ACP Workforce Summit Speaker Biographies

ASAF BITTON, MD, MPH is the Executive Director of Ariadne Labs, a health systems innovation center of over 100 staff and faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He leads Ariadne Labs’ efforts to design, test, and spread scalable solutions that make domestic and global health systems more effective, safe, and integrated. Annually, Ariadne’s solutions (checklists, technologies, clinical protocols and other interventions) focused on childbirth, primary care, surgery, home hospital, population genomics, and serious illness care reach over 140 million patients every year around the globe. He has served as a Senior Advisor for Primary Care and Payment Policy at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in the US since 2012, helping to design and implement six major federal initiatives representing the largest tests and implementations of combined primary care payment and clinical practice transformation work in the United States. He was a core founder and leader of the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative, an 8-year partnership between the Gates Foundation, WHO, World Bank, and UNICEF, that included more than 30 countries dedicated to improving the measurement and global provision of primary health care. Dr. Bitton practices primary care internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s South Huntington clinic, a team-based community primary care practice in Boston that he helped found in 2011. He currently serves on the board of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and is a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Bipartisan Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security. He is also a member of the Executive Forum at the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (HCP-LAN), and co-chairs their Prevention Working Group. He was a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee that produced the widely cited report Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care in 2021, and currently serves on the National Academies Standing Committee for Primary Care, co-chairing the Payment Workgroup. He is an elected member of the International Academy of Quality and Safety and was the recipient of the 2023 Barbara Starfield Primary Care Leadership Award.     

BRIAN BRADY, Clinical Associate Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine. After completing medical school at Jefferson, Dr. Brady undertook his residency and chief residency at Temple University Hospital and went on to complete a clinical and research nephrology fellowship at Stanford where he joined the faculty in the division of nephrology in 2018. His research and clinical interests focus on treating patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage kidney disease (ESKD). His value-based care research, focused on developing care models to improve outcomes for patients with kidney disease, has been funded by the NIH and health systems. Dr. Brady’s work has been published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN) and other high impact journals. He serves on national grant study sections, data safety monitoring boards, and peer-reviewed journal editorial boards. With the recent transformation of therapies used to treat patients with kidney disease, his research has expanded to better understand how nephrology can better partner with primary care to increase patient access to specialty care and deliver better outcomes for patients with kidney disease. 

DR. ANNE CIOLETTI is a Professor at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah. She serves as the Associate Chief of General Internal Medicine and has previously worked at different institutions as an Associate Program Director of Internal Medicine Residency Programs, overseeing outpatient residency education and operations and the development and implementation of Internal Medicine Primary Care Tracks. She is presenting at the ACP Workforce Summit on behalf of the Association of Chiefs and Leaders in General Internal Medicine to highlight ongoing work around the Learner Experience in Primary Care, representing a national group engaging with educational, policy, research, and advocacy arms to develop the next generation of general internists.  

MICHAEL J. DILL is Director of Workforce Studies at the AAMC. Mr. Dill has more than a quarter century of experience in health services research, survey design, and research communication. He manages a research and data analytics group with an extensive portfolio of original research, data collection, and dissemination activities to support and inform AAMC, its members, and the broader workforce research and policy community in planning to meet physician workforce needs and improve access to medical care for all. Mr. Dill leads AAMC’s physician workforce projections modeling work, and he is a nationally recognized subject matter expert on health workforce data and research methods.   

DR. KATE GOODRICH serves as Executive in Residence at Optum, where she serves as a mentor and advisor to medical professionals across the organization. In this role, she fosters clinical innovation, supports continuous clinical learning, and helps to uphold the highest standards of clinical excellence in the delivery of care to patients.

Dr. Goodrich was previously the Chief Medical Officer at Humana, where she provided executive clinical leadership across the enterprise. She led clinician engagement and retention, healthcare clinical and health services research and efforts to advance the Company’s value-based care and integrated senior care strategies.

Prior to Humana, she held several leadership roles at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), including CMS Chief Medical Officer and Director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality.   

Earlier in her career, Kate served on the faculty at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (GW), where she served as the Director of Hospital Medicine and chaired the Institutional Review Board. She continues to practice as a hospitalist and clinical professor of medicine at GWU.

Kate earned her medical degree from Louisiana State University School of Medicine and her master’s in health services research from Yale University through the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. She completed her residency in internal medicine and served as a Chief Medical Resident at GWU.   

