Authors

Dr. Karen B. DeSalvo

Portrait of Dr. Karen B. DeSalvo

Dr. Karen DeSalvo is a physician who has served as a leader through her 20-year career toward improving access to affordable, high quality care for all people with a focus on vulnerable populations through her direct care, medical education and administrative roles. Before coming to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, she was the New Orleans Health Commissioner and New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu’s Senior Health Policy Advisor.

Before joining the Mayor’s administration, Dr. DeSalvo was a professor of medicine and vice dean for community affairs and health policy at Tulane University School of Medicine.

Following Hurricane Katrina, she created an innovative model of neighborhood-based primary care and mental health services for low-income, uninsured and other vulnerable individuals, and was the founder and president of 504HealthNet, a consortium of safety net providers in the New Orleans region.

Dr. DeSalvo served as president of the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum and the National Association of Chiefs of General Internal Medicine. She has served on the boards of the National Association of County and City Health Officials and the Society of General Internal Medicine.

Dr. DeSalvo was recognized as one of “Women of Excellence in Health Care” by the Louisiana Legislative Women’s Caucus and named a “Children’s Hero” by the Children’s Bureau of New Orleans and Family Service of New Orleans named her as one of their Ten Outstanding Persons. In 2013, Governing Magazine named Dr. DeSalvo one of nine Public Officials of the Year.

She earned her Medical Doctorate and Master’s in Public Health from Tulane University, and Master’s in Clinical Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Karen B. DeSalvo's Latest Blog Posts

A Call To Action for a Nationwide Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure

Dr. Karen B. DeSalvo | June 5, 2014

Today we are pleased to release Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure.  This paper describes ONC’s broad vision and framework for interoperability and is an invitation to health IT stakeholders – clinicians, consumers, hospitals, public health, technology developers, payers, researchers, policymakers and many others – to join ONC in developing a defined, shared roadmap that will allow us to collectively achieve health IT interoperability as a core foundational element of better care,

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Advancing Health Equity in the Digital Age

Dr. Karen B. DeSalvo | April 18, 2014

During National Minority Health Month, we acknowledge the potential for health information technology (health IT) – from electronic and personal health records to online communities to mobile applications – to transform health care and improve the health of racial and ethnic minorities. Lack of access to quality, preventive health care, cultural and linguistic barriers, and limited patient-provider communication are factors that aggravate health disparities. By increasing our investment in health IT policies and standards, we can help improve the quality of health care delivery and make it easier for patients and providers to communicate with each other – a huge step toward addressing the persistence of health disparities.

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HITECH Turns 5

Dr. Karen B. DeSalvo | February 19, 2014

This week marks a major milestone in our journey towards adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records. As we work toward the secure, private and meaningful exchange of interoperable health information across the continuum of care, the law that made much of this possible turns five.  We are celebrating the five-year anniversary of the passage of the Health Information Technology and Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) as part of the American Recovery and Revitalization Act.

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