HL20: Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD—Leading the Dialogue on Cultural Change and Collaboration

In our annual HealthLeaders 20, we profile individuals who are changing healthcare for the better. Some are longtime industry fixtures; others would clearly be considered outsiders. Some are revered; others would not win many popularity contests. All of them are playing a crucial role in making the healthcare industry better. This is the story of Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD.

This profile was published in the December, 2012 issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

 "Not a day goes by that I don’t talk to someone or interact with someone who has been able to achieve something important for the country or community or people who need help."

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, probably began her preparation to lead the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation when she was a child growing up in Seattle.

Her parents were both physicians—mom was a pediatrician and dad was a surgeon. The Harvard Medical School graduate says she grew up understanding "the incredible privilege and honor it is to be a physician and to have that intimate relationship with a patient."

At the same time conversations with her parents helped her understand the larger forces in society—such as poverty and policy—that can affect whether people have access to physicians and the healthcare they need.

When she began practicing medicine in Philadelphia, Lavizzo-Mourey gravitated toward geriatric patients with complex illnesses who had largely been ignored by the healthcare system. "I found that taking care of them was intellectually challenging. It allowed me to be the kind of doctor I wanted to be—involved with the patient and the family."

It also allowed her to take those first steps toward becoming recognized as a national healthcare policy leader. She looked at how decisions being made in the Medicare program affected her individual patients while studying the importance of those decisions in setting a national agenda for healthcare policy.

In her 10 years as president and CEO of RWJF, Lavizzo-Mourey has deftly guided the multibillion-dollar philanthropic organization to take on and speak out about what she terms "the important cultural changes that are necessary for us as a nation if we are going to become healthier."

She says the foundation is increasingly focused on supporting projects targeted in areas that represent big health concerns for the country. RWJF is also becoming more intentional in its efforts to that achieve large goals and specific outcomes within set timeframes.

One example: a goal to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity by 2015. Lavizzo-Mourey cautions that while obesity rates probably will not return to the low rates of the 1970s, it is still important to demonstrate that a reversal is under way.

In 2011 the RWJF, which is funded through an endowment, awarded 739 grants worth $397.4 million but Lavizzo-Mourey says the foundation is increasing its use of tools other than grant making, such as strategic communications and collaborations, to try to achieve its goals. She explains that the move is grounded in the realization that RWJF "needs to deliver a very consistent message and develop strong relationship with other foundations, nonprofits, and business leaders to raise awareness and produce the social change necessary to achieve its goals."

Lavizzo-Mourey says RWJF is active in two issues critical to the future of healthcare: how we invest in our health and how we invest in value for our healthcare dollars. The foundation can produce the type of objective evidence that leads the nation to have "constructive dialogue about these issues. RWJF is raising these issues in a thoughtful and explanatory way so people across the country can become engaged in the dialogue."

She explains that RWJF is in the position to help other groups that are working toward the same goals by raising the issues that allow those groups develop other collaborations and investor relationships.

Lavizzo-Mourey says the best part of her job is spending each day figuring out what the foundation can do make meaningful change happen. "Not a day goes by that I don’t talk to someone or interact with someone who has been able to achieve something important for the country or community or people who need help."