoking and substance abuse. Others are ones we are just becoming engaged in, such as physical activity and obesity.

Does the foundation expect to increase its grant making to deal with terrorism?

There are a lot of funds from the government that are going to terrorism and bioterrorism. We see our role as really helping to coordinate individuals who are working in this area, to convene them, to provide information that will allow them to do the best possible job to develop an infrastructure to ensure that those funds are used in an optimal way.

Did your career follow the path you expected?

I never would have dreamed that my career would have this kind of incredible opportunity. What drew me to apply to the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program was the sense that health and health-care policy was incredibly important to the way medicine was practiced and to the health status and opportunities of people. And so while I started out thinking I wanted to really focus on practicing medicine and doing more traditional research, as I went through clinical parts of my training as a medical student I became increasingly interested in health policy.

What drew you to the field of medicine?

I credit my parents and their friends who ignited the initial spark. I was blessed to have two parents who were physicians, so I grew up seeing what an incredible opportunity it is to be a physician, and that love and interest just grew as I got into my teenage and college years. What I’ve really been struck with is that over the years there has continued to be a tremendous need among populations, certain populations, for health care and although we are doing an incredible job in certain areas, there are pockets that still don’t have access to good health care. I saw that very clearly in my parents’ practice, when they were practicing in fairly poor neighborhoods in the time before Medicare. We have made a lot of progress, but there are still many who have been left behind.

In what specific ways has your career prepared you for this job?

What my various experiences have allowed me to do is gain an understanding of health care at the bedside that involves an individual patient, their family, their particular needs, and the ways that the health-care system does and does not meet them, right up to the needs of a nation and how the government, the business community, and community leaders can meet or not meet the needs of that population and of individuals who want to stay healthy. I’ve had the opportunity to practice medicine and take care of people who were sick, and getting older. And I’ve been engaged in health-care systems that were struggling with issues of delivering care in an increasingly constrained setting. I’ve been involved in setting government policy and with businesses trying to deliver products and services to the health-care community in a way that was ethical. All of these situations have broadened my perspective on how to improve the health of American people.

How involved will you be in the foundation’s day-to-day work?

The foundation staff is an incredibly dedicated, smart, and committed group of people. So I’m very fortunate to have leaders within the foundation that I can turn to to help me every step of the way. That’s been the way that the foundation has operated and I plan to continue to have it operate that way, so that while I can be engaged in internal activities, I can also play a more external role. I’m the kind of person who likes to get out and talk to people and to, as we say in the field, palpate programs. That’s the way that I learn and understand, so I know that I will do a lot of that. And I will of course be looking for ways that we can work with others in a collaborative fashion.

ABOUT RISA LAVIZZO-MOUREY, INCOMING PRESIDENT OF THE ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION

Education: After completing her junior year at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, she was admitted to Harvard Medical School, where she earned her M.D. Completed internship and residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Received her M.B.A. in health-care administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance.

Previous employment: Currently serves as senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Previously she was a professor of medicine and health-care systems at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She also directed the university’s Institute on Aging and was chief of the medical school’s division of geriatric medicine. From 1992 to 1994, she was deputy administrator of the federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Health Care Quality).

Charitable affiliations: Serves on the board of directors of Ascension Health, a nonprofit Catholic health-care system in St. Louis.

Book she was reading at the time of the interview: The Emperor of Ocean Park, by Stephen L. Carter.