She currently serves on the boards of Tarsus Pharmaceuticals, the National Quality Forum, the Institute for Accountable Care, and is a member of the Advisory Board for the Parity Center at the University of Pennsylvania.  

SUSAN KIRSH, MD, MPH Deputy Assistant Under Secretary for Health for Discovery, Education and Affiliate Networks (DEAN) Dr. Kirsh oversees Innovation, Research, and Health Professions training across the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). She has extensive experience in VHA where she has led initiatives in telehealth and clinical contact centers, focused on improving access to care through innovative practices, and led the implementation of innovations that drive better outcomes for Veterans.  

Dr. Kirsh has served in numerous roles during her career with VHA. She practiced as an internist for many years at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center where she led Primary Care, served as the VHA based CWRU Internal Medicine Residency Program Director and started group visit for Veterans with diabetes that became a national expectation across VHA for Primary Care. She has led initiatives nationally with the Primary Care Program Office and implementation of Patient Centered Medical Home. While she spent time in Specialty Care, she implemented e-Consults nationally, Specialty Care Access Network-Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (SCAN-ECHO), and Specialty Care Neighborhoods. Dr. Kirsh has led access to care efforts such as the initiation of group practice managers that now exist in every medical center. Other access efforts included outpatient same day services, and direct scheduling into specialty care. In 2020, Dr. Kirsh collaborated to scale telehealth nationally and initiate and stand up the Clinical Contact Centers Modernization. In 2023 Dr. Kirsh supported the AI efforts aligned to the Executive order developing the Trustworthy AI guidebook, to ensure safe and effective use of AI. From 2022 to 2024 she served as the Executive Sponsor overseeing the implementation of the STRONG Veterans Act. Dr. Kirsh is currently the business owner of the Elizabeth Dole Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act, section 107 seeking to demonstrate how Value Based Care can lead to better outcomes for Veterans with improved health and efficiencies.  

Dr. Kirsh is certified with the American Board of Internal Medicine. In 2024, she completed Competing in the Age of AI at the Harvard Business School. She received a professional designation in Certified in Medical Quality (CMQ) from the American College of Medical Quality in 2023. She is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Society of General Internal Medicine, Medical Group Management Association, and the American College of Physicians. She is on faculty at CWRU as a full Professor, and faculty at USUHS, Georgetown and teaches George Washington University in the School of Public Health. She earned her Master of Public Health (MPH) from Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Dr. Kirsh has over 50 peer reviewed publications. 

JOSHUA LIAO, MD, MSc, FACP, is a physician executive and health systems scholar. As National Associate Vice President for Clinical Transformation at Ascension, Dr. Liao oversees enterprise strategy and execution of care engagement technology, products, and programs, including those involving remote patient monitoring, patient-reported outcomes, and engagement campaigns. He is also Professor of Medicine and of Health Economics, Systems, and Policy at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. His health care payment and care delivery experience includes other enterprise health system roles and service on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the Physician-Focused Payment Model Technical Advisory Committee, the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network Patient Empowerment Workgroup, and the National Academy of Medicine’s Commission on Investment Imperatives for a Healthy Nation.  
   
With continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Liao has led grants and evaluations totaling over $15 million and published over 400 articles. He earned degrees magna cum laude in English Literature and Biochemistry from Rice University, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and his medical degree cum laude from Baylor College of medicine, where he was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Dr. Liao trained in internal medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and was a Clinical Fellow in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and afterwards served a Senior Fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.  

DR. PADILLA comes to NACHC from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). There he served for nearly a decade as the Associate Administrator for the Bureau of Health Workforce (BHW), responsible for over 70 workforce programs and 478 staff, and Director of the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), BHW’s largest program of over 18,000 clinicians. A key focus for Dr. Padilla at HRSA was improving primary care across the nation and developing, recruiting, and retaining a diverse and culturally competent health workforce; under his leadership, the Bureau expanded to its current budget of almost $2 billion and the NHSC grew to the largest size in its 50-year history. Prior to joining HRSA, Dr. Padilla served for more than a decade at Unity Health Care, the largest community health center system in Washington, DC, as senior health policy advisor to the CEO, medical director, and as a NHSC Scholar. He also served on the National Advisory Council of the NHSC from 2007 to 2010. A licensed family physician, Dr. Padilla received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and a Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of California at Irvine. He earned a medical degree from Wake Forest School of Medicine and completed his family medicine residency at Brown University.  

