Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

(1954- )

Physician, Public Health Administrator, National Academy of Medicine Member

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, Courtesy of Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey,president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a national leader in transforming America’s health systems so people live healthier lives and receive the health care they need. Her career as a physician, professor, policymaker, and nonprofit executive spans more than thirty years.

Prior to joining the Foundation in 2001 as senior vice president and director of the health care group, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey was a leader in academic medicine, government service, and her medical specialty of geriatrics. She was the Sylvan Eisman Professor of Medicine and Health Care Systems at the University of Pennsylvania and director of Penn’s Institute on Aging. In Washington, D.C., she was deputy administrator of what is now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The American Philosophical Society, and the President’s Council for Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. She is also a member of the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents and has served on many the boards of many corporations and nonprofit organization.

Her contributions have been recognized with numerous honorary doctorates, awards, and commendations from prestigious institutions, including the Harvard School of Public Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the American College of Physicians, and the National Library of Medicine. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked her as number twenty-two on its 100 Most Powerful Women list. Modern Healthcare also included Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey on its list of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare.

Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School and an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania; and trained in geriatrics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Additional Information

Profile from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Biography from the National Library of Medicine exhibition Changing the Face of Medicine

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