Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto, Calif., has appointed Nazleen Bharmal, MD, PhD, as its first chief health equity officer, the academic health system announced Sept. 4.
In this role, Dr. Bharmal will lead efforts to integrate health equity best practices across the healthcare delivery system, focusing on quality performance, patient experience and community partnerships. She is a primary care internal medicine specialist and will also join the Stanford School of Medicine as a clinical associate professor.
Dr. Bharmal joins Stanford Health Care from Cleveland Clinic, where she spent more than five years overseeing the health system's community health and partnership strategy, according to her LinkedIn profile. Before that, she served as the director of science and policy in the Office of the Surgeon General, part of HHS.