RHEA POWELL, MD, MPH, FACP, is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Division of Internal Medicine at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. In this capacity, she oversees the academic and clinical operations of nine internal medicine practices. Dr. Powell currently serves on the ACP’s Performance Measurement Committee, which promotes use of evidence-based performance measures to improve the quality of patient care, as well as the ACP Coding and Payment Subcommittee, which advises on policies to improve coverage and payment tied to quality and value through alternative payment models and recommendations for improving coding and documentation of physician services. She previously served as a senior researcher at Mathematica, where she evaluated federal delivery and payment models, including CMS’s Primary Care First and Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+) models. As a practicing primary care physician, Dr. Powell focuses her work at the intersection of clinical practice and the policy reforms necessary to better serve patients and the healthcare workforce. 

DR. PRIYA RADHAKRISHNAN serves as Chief Academic Officer and Vice President at HonorHealth and as Vice Dean of Clinical Affairs and Graduate Medical Education and Professor of Medicine at the Arizona State University John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering. She is an internal medicine physician with a focus on caring for patients with chronic, complex illness. A seasoned physician leader, she has extensive experience in medical education, guided by a philosophy that integrates the needs of learners, patients, and the community.  

Under her leadership, HonorHealth has grown the residency and fellowship programs to serve the workforce needs of Arizona and has received grant funding from the Halle Foundation to expand primary care with a focus on rural and underserved areas.  

Her research portfolio in health equity includes service as Principal Investigator for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Health Systems Implementation Initiative (HSII) projects, advancing the use of data and technology to drive patient-centered outcomes with a strong emphasis on equity. This work supports the development and implementation of strategies that promote evidence-based health care delivery. She has also received grant funding from the American Board of Internal Medicine to expand health equity, resulting in the establishment of two People Resource Groups supporting American Indian/Indigenous Peoples and LGBTQIA+ staff and patients.  

Dr. Radhakrishnan has held multiple national leadership roles. She has served as a Regent and former Chair of the Board of Governors of the American College of Physicians. Her contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the AAMC Samueli Curricula Innovation Award for Opioid Stewardship, the AIAMC Innovation Award for Research, Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, the Arizona Medical Association Wallace A. Reed, MD Award for innovation in healthcare, the ArMA C.H. William Ruhe Award for excellence in CME programs, and the HonorHealth Advancing Philanthropy Physician Award.  

ANKITA SAGAR, MD, MPH, FACP, FAMWA is a nationally recognized physician executive and System Vice President for Clinical Transformation and Well-Being at CommonSpirit Health, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems. She leads enterprise efforts to standardize care, improve outcomes, and implement a learning health system framework across 140+ hospitals, with expertise in value-based care, implementation science, and evidence-based medicine.  
Board-certified in Internal Medicine with a master's in public health, Dr. Sagar brings deep expertise in value-based care, implementation science, and evidence-based innovation, with work spanning cancer screening, clinical AI, antimicrobial stewardship, age-friendly care, and eliminating bias in clinical algorithms. She serves on the Board of Commissioners for The Joint Commission and the Board of Directors for the American Medical Women's Association.    

LAURA SESSUMS joined ABIM as the CMO in June 2025 and is a practicing general internist. At ABIM, she leads external stakeholder engagement, including with medical professional societies. Previously, she was the CMO at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality where she had a diverse portfolio including Long COVID, strengthening collaboration with CMS and other agencies, developing a primary care strategy, and improving patient experience measurement. She has worked in the private sector, as the Chief Care Transformation Medical Director at Anthem, where she focused on commercial value-based care programs, including primary care, ACOs, and episode-based payment models. She also spent five years as the Director of the Division of Advanced Primary Care at the CMS Innovation Center (CMMI).  At CMMI, she developed and launched the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+), America’s largest multi-payer initiative to improve primary care. She spent over a decade in academic medicine as a clinician-educator, mostly at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (as a civilian), where she served as the Chief of the General Medicine Section. Her professional activities have been in the areas of health care policy and advocacy, medical education, and research has focused on primary care.  She is a former lawyer.  

DR. CATHERINE SMITAS graduated from Harvard College with a degree in History and Science.  She received her MD from the University of Rochester and then pursued General Internal Medicine residency at Brown.  Following graduation, she joined the faculty for a few years until she and her husband decided to move back to their hometown near Albany, New York.  She joined an independent practice and developed an interest and expertise in value-based care.  In 2021, she decided to step back from practicing medicine full time and joined Aledade where she uses her skills to help other physicians successfully transition to value-based care.  She sees patients once a week at a clinic that serves the homeless and uninsured.